[ 1v1 ] the world is a beast of a burden ( ash vs rep )

[its me debz]

The world still lingered in the corner of his mind. He had seen Henry once more, in a passing dream, and sometimes he smelled the lavender that hinted at Elysion, head the burbling of brooks that would recover memories lost to the sands of time. But it was not real; no more real than the little blond boy who had been so afraid, with keys for laurels and a hope for death and a love untainted by sorrow for his King.

Patrolling brought back the memories of his Affliction, how he had wandered the halls and grounds like a zombie, how he had attacked Thackery-- but it also brought him peace. Amityville was his home, and not in the eerie half-whispered Insanity way. It had memories, here, warmth and happiness and a hope he had never known.

He had stumbled upon the Haunted House by chance (as one always did), and on this day, his restlessness coaxed him inside its walls.

A decision he'd soon regret: it was cold, here. Ash walked its halls methodically, his Great Knife dragged behind him, the blade scraping along the different floors of every room.

It would be a familiar sound, to some.

Quote:

Rolling a 6: ALL STUDENT/ HUNTER HP IS HALVED. You feel tired.... cold...numb. It becomes increasingly hard to focus as the battle draws on.

 

[Baneful]

Rep wasn't allowed to spar with Tracey on Deus grounds. He'd earned the ban, he had to live with it. But he also had to get fit again, it was imperative to his survival, and more importantly, that of his guys. So he'd picked up some haunted house duty, hoping for a fight. It was a long shot, more often than not there was nothing in the decrepit halls but lingering mist and layers of dust decades thick.

But for some reason today it was different. There was something about the place that was dank and oppressive, it was cold, a kind of cold that ignored even the insulating fur of his hunter coat and instead went straight to the very heart of him, chilling him. He didn't shiver, but some instinctual primitive part of his mind cried out to him that seeking warmer climes would be a fantastic idea about now.

It set his nerves on edge.

An edge they fell off of as he heard a bone chillingly familiar drawn out scrape on the floors. The colour drained from his already pale features and he barely dared to breathe.

 

[its me debz]

The Haunted House afforded Ashford his true size as he removed the pin on his apron, and he grew to his full height. To tall to duck through a few doors, especially with the added helm, but to be unbound was a freedom he would gladly pay any inconvenience for. He entered a room familiar, a hospital turned red with rust and smudged with decay. It was not his town of origin, but it was something like it, dangerous and worn down and a corruption of the pure.

It felt good to be here: he belonged here, in a place where he could scare. He had several times, now, with no effort of his own put forth except his very visage.

Once upon a time, he had found himself fond of their curiosity. But, having awoken from that dream--

Ashford was a changed Reaper, now, and the consequences of that false life had not yet fully settled. In this room, of sanguine and black and dirty-white, Ashford smiled beneath his helm. The door he had just entered through clicked shut behind him, and he heard the faint sound of a lock settling into place.

He turned, looking through the bottom of his helm for the feet or legs of someone else in this bastardised place of healing. The protection from the metal helmet was mostly superficial, but Ash relied as heavily upon it as a bird relies upon its wings. It had only been a few days, in the false-world, but facing enemies and strangers and allies alike without the protection of his helm felt like a violation of his privacy.

To see a Pyramidkind's face is to see into their core, to know them in ways most did not.

"Hello," Ashford rasped, catching the sight of heavy boots against the tile. "Who might you be?"

His voice echoed against the metal, reverberating just enough to be strange.
 

[Baneful]

Rep should have drawn Tracey. Should have done a lot of things that weren't standing there, pinned to the ground in fear like a bug on a board.

But he couldn't.

He kept flashing back to the shifting fog, helpless as his guys were cut down at his side, left alone.

He was alone here now. Alone and faced with a monster that actually scared him, tapped into pre-island memories, forced him to face the true nature of his life now. When Ash spoke he was jarred out of his terror for a few seconds, stepping back a few steps, finally summoning Tracey, who was even less useful than the great knife in these close quarters.

"I'm ******** Rep." he snarled as if it was something the pyramid head should know, bristling like a cornered animal, but there was a shakiness in his voice he couldn't hide, that betrayed his anxiety.

 

[its me debz]

"Hmm." Ashford took a step closer, resting a latex-gloved hand upon a cart of rusted surgical instruments, the Great Knife dragging a little as he moved. "Rep."

He felt the shift in the air more than he saw it, but the Reaper knew the feeling of a weapon being summoned and desummoned. He latched on to the aggression, to the rage that burbled just beneath the surface, covering up something else. There was a quake in his words, a trembling so careful that made his heart absolutely soar.

"Hello, then, Rep." With a tilt of the head that barely shifted the heavy metal balanced up his head and shoulders, Ash grinned beneath it. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he said with a tranquil voice and a light tone.

He had lost control in the false-realm, had been the visage of a man gone mad with grief and loss and possessed with a fury he would never be able to summon up on a whim. But he was in control, now. He was not the one so angry and afraid.

"It's just the two of us, here, and I have no army behind me, no vendetta with you." Ashford's brief bark of cold laughter echoed sharply in his helm. "But, ah, we are but pieces in a large game, are we not?" Leaving one world as a chess piece to return to another as a pawn. Nothing truly changed. "I suppose, the question is..."

Ashford lifted his weapon with absolute ease, pointing the Great Knife in the direction of Rep's voice. "Art thou player or audience?"
 

[Baneful]

Confidence was normally effortless, a cocky arrogance propped up by his loathing for the denizens of Halloween. Right now though, it had deserted him entirely, the halls were too small, too narrow, suffocating and claustrophobic compared to the weapons they weilded.

He almost wanted to avoid combat, to evade this nightmarish thing and get out of there, let someone else handle it. He didn't doubt often either, but when he did it rattled him.

He steeled himself but that anxiety remained. "I'm no ******** scared." he snarled, clenching his hand all the tighter on the weapon he held.

As he was pointed at he hauled the axe back defensively with a scrape of serratedd metal on ancient wood. The thing had a point, he had a duty, he played this game wether he wanted it or not, he'd fight him because it was his job. Because the only way a pawn could change its role was to become a queen. "A player. Also the inevitable winner."  

[its me debz]

“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”

A weapon was pointed at him: larger than the Great Knife, a gnarled axe of black and red that gleamed in the dim. And so the challenge was issued, a game of Mad Hatter's Chess, sure to be brutal and cruel in every way.

Mercury went first. Pawn to E4.

He was not the strongest creature in all of Halloween: Ash was a slow learner, and raw strength did not dictate the ability to fight. But oh, how he desired to terrify all that crossed him: he yearned for it, in a way that would make his parents proud, to be a weapon of Halloween.

The air shifted, growing heavier: it was cooler, now, a fever chill, Ashford stretched out his mental tendrils, channelling the essence of Pyramidkind. One part aggression, two parts strength, seven parts guilt. Shaken, not stirred. The Reaper remained still as he focused, zeroing in on the pulse of a mind. He pushed, and he pushed, and he pushed against that mental barrier until something gave.

Rep would be flooded with guilt, a swirling mire; thick enough to choke on.
 

[Baneful]

Rep was steeling himself for a battle, working up confidence and power, thinking through a means to attack despite how confined the space was maybe as far as tactically taking out the ceiling above them. He wasn't prepared for an attack of the sort the pyramid head was capable of, his mind put up almost no resistance, faceted like a broken mirror, it had too many hairline fractures to resist.

He had been cold, chilled by the haunted house, but this chill ran far deeper, slithering into the places in his mind he'd tried to lock away, throwing wide compartmentalised nightmares and lurking anxieties. It seized them all and dragged them out into the light.

The emotional whirlwind felt like he was suffocating. Unable to shut off, unable to dissociate the way he normally did - it was panic on a level he'd never experienced before - he wanted to run, to give up and flee.

Dangerous to everyone around you, especially your friends.

Sibilant whispers resonated in his thoughts, replaying Melvin and Jerry's talks with him, the rooftop, attacking Candace and the look she'd given him, absolute hurt at his betrayal.

Deryk bleeding on the training fields, another casualty of his worthless inability to control himself.

Rin, who would never be able to do anything the same way again, his so-called best friend.

You control her the voice wasn't Tracey, he couldn't hear the fallen angel any longer. It sounded like his own voice. Whenever she tries to tell you you are hurting her, you twist it like barbed wire and make her blame herself instead.

His eyes went wide and he let go of Tracey, backing up like a frightened child.

For an instant he was a child again.

She died because of you. You got her scag taken off of her so she'd pay attention to you. She was desperate, she went to a rough and shitty dealer, that s**t ruined her blood, it killed her. You killed her.

"No." he shook his head. "No. No. No. I.. it's no.. I didn't.."

His heart was hammering and it hurt worse than any injury ever had. Intolerable, unbearable on a scale he couldn't even explain. He wanted to scream, to make it stop, to be able to lock away the worries where he couldn't find them. He raised his hands to his head and dug his nails into his scalp as if somehow the pain would make his brain stop, make the repeating accusations stop, terrified of the momentum it was building.

"Don't. ******** don't."
 

[its me debz]

He had never seen a human break down before, had never witnessed the fracturing of a mind, to see someone's metaphorical knees buckle under the weight of their own guilt.

It granted him satisfaction in a way that ran unparalleled to most things. He was born to do this, sculpted out of fear to see into the hearts of man, to reach into the inner sanctums of their sanity and pull forth their darkest fears, turning them around so that they would see their own faults.

A judgement would be passed upon them, and he was neither the judge nor the jury. No, this Rep-human was his own damnation, for Ash did not create anything new. He was merely to be the executioner at worst, and arbiter at best.

The man's quiet mutterings, distant at first and growing frenetic, a magnificent foreshadowing to the pending disaster.

"You may deny all that you wish," Ash growled, taking two steps forward for every step back that he heard. His focus was sharp and beautiful like the edges of a broken mirror. He would not be deterred from the intoxicating results; a new thirst had awaken in him, and it demanded tribute. This human would be a skitter pinned by its wings, placed into a box for observation and inspection from every angle. The Pyramid head would dream of collecting his pieces, so that he might find how humans ticked, if they did such a thing at all. "But I know nothing of your inner mechanisms."

Because he was a benevolent creature, Ash switched off his powers, stepping over the axe beneath his feet, the torn cuffs of pinstriped pants dragging against the filthy hospital tiles.

"I ask you, now, in this brief snippet of sanity I bequeath to you because I am kinder than I am cruel--"

He raised his pocket-watch from where it lay in his apron's pocket, letting it fall open.

It ticked ominously.

"Do you know what time it is, Rep?"  

[Baneful]

As the oppressive weight of guilt withdrew, he fell to his knees, struggling to catch his breath, hands shaking, falling apart. And the creature hadn't even needed to lift a finger. Already his scalp stung where he'd dug his nails in, breaking the skin, and his eyes welled with tears. He was losing it, even with the voice silenced, a wild and feral look in his blue eyes as he looked up in true fear at this creature. Most of the other students had been nothing to him, false kids that could be massacred wholesale without a second's hesitation. This was different, it was like fighting himself. And he knew when it came to a fight like that, there would only be a loser.

He could only look on at the pocket watch, every sane instinct screaming at him to run, that he couldn't win. He reached out for the axe's handle again, holding to it like a lifeline, but he couldn't swing him, he could do no more than cling to him like a security blanket.

Tracey was yelling at him but he couldn't focus on the words. He couldn't focus on anything but what he'd just heard in his own head. His fault. All his fault.

Many in Halloween might not know the significance of the question, some humans might not. He did.

There were no more snarky or witty answers, just a desperate and frantic plea.

"Please."

He didn't want to look back into his own mind.

 

[its me debz]

The human fell to where he belonged; on the ground, at the feet of a superior creature. He took in the way his fragile chest stuttered-- for all the muscles in the world would not conceal that he was made of bones for the crushing, a bag of blood and delicate insides like a balloon ready to burst.

The wild look in his eyes (clear, comet-blue) only fuelled his urge to break him, press him further. This human was called Rep, but what was he beneath the thin veneer of that name? What was he like, inside, where the thoughts are fleeting and full of denial?

"I asked you a question, human," Ash said, his tone cold. "The polite thing to do is to answer me."

He reached down to grab Rep around the neck-- large hand easily fitting around it-- and lifted in a singular movement. Even the immature members of Pyramidkind were tall, and Ash was no exception. The grip around the hunter's neck was like a vice, crushing and unrelenting.

"Mercy is given to those who are incapable of helping themselves. It is bestowed to the weak, as a gift, and they should be so lucky to receive it."

With the brunt of his full force, Ashford flung Rep at a row of hospital beds-- but it was merely a distraction, for an idea had hatched in the Reaper's brain. While the human was recovering, Ash set down his own blade, exchanging it in favour of the axe that had been abandoned on the floor.

He had not planned for the searing pain that would accompany him, but he did not let it stop him. With a guttural yell that was less than human, the Pyramid Head lifted the hunter's own axe, his own weapon, and raised it at him. Shockwaves of heat coursed through his gloved hands and raced up his arms, but nonetheless, Ash soldiered on.

Dragging it along the floor behind him, the serrated edges grinding over the tile, the Pyramid Head advanced towards Rep, hissing lowly in pain.  

[Baneful]

Everything in Rep screamed at him to fight, jarring and discordant against the deer in the headlights reaction he was having. But he couldn't act, couldn't move, couldn't do anything at all. His desire to dissociate had caught up with him too late and now he was powerless, kneeling and helpless. The thought before amended itself in his terror - he was danger to everyone around him, to his friends but especially to himself.

When his throat was seized, he finally managed to move, hands coming up to claw feebly at the grip around it. He was sensitive about his neck, he always had been, Sasha maiming it had only made him a hundred times worse. He couldn't breathe. His heart was racing, he couldn't breathe. Red spots flashed before his eyes as his chest heaved and his lungs snarled their objections painfully at his brain.

It seemed like he was going to die, going to suffocate in the hands of this creature, helpless and wishing in vain for the mercy of which he spoke. He was starting to fade out when he was cast aside like a ragdoll, colliding heavily with the beds and slumping to the floor, raggedly trying to replenish his oxygen starved body, propped up on his elbows. He had to gather his thoughts steady himself.

And then the screaming started.

It was a screaming at first only he could hear, Tracey letting out a sound that was almost bird like, a sound of revulsion and fury as he was picked up. Rep didn't register his own sound of outrage over it, shock, fury and disgust mingling together in a knot of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to demand he put him down, to express the sheer violation of having a monster touch his weapon, his very ******** soul.

Put him down. Put him down. Put him down. Put him down. Put him down.

He threw himself to his feet, a snarling, feral thing, that blazing blue stare fixed on Ash. There were no words, the human part of his brain had all but shut down, silenced by the unheard screams of angelic fury whirling in his head like a parody of the siren from the haunted house.

Put him down.

HP:19
Target: Self :l
DMG: 11

 

[its me debz]

It had been so tempting to holds his hands around that neck, for the Rep-human was not small by their standards, a sturdy beast beneath his grip, the pulse of life racing through his veins with a thumpthump that was, at the very least, utterly intoxicating.

But he had forced himself to release Rep from his iron grip, for there was a more exquisite fate in store for him.

This fate laid in his hands, too heavy. To touch the hunter's weapon was a beautiful agony; as if he was clenching his fist around the thorned stem of a nightrose. It pulsed with a life-like energy, too-hot in his hands, the molten force of it scalding the hands beneath his gloves.

The human yelled, his battle-cry so fierce that Ash suspected it could be heard outside of the Haunted House's walls. It pleased him, this yell, this reduction of an intelligent creature to his base pieces, like the mechanisms of a watch. He wished to take him apart, piece by piece, to not-so-gently extract the emotions that made the hunters tickticktick.

The flame-haired human stood, his skin burning red and his eyes a nigh-luminous blue (the blue of cheshires, the blue of ice-flame, the blue of a sky Ashford had only seen in picture books, the blue of--) and soon, Rep's cries were joined by the reaper's own, because the paroxysms radiating from the axe grew stronger, its weight growing heavier-- and he noticed, with a flicker of his own panicked horror, that it was not just inflicting pain.

It was also draining his fear.

With a disgusted howl of anguish and rage, the reaper swung the axe-- and released it, sending it careening through the air.



[[ hp// 20 - 6 = 14
dmg to self from tracey// 6 ]]  

[Baneful]

Rep wielded Tracey almost every day of his life, he knew the weapon as well as he knew himself, polishing every inch of the deep impossibly black steel with loving attentiveness. He'd always known the axe as light enough to lift, heavy but reassuringly so. His sheer and total weight had only ever been used on others, laying him on Sasha's chest and letting go had been brutal, before he had even reached his current scale.

Standing, set to leap at Ash, he was wide open to attack and Tracey's yell reached a crescendo of warning too late. There was a thunk, a heavy sound of steel meeting fear shield and flesh and Rep was sent backwards with a crash into the wall, splintered ancient timbers and panelling crashing around him and the twisted metal of a wrecked bed kept at bay only by virtue of that same fear shield. He hadn't been able to breathe before, it didn't compare to now, pinned beneath the weight of Tracey. He reached out to touch him and he was light again, but there was no way to move, no leverage. Pinned like a helpless bug.

He could taste the sharp crackle of a charge in the blade, pilfered from the pyramid head, but not enough. He got his feet braced against the handle and pushed Tracey out of the wall, off of him. He fell to the ground with another weighty thud. He was bleeding, but the wounds were rapidly mending even as he staggered clear, eyes half lidded, almost resigned to the fury and hopelessness that possessed him in equal measure.

"You never ******** touch a hunter's weapon." he said, almost like a mantra. "You never touch our weapons. You never ever touch our ******** weapons. Never." It didn't undo the way his skin crawled, the goosebumps across his skin he couldn't help, the feeling he'd been violated, his own power turned against him. He hated this creature, hated him in a way he had hated few people in his life, the incandescent rage he reserved for the men who lied to his mother, for his mother, for himself.

He didn't just want to dissapate him, he wanted to consume him, fracture his core and end him, so he might never come back.

Like those children never will?

The slithering voice wasn't gone, and he no longer knew if it was to do with the creature before him or his own fractured mind.

"I will make you ******** regret it." he snarled, everything about his voice dripping with malice and hatred. He wasn't simply speaking to Ash, he was speaking to him and through him to those other people, the promise he'd made a child and been denied the chance to fulfil. The only person left to regret but never repent had been him.

HP: 19

 

[its me debz]

"What is your weapon made of?" Ash asked in a nigh sing-song voice, shambling towards his Great Knife where it lay embedded in the ground, the crack of his neck audible across the room.

"It hungers for me, as I hunger for your fear: the essence that make you tick, that makes me powerful." His breath rolled out in clouds of fog that drifted out from beneath his helm, and the hiss of leaking pipes hiding in the walls could be heard. Wrenching the blade from the ground, Ashford held it lightly. This weapon of his, it would not hurt him. It cut and vanished and existed because of fear-- because of his own fear, an extension of who he was, non-sentient but a part of him nonetheless.

"I will be sure to try and wield the weapons of my enemies in the future," the Pyramid Head assured Rep, the hissing of pipes growing louder in cacophonous harmony. A clattering of metal sounded off, fog rolling in all around the two of them, obscuring human and reaper alike.

"There is nothing a human could do to make me feel remorse," he promised, pity entering Ashford's voice. "If you hurt me, I will heal. If you break me, I will mend. If you obliterate me, I will reform." He laughed, growing near hysterical.

"I was turned into a creature of fog and madness in equal measure! I stormed your island and pounded upon the barriers of your home with my fists, shaking it to its foundation! The power swept me past the impenetrable wall, where I terrorized your kind in the city, comprised of fog and sorrow and fear."

He was so tired, for the weight of Tracey still bore down on his body, the drain affecting him more than his mind currently comprehended. This creature he was intimidating was far stronger than he-- he remembered that axe, the touch of it, for it had eaten into him once before.

Ash's hysteria was rising within him, this madness an entirely different kind he was so familiar with. Instead of disconnected longing, he felt an erratic madness thrumming in his chest. "You cannot make me feel regret: I have already repented and blotted out my sins. I wear the brand of the demon Thackery, I have taken on his pact so that my power might be his own."