@discoinfernos || for Vox, but I passed out before I could finish this earlier, smh
He should've been fine. The fight was nothing. That's what Alastor told himself, at least, but a part of him knew it was bad long before it got to this point. To say nothing of the lacerations covering his back, his arm, the burn across his elbow from the near miss as the angel wrenched him free of the shark's teeth... his chest ached. That was the concerning part; it hurt more than he thought it could, especially with the drugs still coursing through his veins. He could feel the bone beneath it, the splintered edge where the axe grazed his ribcage, creak, delicate, with each inhale. Was he imagining that? Vox had done a number on it in his time as captive.
Then using his power like he had, even with his staff restored, had sapped what was left of his strength. Afterwards he had melted out of the scene like ink bleeding through water, going as far as the shadows could carry him... which wasn't far at all. Though he at least got to safety before he was forced corporeal again on watery knees, slumped sidewards against one of the few buildings that hadn't been hit directly. Each breath sounded like it came out of a busted speaker, tinny and full of rasping static as his signal shuddered across the open frequency. Even his vision was flickering with static artifacts as color drained from his vision, plunged into grayscale like an old picture show, but he wasn't looking at that. He wasn't looking at anything. His head dipped low, ears drooping, but he felt it. The crackle of an ambient field of electromagnetic interference, coming towards his location. The air should've been dead, not a single spark or signal to be found with half the power to this part of the pentagram cut off from the devastation, but it was unmistakable. There was only one source that made sense to him.
How was he mobile already? he thought absently, and wondered how much time had passed since he slipped away. Had he lost time? His signal was deteriorating; it wasn't an impossible notion. Enough for him to repair?
Alastor staggered towards the middle of the alley as he pushed off the wall, nearly went down, before he steadied himself with the end of his staff. He needed to move; if Vox was coming back for round two, he was in no state to have it. He took a step. Then another. Then he lost track of the interference that told him where Vox was, roughly, in relation to him, and that's when he knew he wasn't getting any farther.
He didn't remember hitting the ground.
When he woke up, the scent was... familiar; the smell of oil and metal, with a burnt, rubbery smell beneath it that might've been caused by a soldering iron coming a little too close to the sheath of a wire. Distant, not overpowering, but very much there. Smells that weren't unfamiliar to him, even before Vox; a little known fact to the rest of Hell was that the radio demon knew a bit more about technology and how to work on it than he actually let on. But this wasn't why it was familiar; it reminded him of the early days he'd spent with Vox, watching the young overlord tinker, making the odd comment here about something that perhaps he could wire differently...
The thought hit, and abruptly his signal spiked with awareness as crimson eyes snapped open, then left, then right. Then he was moving, trying to sit up, and a crackle of static as pain hit him, knocked him flat onto the bed again. His brain barely registered that it was a bed, just that he was horizontal again. The pain wasn't severe enough to wind him, but it was enough to catch him off guard when he hadn't felt the pain when he awoke. Settling down, Alastor's hand came up to his chest, seeking... and was surprised to find bandages there. Surprised to feel the telltale pull of something on his arm, only to look over to find he was hooked up to an IV. Bandages, an IV line in his arm with what he assumed were the painkillers numbing the sensation, but unrestrained... none of which made sense if Vox had found him. What was going on?
Slowly now, he pushed himself to sit up. His head felt full of cotton, his hand coming up to grab the IV line clumsily, curl around it, yanked. The feeling of tape tearing free from the thinnest layer of fur on his arm barely registering, or the trickle of blood. He was already moving on to the next step; legs swinging over the side of the bed, his staff summoning to his hand. He was in no state to do much of anything, not this light headed, let alone get up and leave wherever he'd been taken, but he was nothing if not stubborn.
