#chthonicsurge

[ofdeference]

@chthonicsurge from here

A piece in its game? A pawn to play, to use, to sacrifice. The revelation comes quick, passes in its glory to fade into the dull truth no more a concern than the next cup of coffee once his has either cooled or been devoured.

Gloved fingers trace the porcelain curve of a well loved handle.

"Is that so..." The stench of something stagnant wafts with the...man's passing, churning stomach to upheaval if he's not careful. The aroma of old coffee returns and he decides it is not worth it. In the sink it goes, heels clicking against polished marble as he follows.

"Do you even know where to look?" Because he does. The file in his PHS updates regularly, Elena and Rude are diligent.

[ivory-paragon]

@chthonicsurge // Nero // Unprompted

Rufus doesn't scream.

It was as if he was expecting it, how the lights dimmed and a fog that held a dense macabre clouded the air and the blue hue from the Junon windows. Being newly appointed always came with growing pains. Some would accept his newfound position with the anticipation of a new path, a new era. Others looked toward it with dread. Where do they settle within the uprooting of the stationary lifestyle they were so used to? He'd welcome the opposition, formally expecting someone to invade his privacy sooner or later.

It appeared today was the day.

"Normally, people request a meeting with me via my secretary." He's not about to roll out the carpet, no matter who the esteemed guest was. As his hand shifted away from the leaning position on his face, he proceeded to fold them on his lap. "With tact." Came his reply to Nero's question. It was not like he felt this was going to get anywhere. The ambition of those who dwell in the dark was a far cry from what the board members speak of. The loss of resources was one thing; bleeding millions of dollars from poor mistakes would end.

"What is it that you want?" Rufus isn't ignorant. This isn't some conversation on the whim. When did any of these ambitions come here for a conversation if it didn't benefit them in some way? "Let's cut to the chase. I have a meeting soon."

The soft whirl of cameras from every corner of the room zoned in on this type of dark matter. Junon was a military port, complete with hundreds of troops—a fortress that allowed for safety without the iron walls of Midgar's.

they should have left him to his own devices. on his own, not beholden to this insipid plan, Nero would not have been present for the inauguration. it’s the speech that does it. the others mutter their disgust as they listen, but for once he has no snide comment to say. he listens with rapt attention, a lifetime of conditioning suddenly remembered. what he hears is a promise for a new era, one wherein its darkest nature is at the forefront. and what is darker than nero the sable? one moment the newly crowned king is alone in his office, the next he is not. the air is colder, the weight of his sins heavier, and the shadows seem to hold him fast to the ground. nero steps gracefully from the dark, living shadow one moment and flesh the next. his gaze is piercing, appraising, head tilting ever so slightly to one side as they narrow. “i suggest you do not scream… it would be a pity to see a visionary such as yourself serve the shortest term in history.” Nero takes a step forward, tossing up a hand to raise the shadows across the door. They writhe and twist like snakes, living but not alive. no. death stands within this room. it has fixed the president with a stare that suggests that it is judging the worth of his soul. ( a gamble if there ever was one. Nero’s powers are weakened, this show of force will not last nearly so long as he would like. yet this is a negotiation, an interview, one done in the way that Deepground would surely be proud of. ) “how do you intend to rule this world?”

[saengjonja]

@chthonicsurge:

"pure nonsense." the youngest of the 'turks' doesn't look up from the book he's reading, long fingers absently twiddling with the flyaway ends of his hair as he flips the pages. tseng is not present to scold him or to keep him from the rest, so nero is all too content to eavesdrop on their conversations. "any man is weak to a threat to his family. the driven fear a threat to their career. the threat of scandal exposed can supersede their fear for their lives," he leans back, folding his legs atop the table. "but that is not their greatest fear. that is just the most immediate... and there is a difference." his smile is razor sharp. "if you can delve into the depths of their soul and yank free that which they fear to be discovered, ah," he throws his head back, laughing coldly. "why, you will find a mortal man willing for fight god himself if it means their sin is not exposed."

"So what about those who don't believe in God, or sin- For that matter?" he replies, curious to hear what Nero has to say about atheists.

It was always hard to parse what Nero was really getting at from the rather poetic language he seemed to enjoy employing.

"There are probably people who think you're some kinda devil or demon, but your power was created by human hands, human technology, and human ambitions. It's not like you're somehow a special exception-"

[evcryopeneye]

@chthonicsurge asked: ‘I believe you left something behind when last we played… do you intend to return to collect? Or shall I assume him to be mine?”

It wasn’t as if Yuffie hadn’t imagined this moment, she’d thought about it more than was probably healthy, thought about putting a hole through that witch Scarlets head. Thought about how she would kill Nero. How she was going to take revenge on Shinra. Return Wutai to what it was meant to be. All these lofty dreams…and now she was face to face with it all she felt was fear.

His voice made the entire world cut out, static was the only thing that existed. All she could see was Sonon and that moment. Blood stains black against the fabric of his shirt. She could still smell the iron in the air, the cold air, the sound of the door. Everything etched into her memory in horrifying clarity, as if the memories were old Wutai piece of furniture that has been carved and inlay with glittering shell.

Sonon had died, and that was something she was going to have to learn to live with, to survive, but he had died over and over and over again in her dreams and Yuffie wasn’t sure if she could cope with what his words meant. What if she’d been wrong? What if he was alive in some way? What if she had just abandoned him to suffer all of this time?

It was dawning on her that she was scared, terrified even…but fear was for children and Yuffie was not a child.

“Give him back you sick fuck!”

[saengjonja]

🛑

send 🛑 to clean blood off of my muse after they protected yours. [NOT ACCEPTING]

Tsviets were the strongest.

If one wanted to become the strongest, wasn't facing a Tsviet inevitable?

They were underground, yet palm leaves cast jagged shadows over his prone body. Maybe he'd wanted this. The End- Huge red fangs glistening upon his throat, yet his opponent didn't have the decency to consume his soul and leave nothing else. There was only gloom, fog-blue mist rolling in and stretching beyond the horizon.

There were no wolves here, no foxes- But the former Turk was still a fox. No different than the wolves he once ran with except sleeker, leaner- the teeth not as big but the smile still bristling cold ivory.

He was a hunter, as his grandfather was a hunter. The old man's voice cut like a whetted blade through the mire of his thoughts:

You and me- We will never be any different than what we are.

In the jungle, death is life. Life is death. Deeper and deeper and the roots cut hungry into the mud while the spiders and snakes crept through tangled furls- Hungry tendrils sucking the nutrients from the tar-like bracken of ten million years of nothing but shrill, screaming animal death and rot.

Death fueled everything.

And then Death stepped out in the jungle. Slowly, quietly. A wraith in the half-darkness. Strange wings flexed like skeletal fingers.

Jae saw his eyes reflected in it's face. The pain- But the relief, too.

"You know her?" he asked, half-delirious from blood loss, dark vulpine eyes shifting the retreating slow stalk of movement through the undergrowth. A cape of red fur dragging across the creepers and black-green loam.

"No offense, but she's kind of a bitch."

[saengjonja]

Yuffie, probably: 'Dahnce~', that's so pretentious. Shut up, it's fucking DANCE.

[ofdeference]

@chthonicsurge asked: the blade should have struck tseng. found itself neatly between his ribs, bypassing anything vital but making its intention known. Sephiroth’s aim was right and true. But he was not anticipating the man’s shadow to gain form. For Nero to lurch upright, kicking the Turk away and out of range of harm and taking the blade himself. The scene plays out very differently this time. The Turk is forgotten as the Tsviet takes center stage, outshining even the puppeted SOLDIER. But his abilities cannot hold Sephiroth. but the sable is in poor form. Already exhausted from using his abilities to clear the way for them, the latter half of the trip through the temple had had him leaning against the Turks shoulder, breathing hard as his jaw chattered with pain. It is a painfully one-sided match. The Masamune rips through Nero’s chest, his side, again and again. But he accomplishes his task - the host exhausts itself, the general’s presence burns through it and leaves behind nothing but the corpse of a clone. Nero lays on his back, staring up at the lifestream above. Knowing all too well that it will not have him - he feels Tseng beside him more than he sees him, bloody lips curling into an empty smile as he’s lifted. He’s changed nothing. His fingers find the back of the man’s head, pulling him down so their lips crash together. So Tseng is forced to taste the blood and pain, for him to experience a fraction of what it is Nero has endured. And so he sees what the Sable sees. A vision of the future, no longer hazy but certain and concrete. The skies aflame, a flower drenched in blood, a bloodline extinguished. midgar in ruins, the world forever changed. “… it could have been different,” Nero breathes, his voice rasping. his smile is painful and cruel, anger in his eyes. “if you had… heeded my warnings… it could have been…” the hand tangled in the other man’s hair going limp as the light slowly fades from the younger man’s eyes. whether dead or unconscious it does not matter, he’ll wake just the same in due time.

Sephiroth. He can feel the cold tendrils of fate winding around his body, calling to parts of him thought long since dead and buried and every inch of him screams to live. He does not want to die here, paradise is on the cusp, at his fingertips, he can hear the Cetra's songs he's sure of it. Just once, in his lifetime, he wants to see the Promised Land.

For this he fights. Blow for blow the cat plays with his mouse to drive home the futility of his fervor. Not here, not here! No more bloodshed on this holy ground, he won't...die.

The blade is all he sees and, just beyond it, those wild feline eyes wide in their delight, pupils a slit which draw ever closer. The stench of oil chokes his airways and he must come to terms with the end. This is where his story stops.

Something violent raises the hair at the nape of his neck, spine cold with fear greater than the roiling in his gut. He knows this feeling...that...that smell...

The overwhelming understanding of something so terrible and wrong that it rivals that of the evil standing clad in black and silver.

"Ne-" Not another word can leave his lips before his world lurches sideways, vision spinning uncomfortably so and-

Black.

The world is dead to him or rather, he to it. He can not hear the battle raging on, he can not see the ferocity with which Nero fights, he can not appreciate the lithe form giving Sephiroth a run for his money.

When he wakes it is quiet. Eerily so. Understand comes slow and thick as the sludge dredged in the first sup of a reactor from mother Gaia but it dawns on him in time.

NERO!

He...saved...?

He saved!

Scuffed leather gloves dig frantically for purchase in the cracks of stone beneath him, dragging him staggering to his feet to lay eyes on two prone forms. One, a clone. Imperfect, incomplete, and still so god damn powerful it took Deepground to hold it off.

Tseng collapses at the Tsviet's side, hands digging beneath the man's head to shift him into his lap. His attention darts frantically between the gaping wounds, the seeping blood, the violence written across his body of what he endured. For him.

"Nero..." No sooner than the name leaves his lips is he tasting him. The bitter sweet of copper, the agony which seeps through his very being, permeates Tseng to his core. He cries out as they part, chest heaving, aching, tearing him apart as if it could kill him. He knows it is only a taste and yet those eyes hold a storm in check. The glimpses of what is to come which will haunt his every waking and unconscious minute.. Aerith...

It could have been different...?

Is this what the bastard had meant all along? Was he intending to help save the planet? Save countless lives from the terror of its greatest enemy? No...nononono.

Tseng could have made his choice blindly then, he could have trusted his Turk. He hadn't.

And it cost him....everything.

With a feverish fury his hands go to work, tearing at his own jacket to shed and rip the lining. A commendation to the tailor, it is not easy, but he manages. The worst of the wounds are bandaged but there is no life in him still.

He fetches his PHS and dials Rude, set on speaker, and he goes to work breathing life into the body still warm beneath him. Chest compressions one, two, three, four- breathe. He would scream if his mind had not gone, if his hands would stop shaking, slipping on the slick of skin bared around its seeping wounds. He can not see, the world's gone blurry and there's a river running down his nose.

At least it might wash away his inadequacies, those garish splashes of red. How fucking pathetic to need rescuing. Leader of the Turks...

"Nero, come back to me. Come back damn you. You don't get to leave until I dismiss you from duty." The longer the minutes tick by, the more the desperation takes its hold. Arms shake from exhaustion, lungs scream and burn and his head is pounding.

"Come back...please I'm-."

[bitterarcs]

They've been hunting for Sephiroth for months. Turk and Tsviets, side by side, monsters by any definition you could give them. There is very little in their journey that has given Nero pause, even less that has made him bleed.

But he is only a young man. An untested, unrealized WEAPON set against an entity he was not built to fight. This latest encounter left him close enough to dying it would be a mercy to finish the job. Stabbed through and twisted up like he was nothing, a fly to be battered and batted aside.

Hojo hadn't seemed particularly concerned. Almost annoyed to be bothered by the memory of the creature he'd sent to hunt Sephiroth down, like Nero was a waste of energy to even consider. The med-evacuation did not sound like it would come any time soon, the only help given had been authorization to strip the restraints and let nature take its course.

Now here he is, pale body exposed for an audience of one. A patchwork of scars blanketed by prophetic tattoos that seem to grow and twist as the day goes on, his pretty face revealed wrecked by blood and bruised and utterly ruined by the haunted expression. He'd been more lucid earlier. Yet had been in and out of consciousness since the reports of the WEAPONs rising had begun to filter in, blood smearing from a nosebleed that nothing seemed to stem.

Pale fingers catch Reno's wrist, but when they squeeze they lack their customary strength. There is little doubt that he will be dead by dawn's light, the fading lucidity in his eyes the most damning sign.

"Can you hear it?" Nero's voice wavers, tight and breathless in a mixture of fear and awe. "The song. I have never heard it so clearly... like a mother's lullaby, sung too soon. Centuries too soon... make it stop..."

He trails off into a pained moan, still holding the Turk's hand. Unguarded, like a beat seeking comfort under a hand it's known to be cruel, hoping for affection but expecting to be struck all the same.

( By dawn he will be dead, gone in fitful sleep. Shattered ribs shredding his lungs, internal bleeding going beyond what even a TSVIET can survive.

And yet he will awaken all the same, healed by the planet's refusal to grant him rest. )

There was something about injury ( more accurately defeat ) that was, frankly, a major turn off— and it wasn't even remotely sexual, however defeat turning rigidity into flaccidity had occurred. It was more like pity. More like disappointment. No. It was more like he was facing his own mortality, staring at an image of scrawny, twelve year old Reno beaten to a pulp. Reno wasn't scared of death. In fact, he looked forward when he would blow up in a glorious heroic feat ( heroic for ShinRa ) and left to be mourned by everyone. . Rude especially. Death and defeat were two very different things, so while the former was a matter of fact worth grinning off, defeat was the sick taste of blood pooling inside his mouth.

All of that hot iron-tang never tasted good, and it was almost as bad seeing someone looked like a gutted boar. Did anyone expect an outcome that did not end up with impalement, scorched flesh, or a quick death? Reno had played it over and over in his head. Frankly, he had been stressed about the mission, but orders were orders. No way would he with an electro mag-rod go up against the fucking strongest human being of all time. A human was a joke of a term when it came to the infamous Sephiroth, who Reno had not wanted to cross paths with even before he lost his bolts and nuts. Stick-in-the-mud genetic super freak Sephiroth, oh yeah, let's just send a Turk and some basement lab monkey.

Both his self preservation and having an IQ that wasn't abysmal told him, naturally, Reno wouldn't be the one to go toe-to-toe against the feared Silver General. As careful as the Turk could've been, it didn't negate the very real possibility Sephiroth would scorch the earth, or hunt down Nero's accomplice for the sake of sadistic fun. Who knew how the lunatic thought! EVEN in the best scenario possible where Reno was totally clear of danger, that still left the basement lab monkey to fail. Fail he did. Part of him expected something . . more, considering ShinRa and Hojo were placing eggs in that basket. However Reno also harbored tremendous doubts considering Sephiroth was Sephiroth. All powerful, apparently.

So what was ShinRa's real goal here? It left the inside of his cheeks raw, and th expression on the redhead's face might have looked like one born of sadness. Did he expect something more or had he, simply, just wished it? Sephiroth was god, thank ifrit's cock, so Reno's due diligence sat upon calling HQ and then— waiting. Fuck. Every bit of this he loathed. He had seen plenty of people hurt horribly and had seen plenty die. There were very few instances where those people were ones he felt bad about. As a child running around, fighting for survival, he was often the one dealing the killing blow. Not since joining the Turks was he faced with a fallen ally, and the feeling of helplessness.

Nero only made matters worse when he babbled through broken teeth like a loon about to be embraced by the lifestream, allegedly. It made Reno wince, yet he did not retract his hand. It was difficult keeping it there in the grip of a dying man, but the hand remained. When he forced himself out of whatever he was feeling, the redhead sighed as he sat beside Nero, wrist still in weak grip. Shit, what did he want? What did people want as they were dying? He mustered the part of him that wasn't utter chocobo shit and slooowly extended his other hand out. To the outsider, it looked like it was the blood that disgusted him, but that was the furthest from the truth. He would do this and a hundred times more for his fellow Turks, but this was different. Complicated. Fingertips scratched and dirtied moved past the mess of hair to brush against Nero's forehead.

(  ❛ Just shaddup and. . . go to sleep. Dream of stranglin' me . . ❜  )