“You leave him alone!” Xisuma shouted, moving to stand in front of his twin, Exavion. “He did nothing wrong!”
Exavion couldn’t hear anything else over Xisuma’s shouting and his quiet sobs. His ears rang, his nose bled, and his head hurt. What did he do to deserve this?
"The Watchers!" Xisuma warned, running into battle them without a second thought. Xisuma was not a fighter. He was trained minimally, young, and dumb. He just wanted to buy his team more time.
Exavion could not forget the fear in his twin's eyes the second he stepped in front of him, surely saving Xisuma from death, or worse. Beaten and barely clinging to consciousness, Xisuma could only assume what the Watchers were going to do.
What he couldn't have predicted, though, was Exavion's agreement. "You leave my brother alone, and I will go with you. An eye for an eye, so to speak."
The Watchers agreed. Xisuma sat in that same position, watching his brother vanish before his eyes, unable to even apologize.
His team found him, cold deep in his bones, staring at the same spot he saw Exavion, half an hour later.
Xisuma recovered. There wasn't anything else for him to do. Benched from exploration work, deemed unfit to work due to the mental grief and strain of losing his brother.
He didn't have to listen to them. He was Admin, head of the exploration team, and you were going to make him out for the count? Rookie mistake.
So, X searched. He looked where he wasn't meant to. Sleepless nights bled into sleepless days. Until, a trail picked up.
Admin, ever the fool, followed it.
There he found his brother, bandaged, chained, and beaten. There he found the Watchers, going back on their deal, setting him up. There he fought the watchers, again, stupidly. There he lost his ability to ever grow wings.
Luckily, they ended up in a cell together. Why? Who knows! Whenever one was hurt, they would always have the other. They helped each other bandage wounds, sit through the pain, make sure the other would stay alive.
But this? This was too much.
"You all **disgust** me," Exavion snarled, barely sparing a glance to the Watchers outside of the bars of the cell. They had taken it too far. They messed with Xisuma's code. Who, in their right mind, would do that? Now, stuck somewhere between human and not, all X could feel was sick. Pain radiated from deep in his skull, repetitive, neverending.
Exavion refused to let them take his brother again. If he had a say, this would never happen to Xisuma again. Xisuma could live without him.
"Is this what you want from us?!" Xisuma shouted up at the Watchers, seeing them below in their carefully constructed Arena. "You want us to fight until we both die?!! Until there is nothing left?!" His sword remained pointed at Exavion, gesturing with importance towards his brother.
"I will not fight him, he has already surrendered! Look at what ***you've*** already done! Is that not enough?! Are you not **satisfied**?!" Xisuma dropped his sword, running his hands through his hair in a self-soothing action. "You've given us leather armour and brittle, rusted swords. Is that your idea of entertainment?" Xisuma asked, eyes beginning to glow just a bit. "Because to me, that seems a bit fucking grim!"
As Xisuma continued, Exavion watched the Watchers. Though their expressions were covered, he could tell by body language alone, that a few were affected, but not in the way X would have wanted. They were disgusted in his strength to speak back. They were disgusted by his show of mercy, towards his own brother, newly dealing with the same code alteration Xisuma had gone through merely a 2 weeks prior. They were disgusted, and hateful, and would not be showing any mercy.
Why is it now, Exavion wondered, that the stupid, reckless, and loud Xisuma came out to play? Why couldn't it have been the quiet, resigned, yet guilty one instead? It would have been so much easier.
The Watchers were *pissed*, to say the least. Exavion could only hold his brother closer as he zoned out, not truly processing what was happening.
Ex could only growl any time they got close.
Xisuma did not respond to any stimuli, not even when his brother was taken directly out from under him.
When Xisuma came to, or rather, Admin, he was *Pissed*. With a newfound strength, he realized, if he didn't get he and his brother out, they would both very likely die here, to be remembered by no one, and have no home in the afterlife to return to. So, he planned.
He succeeded, somehow, a stroke of luck? Maybe.
Carrying out his brother, struggling with the weight just a bit, but incapable of stopping, Xisuma ran. He ran until he found a room full of portals. He saw a random one, and jumped, making sure to break it after him.
Voidwalkers can break portals, luckily for him. Why hadn't he thought of it earlier?
However, this was their first time in the overworld, especially without their masks. No wonder: the air was different. Exavion was not going to wake up up here. They needed to get help, and fast.