T - Shini, Xenon

[carcinoGeneticist]

There was a moment's satisfaction at the sensation of her claws connecting with flesh, but it was immediately buried beneath the sorrow and rage that was filling her. It overwhelmed every aspect of her being, and she could focus on only one thought: The man needed to pay.

Ceren didn't even realize that her daughter had entered the room, not until a spell anchored her to the ground. She let out an enraged scream, reaching for the closest object (a vase, as luck would have it) and hurling it at Viast's head (17). He had no right! He had no right to complain, no right to use magic on her! He had killed her Queen, raped hir. That was the best that her mind could figure at that point, and it didn't need any further encouragement. There had to be something else to throw, something that was in reach.

As she searched, she became aware of the fact that Kaiesha was standing there, sobbing and heaving (rolled a 1 for her ability to keep her cool >>; ), a puddle of vomit at her feet. "Kai, l-love, you have to stop him! He killed... He killed hir...[/b]" The Sparrow choked on the words, tears blinding her for a moment.

The girl froze at the words. They confirmed her worst fears, all at once. No. This wasn't... No! She cried out sharply, then turned for the door and ran as fast as she could, following Yarrast.

Her mother was not a fighter, and neither was Kaiesha. But this man had killed her mother, done something terrible to her entire family. She had to stop him. She had to. As soon as she was close enough, she lunged for him, aiming to crash into his legs and send him to the ground (12).

[Nathalia]

((Yarrast let out a sound that was closer to being a shriek than he had so far that night, as the vase caught him between shoulder and neck; shattering into pieces and taking quite a chunk out of his lip.
Scrabbling off towards the door, he only just made it out into the hallway when something wrapped around his legs and started tearing at his clothes and fur.
A mixture of embarrassment and fear distorted his features when he saw what had a hold of him.
"Please let go." He hissed, blocky teeth bared in anger. "I wasn't trying to kill the Queen, please...it was an accident. I didn't know-"
He reached down and grabbed the girl around the middle (18), hoisting her up and trying to pin her legs to stop her squirming.
"I didn't want to kill anyone!" He looked half-mad, his hair falling out of its nice, gelled weave, eyes wide with all the whites showing. "I was just doing what I was told, there were perks, yes, but this is insane!"

He gave an odd laugh, choked and spasmodic.
Then, dropped the girl and bolted back into the room, avoiding the Sparrow rooted int he middle and seeming to be casting about for something, when he practically tripped over the gore-covered child who had burst out of the Yarrow Queen.
He stared at her, unable to connect the dots for a moment.
His eyes roved over her hooves, mane, and ears, little strands of pink wheat on her fur.
His face slowly lost some of its contorted panic and became mildly quizzical.
He gently tried to touch her mane.
"Are...you mine? Are you my daughter?" He asked, quietly, voice shaking.))



~Nathalia

[Shinigami]

More screams that terrified her, that drove her to pressing herself all the more firmly against the walls. She couldn't go toward the door, because it sounded like there was fighting going on, and someone was saying that someone had been killed- Had her Mama been killed? Her Mama was gone? No, that couldn't be right, it just couldn't. She shook her head frantically, because her Mama loved her.

Motion right by her got her attention, and she looked up slowly, tears dripping down her furred cheeks. A donkey, a very familiar donkey who had markings sort of like hers but in different colors. She knew him. She knew him! This was- This was-

"Daddy?" Then she burst into further sobs and flung herself at him, trying to press herself to his chest and hide from all of the scary noises and things and the terrible way that she felt right now. "Daddy!"

[carcinoGeneticist]

The girl's mind reeled with confusion, but there was at least some satisfaction as her claws met flesh. She didn't know what to do beyond continue assaulting him as best she could. Until her father was free, could come and -- and...

Oh, Suits. Her mother was dead, and this man was the cause. She looked up at him, eyes narrowed with pain and hatred. His words confirmed what Ceren had been saying, and actually hearing it spoken was... It was almost too much. Kaiesha yelped when she was suddenly seized about the middle, ripped free from her target. She fought against the man's hold but he was much bigger than she was, but then she also had more limbs than the average Card. One of her large peacock-lined wings suddenly shot out and flapped wildly, intending very much to smash into the Donkey's face. (16)

What he was saying, it didn't make a lick of sense. All she knew was that he'd done something and killed her mother, and was now holding her like some kind of hostage. The girl continued squirming and flapping, twisting to try and peck at the hand that held her (11). Finally, she let out an angry cry. "Unhand me, you murderer!" She hissed the words out, trying to push her own fear aside. Was he going to kill her, too?

No. A moment later he dropped her and she let out a quiet yelp of pain, the wind knocked out of her by the impact with the floor (1). Suits. She brought herself to her feet and immediately yelped with pain as her weight went onto her front foot - broken, she was sure. Biting back tears, Kaiesha limped back to her parent's room as fast as she could.

Tears streaked Ceren's face. He wasn't going to come back, he would escape, she would never get revenge for her Queen... She let out a sob, holding her own swollen midsection with a hand and squeezing her eyes shut. Things... were never supposed to happen like this. It was wrong, more wrong than anything she'd ever before imagined...

At the sound of returning hoofbeats, the Sparrow's eyes flew open.

Yarrast had returned. He was in the room, trying to ignore the King and searching for something. He found instead the child that had killed Ceren's love, the beautiful little girl who the King had been unable to hate, though her brain had hardly registered her presence as anything worth paying attention to when there was such an important cause filling her brain. Revenge. Her heart caught in her throat as the pair began to speak, and the little girl's heartfelt cry tore Ceren's heart right out of her chest.

Daddy.

Daddy?!

Her talons finally found something heavy - a chair, as luck would have it - and with a frenzied scream she slammed it down towards Yarrast's head. (18) "He KILLED your mother!" She screamed, all her feathers on-end. Hopefully she wouldn't hit the girl in the process, though her rage at hearing that simple word directed towards him was too much to be easily overcome. "He drugged her, and raped her, and he KILLED her![/b]"

[Nathalia]

((Yarrast wasn't prepared for affection.
Something about the situation suddenly became absurd as he caught and held the girl as she leaped into his arms.
He was hallucinating.
He had to be.
This was completely and utterly mad and none of it could be happening.
The job had been to take all the Courts down a notch, the boss took the Spades and Hearts; and he took the Diamonds and Clubs; simple as that.

Go in, have your fun, light the box, leave.
Easy.
What the ever-loving-Hell was this mess?
He automatically stroked the little girls' mane and shushed her.
"It's ok, honey. Daddy loves you." He muttered. Hallucination or not, she was a cute little thing and he didn't want her to feel bad...
It wasn't a dream, was it?

Just as he was about to try to stand again, the blows the girl in the hall had wreaked on him drizzling blood all over his already gore-soaked daughter, a chair caught him over the shoulders and head and he curled instinctively over the girl.
Time seemed to have slowed down.
The pretty Sparrow, Ceren? Was screaming, but he couldn't understand her over the sound of his own mind racing.
If he just left?
He hadn't gotten to the Clubs yet, his boss would make a quick end of him, that much had been implied.
If he stayed?
He rolled away from the still-stuck Bird and her chair, groaning as he felt his shoulder slip in and out of place.
He let go of the girl.
"Honey, can you do something for Daddy? Can you please go out in the hall for me?" He asked, voice quiet and a sharp pain behind his eyes struck him as he tried unsuccessfully to repress tears. "Daddy and your um...Auntie are having an argument and we need to talk, ok? Please, just go out in the hall for a second, ok?"

He tried to push her toward the door, waiting until she seemed to be leaving before turning to the rooted Sparrow.
"What do you want!? I can't do anything to un-do it, I didn't know it would-" He bent over in gut-wrenching pain as the front of his body began to swell out.
He stared at it, poked it gently, and began to laugh.
He gestured to it, and then back to her, still laughing.
"So this is his "insurance", this is what he meant. Oh, that's funny. That's funny, I wonder if he'd thought about the time it would take! That's funny!"))



~Nathalia

[Shinigami]

Hadiya leaned against her Daddy, shivering hard; but much of her tension was starting to drain away, because Mama wasn't here - and she didn't know why she wasn't here, and that still scared her - but her Daddy was here, and he'd take care of her. He loved her too, he said so. That was more reassuring than she'd have thought right now, when there was so much bad stuff happening all at once.

Her ears flattened back against her head as the bird-woman yelled again, and her Daddy jerked against her, around her. Wood pieces went flying, but none of them struck her (14, plus cover) and she cried out in fear.

"Daddy-" Daddy wouldn't kill her Mama! She knew that! But before she could protest that idea, Daddy was letting go of her and telling her to go out into the hall. Hadiya sniffled back more tears unsuccessfully, and gave him her best Good Girl look and nodded. "O-okay," she mumbled, and then hugged him as best she could one more time before whispering, "I love you, Daddy!" Then she bolted for the doorway, running past the bird-woman - her Auntie? - as fast as she could.

Stumbling out into the hallway, she thumped against the opposite wall and left a bloody splatter against it before slumping to the ground. She turned to look back into the room for a second, and then turned her head away again, putting her paws over her ears again.

"I just have to wait out in the hall. Daddy will make everything better again," she mumbled, mostly unaware of the older girl standing there.

[carcinoGeneticist]

The impact of the chair against the hated man sent an alarming amount of force up her arms, enough to break one of her fingers (7). With her goal in mind, it hardly seemed to matter, but all the same - she let out a pained hiss, dropping the chair off to the side. She was gasping for breath, the energy required to keep up her current emotional state quickly draining her. As the rage left, she found herself too exhausted even to feel the sorrow from before. All Ceren knew was emptiness.

She took a deep breath as he directed the little girl to leave, talons twitching as she experimentally tried to move from where she'd been anchored. Nothing, yet. She could hear their words to each other, said in a hushed whisper, but they were close enough that she caught every word.

A vice closed around her heart.

So her love's daughter would go on hating her, instead caring only for the man who had stolen the Queen's life. It was the price she would pay, though it still tore at her horribly. She managed a small smile at the little one, a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Then she looked to the Donkey, and even the ghost of a smile faded. There was a hollowness to her eyes, her gaze that of a woman at the end. She laughed harshly, feathers bristling, as the man began to swell as her love had done only minutes before. She laughed until she could barely breathe. "What do you think I want? You killed my wife, but not before you raped her. I don't care what your goals were, or who sent you, or what you're afraid will happen to you now that you've failed, though it does seem appropriate... Doesn't it?[/b]" A cruel sneer made it onto her face, her undamaged hand clenching around the chair again almost idly. "I want you to pay, Yarrast. Tell me, did you also have something to do with the death of Khushrenada? Or my brother, you son of a bitch?[/b]"

In a flash (18 for speed), she had hefted the chair again, broken fingers be damned (19), and swung it sideways at Yarrast's face (20 ). She was as silent as she did it, all of her remaining strength going into that single action.

Some insurance would not take away her revenge.

Kaiesha herself pressed against the wall outside, heart thudding dully in her ears. Her foot was wracked with pain, nerves screaming every time she put any weight onto it. She listened to the voices in the room, doing her best to focus on all the words that were spoken. None of it really made sense to her, but she couldn't just ignore it.

When the little girl came walking outside, covering her ears and muttering to herself, Kaiesha ignored her and focused harder on what was going on inside. She let out a quiet little gasp, eyes going wide. She had to get help. Something - something awful was going to happen. She started forward and then paused, glancing back at the girl. Her... half-sister, she supposed. Should she just leave the girl here...? That didn't seem right. If something happened, the child didn't need to see it. With a soft, worried chirp, she walked over to the girl, lightly nudging her with her beak.

"You're my sister..." she said, quietly, hoping that would help convince the girl that she would be safe at Kaiesha's side. "I need you to come with me, okay? We're going to go find help." Her feathers fluffed up slightly and she peered at the girl, clearly worried.

((I still just... guh. Ceren. Damn, Ceren.))

[Nathalia]

((The pang of hearing the girl call I love you, Daddy, as she left, pulled the Veldt-dweller out of his momentary spin of madness.
"I...Daddy loves you too, honey." He called, dazed and horrified by what was happening to him.

And then the chair collided with his face again.
The entire front half of his muzzle shattered.
Blood flew everywhere, spraying everything as the Donkey hybrid collapsed to the floor in shock, the impact having broken any semblance of a nose he would ever have again and cracked his eye directly out of its socket.
The man screamed in agony as blood fountained out of his mouth and ruined face, hands rising in terror to claw at the dangling cord of optic nerve spinning against his fur.
"Oh shit, oh shit!! I can still see!" He screamed, heaving himself backwards, away from the deranged Sparrow and feeling his breath catch in a sob as a certainty set into him.

He was going to die.
Right here.
In this room.
And there was no one to blame.

"I didn't kill them!" He yelped, scooting further back and trying to stay away as his middle clenched, adding to his pain, not noticing as the Sparrow swelled alarmingly.
"Just your wife and...and-" He lets out a mad bark of laughter and vomits on the floor, choking on the blood and mess as he heaves himself nearer the corpse of Iria.
"Just your wife and...and, you." He gurgles, trying to stand, one hand covering his dangling eyes as sobs shake his frame, vertigo from the dangling visionary causing his head to spin.))



~Nathalia

[Shinigami]

Screaming followed her out of the room, and she screamed herself, stumbling. Her paws were only good for so much when it came to blocking sound, especially when she was trying to walk - to run - at the same time, and for a moment she didn't know whether she should be trying to flee or collapsing where she was to pin her ears to her head in order to silence everything. She didn't think it would work, either.

Another voice startled her, and she looked up with tear-reddened eyes to see someone staring down at her. The someone had lots of feathers, and colors like the bird-woman-Auntie, and for a moment she flinched away reflexively. The words that followed made her pause in confusion, though.

"My sister? You're...my sister?" She wasn't sure if she knew she had a sister. Well, of course she would have known, how could she not know about her own sister? So if she had to know, then obviously she did know. She was just scared right now, with the screams coming from the room, so that was making it harder to remember.

"Daddy told me to wait in the hall," she whimpered, but she wanted to get away from the screaming now. Right now. At the same time, she wanted to turn on a hoof and run right back into the room, because she knew her Daddy was there, and he'd take care of her. Mama was gone right now, but Daddy would make everything better. Right?

[carcinoGeneticist]

The Sparrow was largely unaccustomed to violence like that which she had already witnessed today. From the wrecked bodies of her fellow King, of her brother, of her love, to the shattered remnants of Yarrast's face after her makeshift weapon had smashed into it, there was nothing in the woman's life that could have prepared her. She didn't need it, though.

She stared blankly down at the ruined husk of what was once a man, gore spraying itself all across her already bloodied feathers. She listened to him sob and laugh and try to hold his face together.

Through it all, the woman felt nothing.

The chair had come apart in her hands, leaving her holding some rather sharp fragments of wood. He didn't have to fear another hit like the one from before - even if the chair hadn't broken, the woman couldn't muster up that kind of energy. It was like her life had fled her body, even while it still lived. Though not for much longer, she reflected, a sudden pain from her gut wrenching her over. Her body ballooned as she had begun to fear it might do, Yarrast's words only confirming her thoughts, and she made up her mind.

With a small smile, Ceren looked up at the Donkey, and shook her head slowly. "No,[/b]" she said, softly. She was glad he could still see. She wanted him to see this, to understand. She hoped that the girls - her daughters, she thought with some small sadness - were far enough away to miss this, even as she wished that one of them was closer so that she might say goodbye. Kaiesha would tell Aliyah. Kaiesha was a good girl. "You didn't kill me.[/b]"

With a sharp upward jerk, Ceren drove the wood through the base of her jaw. Her bones were fragile and it penetrated her skull with relatively little effort, severing the brainstem. Her lifeless body crumpled to the floor, blood slowly seeping out from around her makeshift dagger, sightless eyes still fixed and staring in Yarrast's general direction - though all she saw, even now, was her Queen.

~~~

In the hall, the hybrid found herself starting to shake. There was no time, they needed help! She would have to leave the girl if she wasn't going to come, but then she risked something awful happening...

"We'll come back soon, I promise," the girl begged, taloned forepaws finding paws and tugging urgently, her eyebrows crinkling upward as she tried not to cry. "We - we need to find someone to help them, though. Please, I promise I'll take care of you, just... Let's go, okay?" Her speech wavered and she let out a quiet chirp, talons trembling.