lieutenantantichrist | [17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

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[17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

[ACTION]

[In a low-rent corner of Mahogany, there's a real gym. No mazes, no boss trying to fight you in exchange for something they call a badge, no lackeys, just weight machines and a floor covered with rubber mats, the way it should be. Open twenty-four hours, and this late there's no human in this room but Blake. He's in a sweatsuit, gray in contrast to the brown of the Hitmonlee holding pads for him in its upraised paws. The only sound is his harsh breaths and the thump of his fists on the canvas. His shoulders are hunched like a boxer's. His eyes look straight ahead. Judging from the sweat darkening the back of his shirt, he's been here a while.

On the other side of the room, a Snubbull is sitting on the floor, looking at a Gear that's resting on the mats. A Musharna floats beside her. Fifteen minutes of frustration proved that claws are no good for texting with, but she wants to talk to someone. She really wants to.

She snubs softly, so as not to make her trainer angry. The Musharna's eyes show no reaction, but the buttons on the Gear depress. The text that Steve watches appear seems to be accurate, more or less. The transcription might come strange through the dreaming creature. It's close enough for what she needs.]

[TEXT]

Hello lo low hello

Please talk to me.
I want to talk.
I will tell you my favorite story.
He told it to me when I couldn't sleep. His eyes were closed for some of it but I shook his knee and got to hear the end. Without the end it isn't a story.

Once
upon a time there was a girl. She was poor and alone because her parents were dead, and child services didn't exist then, so she had to go to live with her wicked stepmother and do work for her. Hard work, the kind that nearly killed her, but in time she got used to it.

Then one day she heard the prince was giving a big ball. She asked to go, but her stepmother wouldn't let her. So she tried to run off and get a ride to the castle from a knight, but her wicked stepmother had tailled her, and she found her and dragged her off the horse. While she was going, the wicked stepmother threw the knight a gold coin. He held onto it, and he kept looking at it all the time. He kept thinking about the girl.
He wanted to help her, but he couldn't.

The knight went to the ball, and he was going to kill the prince, but there were too many guards around watching him, so he ran away.

Then the knight went to find the girl and save her. The wicked stepmother grazed him in the neck with an evil spell, but he killed her and all the other guys too, even though he got hurt bad. At first the girl was scared, but then she was free and she was okay. She got to go back home to her real parents. The knight was a hero. All the papers said so.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

..........
..........
..........

Tell me your favorite story.
Voice or video if you can.
The words alone are lonely.

Tell me please.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

_{[She stares unblinkingly back for a moment before speaking.]}

In the four years I've been here, I've gotten combat training from a soldier who was a prisoner of war in Iraq, a Special Ops guy who could knock people out without them ever even knowing he was in the same room, and a weapons expert who'd been fighting wars for thousands of years. In space.

_{[... And then there was that one time she had a lesson with an assassin, but she doesn't really count that. :I]}

And that's just counting what I've had here.

_{[She props her chin on her fist. Her tone is completely dead serious.]}

I've fought bigger and meaner than you, Blake.

And I've won.

But sure.

Save me from your extra half-a-foot and fifty pounds.

[Blake hears her, but hardly listens. Then he stops in mid-swing. What trickles through is the fact that she's not going to go away and leave him to his brooding and self-loathing without a push.

He rounds on her. His voice is soft, and more dangerous than when he's yelling.]

Fine. You wanna go, kid?

[With a jerk of his hand, he gestures toward himself.]

Go ahead. Hit me.

_{[... Yeah, she can kinda tell everything she just said went in one ear and out the other. Oh well. His problem, not hers.]

[He'll never be able to say she hadn't warned him.]

[She doesn't say anything else-- just gets to her feet. Dusts off her knees and the back of her jeans. Takes her time doing it, too. Then she starts to unlace the gloves, seemingly in preparation to pull them on.]

[Halfway through loosening up the first of them, she whirls on her heel without warning. Her fist is already swinging, and it's heading for his jaw. Hard.]}

[If he were in his right mind, Blake would be growling at her to hurry up. But a strange patience has fallen over him. Time doesn't mean anything here.

This isn't the first time a girl's taken a swing at him. Blake's been attacked by representatives of every place on the socioeconomic spectrum. Teenage girls can be stronger than they look, especially when they're screaming and pissed off, but what they do is they scratch, bite, and kick.

He sees her move and jerks back by reflex. Instinct tells him the range; in the rare cause a girl like her tries a punch, they're always short and abortive, without any weight or follow-through behind them.

So when her fist cracks audibly across his face, what makes him yell out is surprise as much as pain.

He stumbles back, pressing his hand to what will soon be a hell of a bruise.] What the fuck?!

_{[The punch had fallen a little lower than she'd intended it to, and the smarting on her knuckles is pretty intense. Ouch. But otherwise, she'd done it properly. Thumb outside of the fingers, plenty of follow-through.]

[And she doesn't hesitate before throwing another-- this one at his stomach.]

[She doesn't say a word.]

[She's not fuckin' around anymore.]}

[Well this was a great idea, because Blake's forgotten all about his problems for a moment, since the primary one is now the angry little girl making a surprisingly focused effort to kick his ass. His Hitmonlee hops well out of the way.]

Holy shit!

[The throb in his jaw means his attention is kicked into gear. This one he sees coming and blocks.]

_{[Good, he was able to block. Now Heather doesn't feel... QUITE as bad about doing this.]

[Although there's a certain grim satisfaction in earning a blurted "Holy shit!" from the guy who'd been trying so hard to blow her off, she remains stonefaced as she sidesteps and-- instead of throwing another punch-- kicks out with one leg and stomps her foot down behind one of Blake's, before sweeping it back towards herself, aiming to entangle and knock him off of his feet. Or at least off-balance.]}

[You've got him taking you seriously now, that's for sure.]

Damn it, kid, you made your point! [She doesn't look like she's anywhere near done.] I'm not gonna fuckin' hit you!

[She kicks out and he twists away, and he is just feeling a flash of satisfaction at dodging it when he finds out there's a foot wedged behind him, and he is falling flat on his ass.

How long has he been in here, mindlessly pounding at the pads? When he tries to get up, his muscles do their best to let him know. He falls back with a thud.]

_{[When he hits the ground, she stands at the ready, waiting for him to rise again-- and when he fails to do so, she lowers her hands to her sides.]

[Stepping over to him (but keeping out of reach-- she's learned the hard way in the past that just because an enemy's down doesn't mean the fight's over), she bends over a little to look him in the eye.]}

Satisfied?

[Blake catches enough breath to growl at her.] Smug brat.

[He's not going to punch a little girl.

He will, however, reach up and try to shove over a little girl.]

_{[At long last, her mouth curls into a smirk. She steps neatly backwards out of shoving range, clasping her hands behind her back.]}

I know.

[Blake lets the useless action pull him up and flop him into a sitting position. He tosses his arms over his knees. From a few steps away, Steve watches with inscrutable animal eyes.

His jaw aches, his muscles ache, and he is very tired.

He says dully to the mats] Fine, you win, kid.

What do you want?

Just tell me what's up.

That's all.

_{[And don't you dare refuse.]}

[he doesn't even shake his head. Just stares down at the mat.]

You don't want to know.

I do, actually.

And if you tell me and I change my mind after hearin' it, that's my problem.

_{[Reaching down, she plants a hand on the floor and settles herself back into a sitting position, chin once more on her fist.]}

[he doesn't look at her. Couldn't if he wanted to.]

You ever met a kid named Shaun Mars?

Yeah, I know him.

Sweet kid.

... Did something happen to him?

_{[She tries to keep any alarm out of her voice, lest that... be exactly what he's talking about.]}

[That's the answer he was afraid of. He can't look at her.]

Nah. He's fine.

[Abruptly, he asks something else.]

Do you believe there's such thing as alternate worlds? Not only totally crazy planets like here, but copies of the real one, with one thing different.

_{[She tips her head just slightly to the side. It's not a DIFFICULT answer for her but it is one she has to think about her wording of, just by virtue of the question.]}

... Yeah, I guess.

I mean, I've met different versions of the same person before. It's weird, but... after this place, I think you'd have to be dumb not to think alternate worlds're possible.

[Blake sighs out. It seems to take all the air in him, and everything holding him up. He can't lift his head, or move his eyes from the scuffed pads with their indents of his own feet.

His voice is dull. Just a mechanical process.]

If those exist, I killed his dad.

_{[Heather's silent for a moment.]

[If she'd found this out any other way, she'd have been angry. Furious, even. Ever since she'd watched a pair of uniformed cops stuff her own father into a police car right after being terrorized by a home invader, a wicked contempt for the badge had been cemented in her mind and it had never really gone away.]

[Her fondness for Blake is practically a fluke-- his fleeting similarities to Douglas, his affability when not being grumpy.]

[But well, if he's telling the truth, he's right. That's something she'd rather not have known.]

[At the same time, though... she literally just saw firsthand how worked-up he is about it. How angry and upset. So, with nothing but a slightly-furrowed brow to indicate how troubling the news is, she asks:]}

How'd it happen?

[This time he's expecting the punch to the head.

She's drawing in breath for it now. She'll hit him, and call him a sick lying son of a bitch. You were a murderer all along, and you let me think you were my friend.

Sitting on the floor with the sweat turning cold and clammy on his back, he's ready for it.

Instead, she just asks.]

You wanna know the funny thing? I don't really know.

[His arms are draped over his knees. His bones are leaden.]

...not "ha ha" funny.

[He tries to collect it all and trace it back to the beginning. It takes a while, a few long breaths. Maybe she'll get sick of waiting.]

Eight little boys, drowned in rainwater. All around the same age, all the same way.

I've seen worse. Kids get killed all the time. Nobody likes to talk about it much, but that's life. But they just kept coming.

[The file photos were usually school pictures, kids who'd had a comb dragged through their hair before being shoved in front of one of those flimsy backdrops.]

Shaun Mars would've been the ninth.

[His fingers laced together, making the sore knuckles twinge.]

Then we got the first solid lead we'd had after months of dead ends. It had to be his father. Every single time a kid was killed, he'd had some kind of blackout. Never once had an alibi. Each time he woke up, he'd be clutching origami, just like the dead kids did. He'd lost his other kid in a car accident a while before the murders started. According to everybody around him, he'd lost his mind, too. We had him in custody for a while and he wouldn't even deny it himself, no matter how hard I hit him.

[Usually "I didn't do it" was the refrain they kept up for a while, but Ethan Mars, he hadn't said anything at all. He'd just taken it. There was still satisfaction to it, like there always was, but his silence had made Blake uneasy and confused until rage rose to cover it up, and it'd made him throw in a little extra. Mars hadn't stayed conscious long anyway. He'd already had all those injuries he'd refused to explain.

Blake hears his own voice keep going, like a cassette tape hooked up inside him that was going to keep on until it hit the end with that little snapping click.]

We finally tracked him down again and had him surrounded at an old warehouse. This newspaper hack, she showed up and kept yelling about how he was innocent, and did some crazy damn stunts to break through and get in to him. We had snipers around, but shit, if you've got the balls to motorcycle through a bunch of armed guys for the opportunity to get yourself killed by a serial murderer, you deserve the chance.

It was quiet, for a long time. Waiting.

[The fluorescent lights cast a steady glow, nothing like floodlights smeared by rain.]

Then Mars came out with the newspaper hack on one side and the kid in his arms. First kid picked up by the killer who was ever seen alive again.

[And he'd had nothing to do with it.]

So I told everybody to stand down, and there you go. Happily ever after.

But the kid--

[His eyes close. His hands are gripping tight to each other, short nails digging into the skin. Hard effort makes his voice steady.]

Shaun says different.

_{[Four years ago? She probably would have.]

[But hey, maybe she's done a bit of growing up since she first got here. ... As hard as that could be to believe, given some of the crap she gets up to.]

[As it is, she just listens, an inscrutable look on her face.]

[She's been on the side of viciously hating police for hurting innocent people, but hearing it from the OTHER side is at least a new experience. She's no fan of him beating on this guy if he was innocent, but if he really did think it was to stop a serial killer from murdering children...]}

So you didn't do it, but Shaun says you did.

_{[... Well, she doesn't think Blake's lying. It took too much to get him to talk to begin with, and the fact that he's telling her at all makes it unlikely that he'd spew a bunch of incriminating details before slapping a 'But I remember something different!' disclaimer at the end if he actually didn't. He'd be accusing the kid of lying, not pondering the nature of the Multiverse.]

[She still squints at him, though, brows furrowed. Not just for reasons of suspicion... this is the first time she's heard that Shaun was kidnapped. And it sends an ache of sympathy for the kid through her chest.]}

... I'll be honest, Blake, that sounds horrific. What you did is horrific.

... But I don't think you'd be telling me you told people to stand down if you didn't.

You wouldn't be so torn up about this if you didn't.

For a long time, I thought the kid was hallucinating or something. He'd been standing in a fucking well for four days, starved, tired, scared--

[Steve's face lifts into the air with an alerted "Snub?". She sniffs, and wrinkles her nose at the sharp scent. Blake's nails have drawn blood from his palms. Blake loosens his hands.]

He could've seen anything. That's what I kept telling myself.

But...it didn't sound like a hallucination that went away. He talked like it was a long time ago. Like he'd spent a long time with a dead dad.

If it was a nightmare, he would've woken up by then.

[Horrific. Yeah, that's about the word for it.

He dares to look at Heather out of the corner of his eye.] You believe me?

[He says it like a report, not an argument.] I didn't kill him. He's alive and well. Had his picture in the paper for weeks.

[He breathes in deep, and out again.]

But for that kid he's dead, and it's because of me.

[Suddenly he looks at her, and his voice is full of urgency, imploring.]

How am I supposed to deal with that? How can I man up and take responsibility when I'm not the one who pulled the trigger?

_{[She doesn't look away or avert her eyes. This is far from the worst story she's ever heard, although her heart still aches for Blake and Shaun both. It's hard to know exactly WHAT to make of this clusterfuck, but the only reasonable explanation she can think of is that Blake is onto something with that 'alternate universe' idea he mentioned.]}

... I don't know if I have an answer for you there. I'm sorry.

But yeah.

I believe you.

... I think... I think all you can do is... you know you're not the guy who pulled the trigger.

So keep being the guy who didn't pull the trigger.

Maybe that'll never be enough to make it better for Shaun, but that's what you can do here and now.

Does that make any sense?

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[action] Ma'am is this the novel you ordered

[action] NO I WANTED ONE WITH A UNICORN IN IT

[action] WELL YOU DON'T GET IT

[action] >8C INSERT A UNICORN INTO THIS STORY IMMEDIATELY