LAY IT, LAY IT DOWN, LET ME SEE YOUR HAND—

[dipolar]

WHO? hei dipolar and ashitaka lonelywar
WHAT? ashitaka engages in fisticuffs to hopefully subdue hei
WHEN? i think right after the angry text log/shaper reveal
ANYTHING ELSE? content warning: beatdowns, um... shaper torture... not good

(another electrical current driven into the metal wall of the ship, one palm flat as his teeth grind out his aggravation. he tries not to fall asleep; their defence mechanisms are nothing to the occasional slap of a shock he turns on his own body. this is how they die. five at a time, roasting and squealing and scrabbling between slates of their conductive hiding spots. it's not a humane way to dispatch them, especially for someone with any kind of conscience.

hei doesn't care. he wants them gone. they've fucked with him for the last time.

by the time ashitaka shows up, his killing spree is tiring him. despite this, it's never a good idea to underestimate a man who's fought wars in similar states, worse states, and without the ability that glows in his pupils like laser lights. radiation rolls from his outline in a sick blue and it looks far from healthy, the presence of it alone making the dim hallway flicker as it tickles the wires in the ceiling, in the floor, everything he touches is alloyed.

not a whole hell of a lot is going to stop him now, hateful gaze bruised by lack of sleep trained on the wall he funnels his power into again and again and again.)

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[lonelywar]

(ooc: THIS IS SELF-INDULGENT PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF U WOULD PREFER ANYTHING ALTERED)

[Ashitaka is typically a very thoughtful young man. Nearly every word that escapes his mouth was one that he carefully considered, artfully aligned to best represent what he meant to say. He knew that there was much trouble to be had in the gaps and spaces between ill-thought out statements and questions, explanations and accusations. He did everything he could to avoid those. But when it came to conflict, he functioned on an entirely different set of rules. A decision to involve himself in a fight was one made in an instant, and from then on out, it was merely following both his gut and his heart, a struggle to both survive and to avoid doing anything that would haunt him or damn him.

He had not been successful, of course. There was often not a perfect answer. He had struck down Nago in his rage and hatred before he had been able to attack their village, and for that he had been cursed. It was fair; Ashitaka had never railed against his fate, for he understood it. Things like that had been simple. Even Eboshi's ambitions and the gods' desperation, that had been easy to understand.

Nothing here was easy for him to understand. So he merely defaulted to what was easiest to follow: instinct.

Whatever he might have thought to do upon reaching Hei evaporates just as quickly as it might have presented itself to him, however. Ashitaka is, culturally, not familiar with electricity. He had watched lightning storms in the skies since he had been a child, but besides watching them distantly strike tall trees in the distance, he has no personal experience. He has no understanding.

So he has no way to prepare himself when Hei crouches down and fills the ground with enough electricity to bowl him over.

It's indescribable in a way that his brain doesn't even process for the moment that it happens. In one moment he stood and in the next, a searing white flash and he was suddenly collapsed into a half-crouch, hands holding himself up as he struggles to get his legs underneath himself again. Instinct. He realizes he had dropped his sword, but he leaves it for the time, thoughts disorganized and wild.

The presence of the demon mark fills those gaps and preys upon the lack of discipline, filling him with the strength and tenacity to march through what probably should have knocked him out. He coughs, slowly getting to his feet. When he steps forward towards Hei the paces are slow, determined, the look in his eyes less understanding as it had once been and more ... unseeing. If he had had any sort of inclination for what his endgame here was before, it was fully and truly gone now; he merely sees a danger he wishes to cease. Wordlessly he reaches out with the intent to grab Hei, right hand twisting in the fabric of his clothing just below his collar to give him leverage enough to lift the man up off of the ground. A trick of the light, or perhaps a confusion with the glow around Hei himself, but there seems to be something similar flickering and seething into sight around that hand and that arm, occasionally twisting and writhing into serpentine shapes.]

Stop. [The voice he uses now is different, low and ragged as it is drawn through a body that had already surpassed its limits of stamina and was still being pushed, rapidly approaching a point where his consciousness would fade completely. He doesn't care. He knows he has one shot and he wonders if Hei would understand his request if spoken in the only language he might appreciate.

His teeth gritting:] Now.

[dipolar]

(the shock targets nerve-endings ashitaka doesn't even know he has, spreading like latticework through veins and muscle tissue and everything around them. even hours from now the sensations will linger. a weakening of legs set to wobble, a numbness that'll only part for wicked pins and needles of feeling as it all cycles through the body in an aftershock. hei knows what it feels like and wonders if he's won already, something he'd sigh a weakening sense of relief at.

he's so tired, so tired he could collapse and sleep for days but— he can't.

nightmares plague him and now he's cornered by something that's approaching him. it doesn't feel the same and the sightless look is something he skims informedly off of his next real study of the boy's face. ashitaka's been hiding something beneath his sleeve, even the most disbelieving of men could agree with him after witnessing the miasma of the thing wavering in the lights flickering under the stress of hei's power. it's writhing and hei comes to the conclusion that if he doesn't do something immediately he's liable to die (a fanciful idea, but not when it's something so easy, avoidable, and pointless).

so letting himself get collected up and hanged in the air like a rag doll, hei invites his enemy in close. within spitting distance, repressing the urge to do exactly that when ashitaka tries a final time to sway him. nothing in this world could and no one that's alive.)

This was a mistake. (at almost a whisper, his eyelids sink over red pupils in a concentrated look that spells out his true intentions:

fingers slap on either side of ashitaka's wrist and tighten to a bruising degree, feeling the skin revolt beneath his. like this he can use his palms like defibrillator paddles and apply a shock directly, filling the body beneath him with another volt wave that's carried from arms to chest, liable to stop a heart if he clung to him longer than was necessary. takes advantage, then, of the insurmountable pain in a stamina-light body to followthrough in quick succession.

core body muscles tense and a leg is thrown at the side of the boy's neck with a whip of a kick that blurs in sight, slamming him to the floor with a seethe of an exclamation through clenched teeth.)

Stay down!

[lonelywar]

[He is a warrior. He's familiar with the types of pains that accompany that - the sharp and shearing pain of a cut, the sickening sensation of escaping bloodflow. Physical blows, bruising, the sensation of destruction to nerves and tissue on a smaller scale than he was aware of. He even carried with him memory of something relatively novel to his time: the breathless sort of pain, brutal and confusing, that accompanied having been shot through the chest with a bullet half the size of his fist. The more one learned about the worst that could happen, the better their understanding of their limits were, and the stronger and more cunning a warrior they became. Ashitaka isn't particularly cunning. He's too earnest for that, too driven by heart and impulse. A clever combatant would always get the upper-hand over him because he was always pursuing the simplest line from point A to point B that his mind could distinguish, relying on directness and tenacity to carry him to victory.

The effect of the electrocution was something he couldn't have prepared for. It's a dangerous perfect storm, something that immediately robs him of any sense of reality, any feeling of groundedness. His vision is blurred and bright, every other sense dulled or feeling as if it was swathed in cotton - a dull ringing in his ears. There's a bizarre conflict of feeling both ready to collapse from the effect of the shock but also unwilling, the raw anger from the demon mark giving him the stamina continue well beyond his body's natural limits. The mingling of exhaustion and pain and that persisting feeling of lack of reality cause his natural thought process to lapse and bleed into white, supplanted by that which the curse remembered.

The last echo of the god Nago understood better than any how it felt to be destroyed from the inside from something it did not understand.

The words that Ashitaka had offered were the last vestiges of his consciousness, a last entreatment of peace he knew would fall upon deaf ears.

A stormcloud falls over his expression, jaw clenching as Hei's hands wrap around his wrist. Ashitaka is immediately moving, stepping forward toward the wall behind Hei, mind blistering, the entirety of the mark along his right arm and coiled around his chest screeching as it sensed the violence in the man's intent, refusing to be attacked again. He stops, and one second more and he might have pulled Hei back, shoving him forward in a burst of strength to slam him against the wall with the force of nearly a dozen men set to the singular point at his sternum -

but he doesn't.

The demon's strength hadn't lasted him in life, and it doesn't last Ashitaka in cursed afterlife, weathering Hei's second shock for perhaps a second or two before it fails him. The determination in his eyes blurs and then fades, grip going limp, already collapsing on his own before Hei's kick cracks against the junction of his neck and shoulder and sends him down onto the floor.

A few seconds pass. He does not move.]

[fessus]

[ The network's been humming for the past few days, and that's no surprise. Whether it's called an "infestation", an "attack", or a "misunderstanding" isn't of particular interest to him; what matters is how many people possess each opinion.

What matters is the second of those.

COST is an organization at war and thus its recruits are those capable of committing to that purpose, something Noctis keenly understands and harbors as he goes about his business. If any of its members see the shapers as a threat, and it's clear many do, then those creatures are inherently in danger. Sure he's spoken to a few (Ashitaka in particular) that share his own more cautious views, but an awareness of even one other violent individual means Noctis has been housing shapers in secrecy, trying to make his search for them as low key and quiet as possible.

It's why he's scouring this particular random corridor solo, immediately alerted to something being off when he spots his first shaper corpse. Burnt to a crisp, nigh unrecognizable. He picks up speed then, hurrying ahead just in time to hear a crackle of electricity and the slump of a body before they come into sight. ]

Hei! [ A shout for the first man he recognizes despite his worn and exhausted state, eyes widening when they land on the other man in the hallway. His dagger's withdrawn immediately, thrown forward to warp him closer just so he can slide to his knees at his side, scrambling to support Ashitaka's head against his thigh. He doesn't recognize him -- they've only spoken over the network. ]

What the hell is this -- what happened?

[dipolar]

(hei breathes through the sight he's just seen, struggling with scraping what air he can into his lungs in horrible pants as he presses his back against cold metal. the wall ashitaka tried to pin him against with a blow he's sure would have been devastating if the demon's arm had only managed to follow through.

but the boy's down and he's not moving and god—

he's killed him, he's killed another one. someone who's supposed to be a comrade, who'd have had his back and fought with him.

barely registers the shout, disoriented by the lack of sleep and the expenditure of so much energy meant to keep him alive. when his mind stirs and he's ready to unlock his joints and sway away from the wall, he notices noctis, the way he cradles ashitaka's head in his lap, the rushed questions he asks in a desperate bid to make sense of it all.)

Is he alive? I can't tell.

(it's the only thing he can think to respond with, fingers open and shaking at his sides.)

[fessus]

What the hell do you mean you can't tell?

[ His eyes are blown wide with the sudden burden of what he's just witnessed, riddled with questions and receiving no hint of an answer. Even still Hei's question prompts him to hurriedly press fingers to Ashitaka's throat, feeling a swell of panic at the initial lack of response and then a stronger wave of relief when that pulse throbs against his touch. Well, thank fuck for that.

He keeps his fingers right where they are to continue monitoring him, too, only then raising his head again to look back up at Hei.

It's the first time he's seen him in person since-- Well, that shouldn't be the main focus right now. But it jars him, violently. ]

Seriously, Hei, what the hell happened? Who is he?

[dipolar]

A heart's rhythm, under the duress of electrical shock, is unreliable. It could still stop.

(it's not a reliable way to tell. all noctis can do is wait and monitor, something he already seems to take control of.

the sight of the king presses shame down on his shoulders like a physical weight, knowing the words of praise he'd had for him are gone under the stress of the moment and aren't liable to ever return. he's uncompromising when he wants to be, this boy with far too much responsibility. hei's tired slump against the wall is forcibly removed so he can begin rebuilding his composure, trying to shake the pain of losing his body to the decay set upon him by every single one of his highness' ancestors.

it's too much. why can't he die?

why is he too big of a fucking coward to kill himself and spare the rest?)

Ashitaka tried to stop me from killing the shapers and I tried to kill him. (a measured breath, before turning away from him with a dead stare down the hall.) I don't have time to stick around and make sure that happens. Don't pursue me.

[fessus]

[ He doesn't miss the reluctance in Hei's own weary stare, the way he purposefully points it away from him as if he knows there's nothing he'll witness that won't add more weight onto his shoulders. Noctis almost wishes he could do the same, staring at the exhausted figure of a man that he's seen beaten and bruised in a dream, for him. ]

Ashitaka? [ The name immediately rings a bell as one he's read on the network, the one belonging to the man he'd most agreed with regarding the treatment of the shapers. He'd been kind and offered his points in a well-reasoned way, and now he's on the ground like this? For trying to adhere to his own cause? ]

I'm not. [ And the anger's finally seeping into his tone, turning his full attention back on the man in his lap instead as he lifts his chin, trying to keep his airways even clearer as he checks him for electrical burns. ] He's more important right now.

[dipolar]

(the disappointment in noctis' tone is enough to mentally bowl him over and he realizes how exhausted he really is in the next second, sluggish limbs pulling him away from the scene. ashitaka is more important, he understands that and hei's acclimated himself to the idea that he's expendable.

everyone else is the priority.)

Fine.

(bitterness comes with that territory, though, and there's a sharp scoff, refusing to look back and not sure he could in a rare moment of cowardice.)