deercountry | (closed) february catchall

Entry tags:

(closed) february catchall

Who: Ange (

entreats), Chizuru (

tealeafs), Daniel (

miyagimagic) and various others.
What: February shenanigans.
When: During all of February.
Where: Locations vary.

Content Warnings: Nothing right now, specific warnings will be in headers when they come up.

( starters in the comments! if you want to plot anything with me, feel free to either pm the journal or contact me at

queeningsquare, i'm always open to new ideas and threads! )

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"Mm, I won't."

Baltus is not as reassuring just now as he normally would be. Omens can sense danger, and he, too, remains uneasy. He doesn't pull away from Ange's touch, but his ears are erect, swiveling to and fro in an attempt to track down the source of his discomfort.

He has no reason to believe it isn’t another beast, already on the way to investigate the corpse.

Break, for his part, only takes a moment to get a better look at the snake, still standing back a ways given the size of the thing. The creature's scales look very like armor, and that's what would take time — trying to force his blade into a weak spot between them, so as to inject his power into the body. He uses that technique as a general rule these days because it forces him to focus, and so uses less of his energy than trying to aim that power at things from a distance. Fortunately, the snake's mouth is open, and there should be flesh enough there for Break to puncture it. Setting his canesword against a tree, he summons the glowing purple blade he can send his magic through and steps closer to —

— the head shoots forward. The long, wicked fangs embed themselves into Break's middle, yanking him right off his feet as the snake rights itself and begins pulling him back towards its den. Break himself doesn’t cry out, but Baltus does, letting out a high, horrid shriek of a yelp. The only other sound is the rustling of leaves and sticks as Break is dragged through the underbrush, disappearing in seconds into the trees.

It's like Ange's blood freezes in her veins.

Even with her being on edge and worried, she didn't quite expect this level of danger. Not so quickly, anyway, striking in a moment and so fast that it already feels too late by the time the girl realises what's happening. That snake wasn't alive, and Break is there one moment, and then the next he's completely gone, the snake dragging him off at lightning speed.

"Break!" The name escapes Ange by instinct more than on purpose, not even an attempt to call out at him to try and get him to respond to her, but more a gutteral wail. It's bad enough that the snake punctured the man with its fangs in the first place, but the way it drags him off right after only makes it worse. Disaster scenarios flash through Ange's mind, the mental image of Break's cold corpse, a single eye staring up lifelessly--

There's no time. There's no time, and Ange rushes. She doesn't even look at Baltus anymore, either trusting the Omen to follow, or just not having the mental capacity to care about him in this moment. All she knows is that she has to follow, that she has to keep an eye on Break, even though the snake already disappeared between the trees and the bushes. She has to do something, she has to move, because if she doesn't do a thing then the worst case scenario will happen.

So the girl starts to run. In her panic she forgets to do even as much as turn into butterflies, which certainly would make traveling through thick overgrown woods like these much easier. Instead she just runs in the direction where she saw the beast escape with Break, running as fast as she can, not caring about the thorns and branches that scratch and scrape her skin as she tries to give chase.

"Break!" She calls out again, though perhaps this time hoping for anything, any answer, any sound that tells her she's at least headed in the right direction.

Her heart pounds all the way up in her throat.

Man and omen collect themselves at the same time. Baltus, despite his silly and lanky appearance, was modeled after a breed of dog meant to hunt wolves, and his body is designed for speed. He takes off through the trees — literally through them, dissolving half into shadow so that he can move in a straight line back to Break — and disappears just as quickly.

For Break's part, he begins trying to fight back entirely on instinct the second he's recovered from the initial shock of the pain. Ange's first indication that he is still active is the sudden explosion of a tree up ahead, the whole thing shattering into dust as Break attempts to hurl his power at the snake and misses, still too disoriented to aim properly. He doesn't try again. That maneuver will use up too much of his energy if he's haphazard about it. He drops back to his most prominent skill instead, shifting his darkblood blade into more of a knife than a sword, so that he can flip it in his hand to a stabbing weapon rather than slashing.

His strike hits. Ange will hear the snake let out a deep, evil hiss of pain, and perhaps she's close enough to hear the thud of a body hitting the ground as the beast drops its prey. Flashes of purple glow between branches will lead her the rest of the way. The thing is attempting to strike him again, but Break is more prepared this time, and blocks the creature's hits with the shield of light he learned to make last summer. Modeled after the protective Aura the Remnant people possess, Break has trained to use it in battle with Qrow countless times, and while he isn't able to keep it up constantly as the others do he can conjure that shield now almost as instinctively as a sword.

When Ange runs onto the scene she'll discover the snake has the hilt of Break's sword sticking out of one nostril, a delightful display of his usual spiteful competence. But the situation is still dire. Break has always been able to push through most of his injuries, even the loss of his eye. This time, the snake's fangs having punctured him in such a brutal way, his body simply isn't capable of moving properly. Pale and visibly angry, he grits his teeth as he struggles to stand. Baltus is behind him, ready to provide support to lean on if Break can get himself upright enough to grab on. But he's unable to do more than keep an arm thrown up in defense, a visual cue that helps him focus on keeping his shield up as the snake attempts to hit him again and again and again.

At first Ange is relieved by the visible signs as to where she should go. The combination of light and sounds make it very obvious where all the action is going down - and it's, at the same time, a sign that Break is still alive. Ange didn't have time to take a good look at the severity of the injury with how quickly the beast had dragged the man off, but it could have been really bad. These beasts never hold back, after all.

So she speeds up, following the visible light between the trees until she arrives at the spot where it is all going down, the snake's tail visibly curled between all the trees due to its massive size. It's not the snake's body Ange is looking at though, her gaze moving past to see Break there.

Alive, thankfully. She was right about that.

But he doesn't look much better than that. It may be the worst state she's ever seen him in, aside from the one time she found him in bed right after one of the Alices had forced that gem into his eye. Break may be struggling to stand up, but Ange can tell from how pale he is and all the darkblood spread around that he's not going to be able to. Not for long, anyway. Not even while working off sheer determination and stubbornness (which Break has a lot of, and she knows it).

So Ange knows what she has to do. Realising she has to draw the beast's attention towards herself, Ange unsheaths the sword hanging at her side, feeling it click into shotgun mode. Despite still being a little distance away from where the snake is trying to lunge at Break's fallen body, Ange knows she's good enough at aiming that she doesn't worry about hitting the man by accident.

There's just so much of the snake to shoot at, after all.

So Ange fires. First one blast, then another, but the snake doesn't turn towards her at all even as the bullets burrow themselves into the snake's body. Apparently the beast has decided that this discomfort is worth putting up with as long as it can focus on a much easier prey, considering it has already half-downed the wounded man.

Letting out a grunt of frustration, the girl quickly runs closer, her tone raised into a yell.

"Hey, you freak, stop ignoring me!"

Raising the gun again, Ange fires once more - this time from much more up close, and aimed at the snake's head.

Ugh. Shotguns.

Better for Ange to have a ranged weapon if she's going to be here at all, but Break hates that she is. If he's by himself for a fight like this, he can run on spite alone, confident that at the very least he'll take his assailant down with him. With someone he loves around the stakes are much higher, and the panic he hadn't completely felt for himself sets in hard when the girl actually manages to shoot the thing right in the eye.

"Ange!"

His voice is distinctly slurred, easy to tell even when he's only saying her name. Break tries to sit up again and again he fails, the muscles of his core too damaged to obey him. But as the snake hisses its fury and swivels toward her, he manages to get an arm behind himself and shove himself over. He's so dizzy the world keeps going without him when he lands -- he's lost too much blood, it seems, he thinks vaguely -- but Break has long since noticed that bleeding freely makes his powers stronger, and this is hardly the first time his head has been spinning during a fight and he's managed to work through it just a little longer. That purple shield manifests in front of Ange next, giving her time to scramble back away from the snake now that its attention is on her.

He feels terribly cold. Like his limbs are petrifying, somehow. Even so, a mumbled command sends Baltus flying to Ange's side to help her confuse the snake, or to serve as a mount of she needs to move away in a hurry; and, left behind on leaves shimmering with his blood, Break sets about attempting to crawl close enough to the snake that he can dust it safely. If his body can still move at all, he has to move, has to keep Ange safe in whatever way he can manage.

She should probably feel more scared when the snake turns towards her. It's huge, after all, and though she hasn't had the chance to take a good look at Break, she can see that he's not doing well.

And that's saying something. Not many things can take Break nearly out of commission this quickly.

Somehow the fear doesn't come though. Not from the way the beast turns towards her, not from how easily it could do the same thing to her. Instead Ange can just feel something bubbling and boiling under her skin, the more she sees Break's form out of the corner of her eyes while she still keeps her main gaze on the snake. She can see the darkblood spilling everywhere, she can see the man starting to crawl, of all things.

"Stay down!" She yells - a command that's obviously not aimed at the snake, even as it approaches, but at Break instead. He already looks like he's losing quite a bit of blood, and moving around will just make that happen even more quickly.

And what if he loses too much? What if he dies here, all of a sudden, just on this random afternoon?

Ange's heart races with fear and rage at the very idea. No more. This crap keeps on happening over and over again, and-- she isn't going to take it anymore.

The girl seems to ignore the purple shield Break put between her and the beast. She's even ignoring Baltus' best attempts to help. The girl keeps on staring at the snake until her hands start to glow with golden magic--

--and then the ground behind her seems to crack as something makes its way up from there. It's a massive tower, an entire structure moving up out of the ground as if it had been buried there and is only now drilling its way up, rising above the treeline.

It takes up a lot of her magic, but Ange doesn't care, doesn't even notice the way her breath starts to quicken. Her gaze is still glued onto the snake, even as windows seem to open up in the tower, even as a turret of bullets starts being fired at the snake, as if there's somehow a sniper behind each of those windows.

Well. That's quite possibly the one and only action Ange could take that will absolutely get Break to stay put. For one thing Break cannot be sure in this moment that he is not hallucinating. For another he has no desire to wind up riddled with holes from a magic sniper tower filled with more shotguns, which is certainly what would happen if he kept going.

Not that his logic is actually making it that far. Mostly he's just staring at the tower, baffled, until his vision begins to swim badly enough that he can no longer focus on it.

The shield he raised for Ange flickers out as Break loses his concentration.

It's Baltus, lunging forward with snapping jaws to herd the snake back into the path of the bullets whenever it tries to retreat, who realizes suddenly just what is really wrong. Break doesn't register his omen speaking up -- oh, oh, Ange, it's poisoned him, it's poisonous -- though he does feel the sense of desperate urgency under the words. The certainty that he absolutely has to move is still there. But his limbs are so heavy that he almost feels as though he can't find them, like he's forgotten where they are, and his thoughts are growing more sluggish and disjointed by the moment.

We must kill it quickly, Baltus is saying, holding it together precisely because Break is not. Yes, yes, kill it, they have to kill it -- Ange can't be facing that thing alone. Shuddering violently as the chill of the venom settles into his bones, Break lowers his head and tries, entirely on instinct, just to keep breathing.

There's not even any real reason for Baltus to have to add that second part. The very moment the Omen alerts Ange to the fact that it was poison - shit, it makes sense, it's a snake, even if it's not exactly any normal snake - the girl already knows she has to get rid of this creature as soon as possible. Even if Break is formidable in many ways, he's still only just a guy. Just a person. Who knows how long he could fight off poison like that, especially when it's coming from a beast?

It makes panic and fury rise within her heart in equal measures, speeding up her heartbeat.

"I'll deal with it." Her voice is tight as she says it, a little too serious, trembling with barely contained rage. Her hands are still raised to keep the towers firing at the beast, the constant barrage of pain enough to distract it as she speaks.

(No, this can't be happening. Not again, not yet another person important to her, and Break could actually die here--)

"Stay by his side." It's not a negotiation. Baltus may not be Ange's Omen, but that sure sounds like an outright order, Ange not giving any leeway at all here. She's not the one who needs protection here when Break is the one almost dying.

(Dying, dying, dying, the word repeats over and over in Ange's head like a nightmare, and her eyes turn a bright glowing golden, irises and pupils and everything fading into it.)

"Make sure he hangs in there until I'm done."

No matter what.

Break can't die.

An order it may be, but Break is at his best when someone he can trust to understand things is bossing him around and Baltus is no different. A brief glance at Ange and her glowing golden eyes tells the omen all he needs to know. One of the many traits Break and Ange share is a determined protectiveness of those they love, a willingness to go as far as is necessary no matter the cost, and Baltus knows it in action when he sees it.

The way to help Ange now is to help Break. She'll be far more likely to make some sort of fatal mistake if she thinks he is alone.

Baltus twists mid stride and aims himself towards his person, keeping himself intangible so that the bullets from Ange's tower pass straight through him on the way to the snake. The beast is attempting to retreat, so Ange should have no problem slaughtering it now provided that she does so before it makes it to the safety of its den. As to Break, he is losing consciousness swiftly. The venom is working away at him faster than any of his previous injuries ever have. But he's still just aware enough to realize that and Baltus can feel his despair, so the omen drapes himself over him like a blanket, nuzzling against the side of Break's head.

Break is competent at field medicine, but what's happening to him now is far beyond the scope of his ability and Baltus is a dog. All the omen can do at this point is provide comfort and encouragement, and the words he chants to Break — easily overheard by Ange, if she cares to listen in — are the same sort of mantra Break used to chant to himself back home, as he found himself in a horrible race against his own withering body.

Now is not the time, Xerxes. So long as this heart is still beating, this body still has a chance. Never you mind the cold; you needn't fight the pain this time. Just breathe. You want to be here. You are needed. Just breathe.

Break isn't so grand that willpower alone can keep him alive when his body is truly ready to give out. If he were, he never would have died before, not after realizing just how badly he didn't want to. But in this world, his powers do affect his body, striking him blind again when he's upset at himself and keeping him looking just a little younger than he ought to still, simply because the face he expects in the mirror is that of the exhausted twenty-something he was stuck as for the past fifteen years. He can't heal himself, his muscles are too shredded to work, and the poison has him reeling. But his heart keeps beating, and each time Baltus pushes him to believe he can draw in just one more breath, he does.

When he's too far gone to manage this anymore, that will be that.

Honestly, Ange's concern lies so much more with Break's condition than with what the snake is trying to do, attempting to retreat from the onslaughter of the bullets. If the snake gets away, then-- whatever, she's too busy worrying about Break to even fully feel the grudge against this thing under those conditions. If she takes too long and something happens to the man, however, that would definitely be the worst case scenario.

It's why she knows she has to speed this up. The current display of magic isn't enough. The monster has to die now, because Break doesn't have the time to wait. Ange is too distracted to listen in on them, to know what Baltus is doing or how poor Break's condition truly is, but she knows it's got to be bad. It's the sort of situation where mere moments could be the difference between life or death.

And she's the only one who can make that difference.

(No pressure, clearly.)

It's why the girl extends a hand, staring intensely at the snake as it tries to retreat from the torrent of bullets, and then slowly forms said hand into a fist.

The snake starts randomly bulging in various spots, like there's something inside of it, until it's almost like the creature is boiling from the inside, squirming in all directions. Not that any of its movements help, since a moment after the snake seems to outside explode from the inside, small pieces of blood and guts splattering everywhere like confetti.

Sometimes you panic about what to quickly do in an emergency situation, and the first thing that comes to mind is one of your brother's dumb ideas. Thanks for small bombs, Battler. Thanks.

The magic is already starting to fade, right after the creature exploded like a piñata. The towers fade like they were never there, no marks even left on the ground. The only visible reminder of what happened are the pieces of snake everywhere, but Ange ignores even those as she quickly runs over to Break and Baltus' forms, sinking onto her knees right next to them.

Ange looks incredibly exhausted and agitated all at the same time - the fact that her eyes still have that golden hue sure isn't helping the latter - but she's already extending her hands towards Break, a golden glow surrounding them as she hovers over the wounds.

"Break," she says, the name never having sounded as desperate coming out from her mouth as it has now. She doesn't even know if she has enough energy left to heal him. She feels completely emptied out after dealing with that snake.

But she has to try, she has to try, even if the girl is looking more scared with each passing moment.

"It's okay, I'll-- I'll heal you, alright? Just hang in there. Just a few moments longer, please."

Baltus only half pays attention, just enough to register that Ange has just destroyed that snake in much the same way the pale Alice slaughtered Break's first Chain. Possibly it is just as well Break has missed this, though Baltus will gently tell him later, if nobody else explains first. For the moment, the omen shifts so that she can get a better look at Break, not that she needs one to understand that he's struggling badly.

You did it once before, the omen reminds her, his voice in her head so reminiscent of Break's own. You fixed his eye, last summer. I've never told him, as you asked.

It isn't a plea on his part. Baltus isn't begging. Rather, it's a note of confidence. Ange has eased Break's pain before. Even if she can't heal him fully, surely at the very least she can bring him back.

It's a good reminder when there's so much panic rising within the girl. It's not like she can't protest those words, even if it's just to herself. After all, she hardly knew what she was doing when she fixed Break's eye back there, and she isn't sure whether she has enough magic left in her tank for this, and--

It doesn't matter, right? Like Baltus is telling her.. she did this before. And she has to do this again now. There's no other option.

Still.. she's scared. Ange is so terrified right now, and she's so well aware of it that she moves one hand to borrow it in Baltus' fur, almost as if she needs the strength of his presence to carry her through this as she's moving her other glowing hand until it rests directly of top of where the snake sank its fangs into the man.

"Come, try to remember.."

The girl's voice trembles as she speaks, but she doesn't stop.

"What form did you have..?"

At first it seems like the magic isn't doing anything - even Ange notices it, and it makes her push herself even harder, trying to squeeze every last drip of her magical ability out of herself here.

"It wasn't like this. You can't--" Ah, this isn't part of how this magic is supposed to work traditionally, right? This isn't what you're supposed to say, but the words live so strongly in Ange's heart that they come out all the same, the girl's eyes growing more watery with each passing moment. "You can't die, okay..?"

At least the emotion does seem to finally kickstart her magic. There isn't enough of it left to heal the man completely, but the wound does start knitting itself back together at the most lethal parts, and the active parts of the poison seem to leave Break's body entirely as Ange lets out a sob.

It's not at all a pleasant sensation. This isn't like before, when the bulk of Ange's magic went simply to easing the pain. Now, muscles and organs that were punctured by the snake's fangs abruptly start to knit themselves back together, creating scar tissue that aches and pulls and itches. The poison burns as it fades, leaving him feeling even colder than before. Blood is created in bone marrow, and as his body produces more blood in a hurry to make up for what was lost, his bones themselves hurt, enough so that Break lets out a small, pitiful little cry.

He very rarely makes noise when he's hurt, and when he does, it's generally a proper scream of agony. Such a pathetic sound really doesn't suit him at all.

But it's working, enough so that once Ange's magic has gotten him started, Break's latches on to keep things going. He hasn't realized it yet, but his powers wear him out the same way the Mad Hatter's did in part because he expects them and even wants them to. That same power strikes him blind again from time to time during his moments of self-loathing, and if he concentrates, he can likewise bring his sight back. Now, as Break comes just aware enough to understand what Ange is doing, his helpless faith in her power pushes the magic she has left farther than it could go on its own.

Faint flickers of violet shudder across the still-open wounds, betraying what's happening. Break murmurs something unintelligible, protesting how keenly he can feel his body trying to put itself back together. It's very much like a reversal of the way he once felt as though it were slowly cracking all around him as the Hatter wore him down, and his hand moves, searching for Ange's.

It takes a moment for Ange to notice, considering the combination of panic and fatigue make it a little harder to be incredibly alert here, but then she does spot the purple sparks seeming to mix with her own magic. She knows it's Break, and his body cooperating to try and heal itself feels like a relief, since it means he is still alive. That he's fighting to be alive.

The hand she suddenly feels brushing against her own is another sign of it, and Ange reaches back to properly hold it, rather than continue to let the hand blindly trying to grasp her own. Her hold on the hand is weak at first, but then becomes a little tighter - perhaps because she's using it as a way for her to hold on here as well in such a scary situation.

But even as she's holding the hand, she's still pushing her magic. Even with Break helping, she knows she can't let up, that she has to make sure he's at least okay, even if it means squeezing her magic out to the very last drops of it.

And she does. After the major injuries are taken care of, Ange's magic just runs out. Her glowing golden eyes vanish, and the girl slumps forward in exhaustion, her head now leaning against Break's chest.

Ange is so tired. She's so tired, but she has to know--

"Was it.. enough..?"

Is he alright? Is he alive? Maybe she should be more worried about how the two of them are even going to get out of here, since that's another problem entirely, but there's no room left in Ange's tired head for anything but the worry about Break's current status.

Working together — Ange's power, and Break helping to direct it — they manage to bring him to a point where he'll be alright, but he'd have a long recovery ahead of him if he were still at home. Here, Sleeper blood and pure spite will have him up and about far faster. Even so, leaning on his chest like this, Ange will be able to hear how erratic his heartbeat is, thumping in unsteady palpitations as it tries to adjust to his body having a very different amount of blood in it than it's used to. He's still shuddering horribly with chills underneath her, and isn't really able to squeeze her hand back any more firmly than she is.

This half-healed state is much more familiar to him, though, and he settles into it with a weird sort of comfort. Relief that he isn't dying here today after all. That he isn't leaving yet another princess with awful memories of his final departure from her life, even if this time, in theory, he'd return to her.

For a while, he simply lays there, aware but muzzy enough that he can't quite put together words to answer her question. As his mind tries to patch together what just happened into something that makes sense, he forgets she asked entirely. Instead, his mind settles on one thing that is really bothering him, and after a few more minutes of focused breathing he remembers how to make his mouth work.

“…‘zat a fucking…gun building…?"

This is not the first time Break has fallen unconscious in an attack of some sort, woken up, and picked back up right where he left off. Last time this happened a Baskerville brat with poor timing wound up receiving a punt he'd meant to land on Vincent Nightray some while earlier. He is still miffed about that, because Break has priorities.

You did not dream that, no, Baltus confirms, laying down to snuggle up against both of them, exhausted. Break slurs something that sounds like "good grief" under his breath.

Before Break speaks up, the moments spent lying there in more or less just total silence are only filled with worry.

It feels like it might not have been enough, after all. Not with what she can hear from his heart, not with how she can feel his body shaking. Break is still not okay - but Ange knows she can't do anything about it anymore. She's already put all of her magic into the fight with the monster and then this attempt to heal Break, and she's so drained that she can barely even more anymore, let alone summon forth any more magic.

It'd be a horrible way for this to end, Ange thinks. Break dying out here like this. Ange being unable to do a thing about it. Her fault. During something that was just supposed to be a more or less routine thing in Trench.

It brings forth an anxiety that threatens to make Ange outright nauseous--

--all the way until she instead hears that. And despite the fact that it's so much weaker than usually - it's not like her energy suddenly returns to her, after all - Ange lets out the most dramatic groan possible in her current condition against Break's torso.

"Are you kidding me..?"

She's probably trying to sound offended.

Instead Ange just sounds young. She sounds scared. It's the total opposite of the determined and cold attitude that came over her while dealing with the snake itself.

"I thought you were dying.. you idiot.." (Maybe it'd sound a little more convincingly angry if it didn't sound like she was also on the verge of tears.)

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(closed) february catchall

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cw: gore (in the form of small bombs)

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cw: healing-related body horror

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