Send me 🚫 to encounter my Muse during a violent meltdown!Usually after one of Megatron’s torture sessions, Starscream hides away in his room, where no one can see his emotional outbursts. Usually after he is released from the medbay he locks himself in for days until Megatron calls for him. Usually when it gets really bad he finds something like a berth blanket to tear to shreds or something to break and that’s enough to help him calm down.Today is not a usual day.This time, Megatron had taken away his (honestly not very healthy) coping mechanism, by attacking him in his bedroom. He can’t feel safe there, and besides, most of his usual “targets” were destroyed in the attack. He NEEDS something to break, to feel strong again, to feel in control. Thankfully he’s still in enough of a sound mind to not attack someone else, taking it out on various walls and doors around the base.It wasn’t until he noticed that Megatron was gone and the throne was empty, that the real trouble started. Would he get into more trouble for ruining his “great leader’s” throne? Undoubtedly, but right now, that thought is at the back of his mind and getting rid of the pain is at the front.
[It was midday. The witch was walking through a particularly crowded street, her silver hair tied under a sports hat, with sunglasses on and an almost masculine outfit that one would never expect her to wear. Her included. It was very hot, but the inhabitants of the city weren’t scared of the sun, it seemed; so they walked back and forth through the market, their voices mixed, and often they had to make themselves as small as possible to pass through groups that seemed to like to stop in the middle of the streets.
The witch sighed nervously when she hid a hand under her sleeveless shirt, pulling out a white apple that a merchant she passed close to couldn’t realize to have seen disappear in front of his very eyes. She gave it a small bite and kept going, looking around for something she had been told to be sold only in that place that she wanted. She usually didn’t allow herself to give up to such petty caprices… And I shouldn’t have, she thought now, feeling particularly uneasy while submerged by too many busy civilians.
She reached her limit while crossing the street, when she risked to be run over by someone on a bicycle that she didn’t see coming. She stopped right in front of them, staring at them for a few seconds, before just turning and abruptly changing direction. She was panting visibly, and for some reason she was starting to cry. She hated crowds. She couldn’t even escape using her usual tricks to get out of there, and she was starting to fear that she could draw someone’s attention like that. She searched for somewhere to hide, to catch her breath, to at least get some relief from the heat of the day. But there were too many people around, and she couldn’t find any quiet spot. She slowed down and stopped, just staring at the ones who kept walking around her, suddenly not even knowing what she was doing or what she was there for.]
[The witch was already panting heavily, speaking to herself as three shadow beasts surrounded her. They were vaguely resembling the figures of other fighters, shapeshifting between indistinct figures and clear replicas of living yordles, wielding the most different weapons… recognizable ones. One had a cannon. Another had glowing limbs and a shining eye. One had rifle and mines ready, and its eyes glowed as if it had a mask on.
All of them had three runes shining in purple on their black bodies; two of them, Shadow and Beast, allowing them to exist, placed on their chests, and one on their heads, Mastery, that granted them the knowledge to use the weapons they were given. They were puppets that Mimi herself created to train, born from the memories of past encounters and whatever she remembered or knew of their fighting techniques. Keeping all of them around consumed her mana constantly, and that was good, because the purpose of that training was to not rely on her powers, learning how to survive without the teleportation spell she got too used to for as much as possible. A sort of timer was looming over the little battlefield, surrounded by bushes and tall trees, in the depths of the forest near Bandle. It was counting down to zero, and when she looked up at it, nine minutes and a few seconds were left.
After mere moments, the tallest figure moved and hit the ground with its fists. Something rose from the ground right in front of Mimi, inclined so that it could hit her; she tried to jump on it, succeeding even if she was about to lose her balance, then jumped off again to hide behind it to avoid some shots coming from the rifle. Her movements were clumsy, uncoordinated, and the dress didn’t make it any easier; and still, from the cuts and bruises visible on her exposed body parts, it looked like she had been trying that move for a while, and that she had at least stopped falling immediately to the ground. But a real fight wouldn’t wait for her to try again and again, and the timer didn’t stop. The shorter figure with the cannon jumped beyond the pillar and started shooting. The witch ducked and rolled to the side, towards the bushes; while the dark shots kept following her and pierced the plants without leaving any trace of damage to the environment, once she was hidden she began to run to the nearest tree, taking out a sort of potion and throwing it between the three right before hiding… or at least, where all of them were. The one with the rifle was gone. But the urticant effect of the liquid that was evaporating from the broken pieces of glass was giving problems to the other two, at least.
The little fight-and-flight performance kept going on like that for a while. Even after a few falls, even with her hat lost and her whole reserve of newly made potions gone, she managed to dodge all of their shots and hits until then. But when the timer hit two minutes or so, a mine under her foot exploded with something that resembled a metallic sound, and she was reduced to her knees, coughing, tears rolling down her cheeks as a greyish/purplish smoke rose from the broken structure, her arms shaking as she tried to push herself up once more. She already knew she had lost only against her nightmares about those three… but finding the rifle pointing at her as she tried to stand up again, blocking her on her knees, made her lose any form of control.
The scream that followed made the figures and the timer disappear, wiped away by a flare emanated from her whole body. She bent in two, her hands on her eyes, more fire threatening to burn down the entire area that bursted out of her with each abrupt movement she made, not realizing nor caring of how dangerous it could all be, for multiple reasons. She had probably gone too hard on herself, keeping to flee those shadows for… she didn’t even know how long now. The only things she knew were that when she arrived there the sun was setting and now the moon was high in the sky; that her training hadn’t been scanned by the passing of hours, but by a timer that kept starting at fifteen minutes and never reached the zero; that no matter how hard she tried, she would always fail. Without her powers she was nothing at all… It frustrated her. It angered her, it infuriated her. She had spent years on what she believed that could be truly useful, that could give her life a better value than being labelled as the worst Noxian assassin ever existed before and as wasted space after. And what now? Even mere pillars could be able to nullify her. Starting from her powers, finishing with her life purpose. You’re useless! Her thoughts yelled at her just like others used to tell her in her early years. She ignored completely that she had barely began to try different methods of fighting and self-defense strategies; all she knew was that she couldn’t make it. She trapped her own mind in a vicious circle which seemed to be impossible to get out from. It was only natural that, with the pain coming from the wounds, the feeling of being trapped and being overwhelmed with emotions of that sort brought her to a nervous breakdown. The problem was that she was too focused on its causes to even realize what was happening, and there was no way she could stop it in that state…]
