[ PRP ] What is your [Mark, Rep ]

[Zoobey]

He pulled out what looked like a rather simply crafted ring. "Taa-daa! I know you like to collect the bling and I think someone dropped their hand wearing one, but I had to get it for you I mean it's Ourboros and that's a snake and that has to be funny."

Mark still had not noticed that Rep was determinedly attempting to gush out all six litres of blood. "I have to test it again, but I'm pretty sure their entire database is accessible through those rings, so if you could safekeep it for me until I could work on it, that would be awesome, Caelius took like five of them and I seriously still have no clue what he plans to do with them, thank god I grabbed one myself."

He gave Rep a thumbs up.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep eyed the ring with eyes that refused stubbornly to focus on anything much at all. He had a ring, he thought. A /nice/ one, one that Harrison had given him that had just been a way of saying something they both already knew, it was a hazy sort of thought in his mind as he took the ring in an automatic sort of way and put it on the only finger it fit on the opposite hand.

“Did you say it was shaped like a-”

And possibly from the shock of adrenaline at the S word and the associated flashbacks that brought with it, it all became way, way too much for Rep to handle and going completely limp he slipped out of consciousness completely.
STAMINA - REP OUT  

[WE ARE HALLOWEEN]

"Yeah I mean Ourboros is literally a snake. Snake eating itself and all I mean why is it even called Ourboros and not Ouroboros, unless you're going by the old translation which skips vowels anyway. Do you think Lucky knows that-"

- And Rep was dead.

Alarmed, Mark ran exactly three circles around him before remembering to drag his body through the portal and away from the mobs of angry people running their direction.

"Someone help me!" the Death Assistant shouted upon arrival back to Deus HQ, "Rep is dead!"

Nobody did.

"Rep is dying," Mark amended, after checking for a very weak pulse.

A few Moon Hunters sighed: one grabbed a hold of Rep's arms and the other his feet and hauled him away like a dead body.

Mark considered following, he really did. But Rep was like, the second person to die this week and he just wasn't feeling it. Maybe later he'll yell about how much he wants to be treated like an equal at Caelius or something but now he deserved some peace and quiet.

It was two hours later before he settled down in his lair. The setup had to be perfect, disconnecting everything on that computer attached to the piece of hardware he had found was critical, force-unlocking the encrypted software was even more difficult. Seriously, why did "hackers" in Hollywood movies always keep their computer connected to the easily remotely accessible network, that was just bad planning. An hour later something rendered, a few video files. He ran the first one labelled "PR - 831-05".

Grey noise. Then from the foilage into the clearing landed a very familiar monstrosity, a large snake that was slowly warping into a spider again. Two figures in the distance, shouting something. More scuffling, fighting, the thing changing forms again to grab a hold of Rep-

And then static on the camera. As it cleared a large, glowing sword materialized from the sky, plummeting downwards. It cleanly impaled the creature that thrashed, and then simply dissolved. The camera shook a bit. Rep was standing there- dressed in an highly unusual outfit complete with a blue crown - the sword faded and he collapsed-

Mark stopped the video. He practically fell while trying to get up and immediately ran towards the office.

Baneful

Rep while unconscious can have a quick dream moment actually talking to his Blue Kingdom counterpart. The counterpart mentions a war coming - but the details are too vague to make out.

When he wakes up there will be a terribly written note next to his lab bed as well that just reads "Sorry you're dead." - feel free to wrap up as you need!

 

[Baneful]

He was on the roof of a building, the red tinged desert stretching away into the distance, terminating in a sunset that ran like blood. Out there was red and dark but here everything, absolutely ******** everything was blue. He turned, an infinity pool lit up in front of him, surrounded by some of the swankest loungers he'd ever seen.

And he HAD seen them before, he knew this place like he knew his room. He lived it every night, watched the trials and tribulations of the people who lived there and that other self, the other version of him who wasn't ******** scared of anything or anyone, who loved himself and radiated confidence like an aura. That person he could only dream of ******** being.

Nearby, one of the pool lights flickered and died.

"We are between our worlds." He knew the voice because it was his voice, older and more charming, but it was his. "Neither here nor there. Neither up nor doon as our ma used to say." He turned and Blue smirked at him. A tiger strolled from behind the older man, the older mirror of himself and bumped its massive head against his leg.

He felt so small compared to them both.

The light in the penthouse behind them went out. The sun had gone.

"What is it?" he asked, absently twisting his hands in soft feline fur and Massacre pressed closer to him, rumbling a low warning at the dark.

"Something's coming." Blue said, taking a pull of an expensive cigarette, the smoke hanging around him the way the opulent furs hung around his shoulders. "Something ******** big. It'll find us, maybe both of us."

The lights were going out all over the place, creeping in to leave them both in a pool of darkness that even his artifact couldn't penetrate, Blue's lit smoke becoming the brightest light on the roof, the sky impossibly cold and dark overhead, reminding him of Marie's temple where he had to witness the nightly murder of everyone he loved.

"What is it?" he asked, more frantic, more worried now and glaring at the red pinprick of light, something about the encroaching darkness getting under his skin. "******** TELL ME."

"War." Blue said, and stubbed out his cigarette.

The light went out.


Rep didn't sit up, but he woke up, his heart hammering, feeling clammy, stitched up, weak but alive.

And he wondered, as he listened to the beeps, if survival itself could be a specialization after all.