Frostburn Canyon was nothing short of brutal for an exiled clone, but it was a home. TZ dug into the Dahl dumpster, precariously bent over the edge to reach for an upturned box of ammo. As his fingers grazed the bottom, he hoped that the weight within that resisted his attempt to flip it was a handful of bullets, or even some hidden cache of food instead of a rat, or worse. With another stretch, his dust-stained sleeve tore against a sharpened edge of the dumpster, its edges reddening from the new gash across his arm.
“Damn,” he whispered, pulling himself up and slipping out of the dumpster to sit on the ground. The thick, damp fabric froze in the chilled air. Clasping his arm to stem the flow, he continued to curse under his breath.
Real bandits could smell blood, probably.
Peeking out from his cover, TZ checked the doors of the haphazardly built camp. He held his breath, so the clouds of haze would not give away his position.
A shadow fell over him with growling huffs of hot, wet breath. TZ’s gaze rolled upwards. The white expanse of a giant ram skull mask stared back. The giant’s thumb hooked under the front palate of the skull and lifted. Three distinct sniffs in the air made TZ grip his dripping arm until his knuckles turned white.
He could not do anything about a badass Psycho.
And the Psycho chortled.
“Fresh meat...” His horned head tilted curiously, the dark eye socket staring down at the clone. The psycho sighed, “no, frozen.” He crawled off of the roof and dumpster to crouch beside TZ. “Frozen meat’s no good. All crunch and no squish. Mum would cry.”
TZ could not look away from the tattoos across the other’s stomach: SUBMIT, in bold, black lettering. “Uh... yeah, I’m too frozen!” TZ said, forcing a nervous smile. This one wasn’t screaming at him like the others, perhaps he could be convinced to let him go? “No good at all. Freezer burnt to a crisp!”
Another head tilt, the psycho leaning so close that his horn squished the floof of TZ’s mohawk. “Don’t listen,” he snapped, scooting closer to TZ, pinning him against the dumpster. The horn on the mask clocked TZ’s scalp as the head it was attached to dipped to stare down at the bleeding arm. “Don’t listen.”
“Okay, all right I won’t,” TZ agreed, struggling to grip his throbbing skull while trying to hide the gash on his arm against his chest.
Without much effort, the bandaged, stained fingers plucked TZ’s hand and straightened it out to inspect. “Guh....” he growled, tugging the tiny being onto his feet. The psycho relaxed, setting down his buzzaxe to fish something out from the threadbare pants stained with the same reddish-brown mystery substance as his fingers. Between his thumb and index finger, he produced a health syringe. “Ah yesss, at last. Red for red.”
Syringes never bothered TZ; FU was fond of using them for all manner of injuries whether they were from the acid burns across his body from swimming in the Caustic Caverns for a video,or nearly losing this same arm in a wrestling match with a Thresher.
The casing cracked as the psycho forced it into his palm. TZ squeaked and squirmed, pulling his own arm out of socket to flee the crushing grasp. Then he let go, dropping TZ with a grunt.
“All better...” the psycho purred, drool dribbling onto TZ’s knees from under the mask. With a wet, sucking sound, the psycho sat back, his head tilting as he scanned the rest of the camp. “All quiet. Mum’ll be proud.”
TZ scrambled away from the dumpster, clawing at the red speckled packed snow to put as much distance from him and the huge bandit as possible before he decided that he was fresh meat after all.
As he got to his feet, he half-expected to get tackled, cut to shreds by the psycho’s buzzaxe in a fit of shrieking poetic nonsense like they’ve done to other clones.
But this Mike made it to his ladder, his sneaker slipping on the crust of ice with every step up. Shins battered on the bars, he tore open his front door and collapsed inside. Gasping for breath, his fingers dug into the tattered rug to drag himself up into a sitting position. It wasn’t until the end of his black tie had found itself between his teeth that TZ realized that he was okay.
The psycho had been rough, but syringe had done its work. A fresh straight scar raised from his once acid twisted flesh. Flexing his fist: his wrist was bruised, but nothing seemed broken. “Huh... That one’s not that bad?”
Pendakka Lakonna is an engineer that has chosen to live among the Stalkers near the Wildlife Preserve. He has taken some of their pelts and sewn them into his signature hooded vest and skinny pants, with some clever wiring, he’s attached a shield to them to enable him to run around under a cloak of invisibility. With a taste for violence and some clever devices, he has almost entirely integrated caustic acids and slag (or whatever replaces it based on a tweet by Pitchford) into his skill set.
A stylish man, he has integrated a snake motif into all that he does and all of his clothing. One arm was lost when he was with Hyperion and replaced with a hefty cybernetic one.
TZ’ll totally take the challenge and he’ll film it, for sure. But as a human and exiled from his Kingdom, he’s lacking all that muscle mass that’s natural to a Galahadrim and a result of a culture of combat readiness and physical fitness.
Prime the Headcanons! (Accepting Blands!verse on Pendles, FL4K, and Thralls)
✍ : What is your muse’s handwriting like? Is it neat? Sloppy? Fancy?
Pendles’ handwriting is neat and methodical, perfect for advertising and writing out clear contracts with exceptionally fine print.
☕ : Does your muse prefer coffee or tea?
Coffee by far. Perfect for long nights designing new mechanations of death and destruction and staying awake for stake outs.
♿ : Has your muse had any injuries in the past?OH YES. Pendles is still missing an arm and an eye. Though the arm was replaced with a cybernetic one. He also has a pretty gnarly scar over the other half of his face, just barely missing his eye.
Pandora is a rough place and stalkers do not play nice at all.
That and he kind of hopped from being an engineer directly into serial murderer/assassin-for-hire. Mistakes were made.
@shellalana replied to your post “Blands!Verse musing”
*grabby hands* Gimme!
Soon! I’m still doing a bunch of world building behind the scenes for stuff to work with (... and replaying the games for lore) and refitting the blogs for the Blands!verses (muse pages, rules etc.).
