[ PRP ] Always use Protection (Rep, Mark)

[Baneful]

can't."

Another set of hands were brought to bear on the hilt of the blade as Blue joined them, trying to tug it free, his existence relied on Rep. "I dunno how you ******** get into these situations man." he said as he tried in turn to dislodge it. It was all to no avail and he had to fall back exhausted as Tracey took up another turn, twisting all twenty of his long claws about and stretching his wings as he pulled with all his might.

He'd done this, he knew, it was his fault everything was going to end for them, if only he'd made some better choice along the way, if only he hadn't been so incredibly and impossibly Rep the whole ******** time. He just ******** up, time and time again, repeating mistakes and never learning, surviving but never improving.

The voice. He knew it. It would have chilled his blood if it wasn't on fire with sheer agony already. She was a woman and that was only the first reason why he shouldn't trust her, the list beyond that was very, very long.

But he was out of options.

"Don't hurt them. Don't hurt the city. You can do what you want with me, just do that, please." But he knew he was in no place to bargain. He was on his knees in a way that even his deep and bitter loathing of women and his equally deep and bitter pride couldn't deny, he needed help, time was running out and she was the only one he could turn to.

He couldn't even bring himself to ask her to promise to let him keep Harrison, to keep the memories he had if she betrayed him, because he knew that ultimately all women were snakes and she'd tear out his weaknesses first of all, while he was able to understand what was happening to him.

And yet, he closed his eyes and whispered. "Open the door."

 

[Zoobey]

Even with his eyes closed, Rep could see her, a presence so different from anything else. Perhaps a part of him whispered that different meant dangerous, yet the same could be said of those similar.

'Of course', she whispered, and there was a chill in his skull as she ran ice cold fingers down his hair. 'A favour is owed in return.'

The last sentence was cryptic enough, but before he could question it, she buried her nails into his shoulders and tore him out of the sword, falling through the fabricated room floor, downwards and downwards.

The sword was still hovering above him, it seemed to hone towards him, and she pulled harder, attempting to move them further still.

'Run, faster.'

And yet Rep found he wouldn't be able to, his legs lead, what remained of him barely comprehensible. She was tugging at him fiercely, dragging him, through memories and memories as the sword followed behind.

When the blade stabbed through Rep's shoulder again, when it bound him in place again, she finally stood her ground and with what looked like great hesitation, grabbed a hold of the weapon by the hilt.

Both of them disappeared.

Silence.

The pattern had ended at last.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

A favour. Great, that wasn't going to be terrible, it wasn't going to be completely and utterly terrible. Maybe she'd just ask him to do something small like go shopping for hair products or something. Levity was the only way he could deal with the helplessness of his situation.

He fell, and he didn't know if it was to an even worse situation than he'd been in before. The sword was still there, it was still coming for him and he was terrified.

When he was told to run faster, he just couldn't, cursing his legs as they didn't take him far enough fast enough. "I'm ******** TRYING." he snapped at Circe, tetchy in the face of his own ineptitude and flying on wings of sheer adrenaline.

There were flashes of moments as they went, of a room, empty of people except for a kid at a television screen eating a pot noodle, a flash of an arctic wasteland with laughter in a tent from too much JOY, a flash of a hoard on the island, of parties, of drugs and still the blade came.

He cried out when it stabbed through him, a hopeless little sound as he found himself once again pinned, horrified and despairing that even she wasn't able to help him.

He didn't expect what happened, and he didn't know what it meant.

 

[Zoobey]

Rep would wake up to a sharp jostling feeling. Every part of him was numb, as if he had been electrocuted twice, and vaguely he could hear Mark yelling at him as the assistant carried him through the portal.

His stomach dropped for a long second, and then darkness again.

When he woke up, it would be in the infirmary, but for some reason, Mark was still waiting there and so was Oz.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Waking up in the infirmary wasn't something unusual to Rep, he'd gotten used to the dodgy beds and strange smells, but what was unusual was waking up to anyone other than Harrison. He blinked slowly, once, as if the situation would resolve itself.

He was grateful to be alive.

"Hi." he said uncertainly.
 

[Zoobey]

Mark had an uncanny knack for falling asleep while sitting, and it wasn't until Oz nudged him that he woke up and nearly fell off his chair.

"Bad news," Oz said while Mark was still recovering from his nap, "Caelius is dead."

"He's not dead," the Death assistant quipped, then paused. "Wait, if he counts as being dead can I be the division leader now?"

"No."

"Eh," Mark sat back in his chair dejected, despite theoretically having more rank than Oz. "Anyway for anyone who asks he's on uh, a 'very long mission' you know how those go."

There was a long pause as the two kind of just sat there. Mark was fidgeting again.

"What we're trying to say," Oz finally said, "is we're pretty sure this is all you're fault and we'd like to know why."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

The sound Rep made was a strangled sound of anguish and panic that was probably more befitting a cat than a human. He managed to haul it back into a "Oh no. Oh no oh no."

Somehow him being alive didn't feel so great on the balance of Cael being out of action. The power balance on the island tended to feel like a precarious game of Cael ******** up H's machinations just enough to keep things oddly stable and without him it would mean that Life's influence would grow and grow. H would have reasons to smile. He didn't like it at all.

"First up, how do you know he's dead? Did he just not come back? Sometimes he does that right? He's like a pet cat you let him out, he comes back when he feels like it." his voice was shrill and desperate.

"And er. Er." He started eyeing the window carefully.

 

[Zoobey]

"No," Mark argued with Oz, "We both agreed that Caelius is 'on a mission.'" There were obvious quote fingers, and a passing Moon Hunter gave them a strange look. "Err, how about you just uh, come with us to the office and stuff and explain things on the way. Can you walk?"

"Super explain," emphasized Oz.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep sighed heavily, figuring that jumping out of the window wasn't going to work and he was going to have to explain at some point. "Yeah." he said grimly "Awright." He didn't know if he could walk, but figured that he was about to try anyway.

He didn't seem to care he was wearing a hospital gown and fished out his clothes to get dressed, regardless of if the other two guys were there. It could be their punishment for making him try and put words around the weird s**t he'd just experienced.

"On a mission." he said, still numb with the idea Cael was out of commission.

Zoobey

 

[WE ARE HALLOWEEN]

"On a mission," repeated Mark and it sounded more like he was loudly trying to reassure anyone else who happened to be by listening. The Death Assistant began to ramble something about responsibilities and touching things as Rep dressed and they made their way to their lead's office. "-And Oz and I are way too like busy and stuff to uh, deal with this-"

-"And this is your fault," Oz interrupted to repeat again-

-"So you get to take care of him until you fix this."

Sitting inside the office right at the desk was a kid that looked no older than Gale when he had started as a trainee who looked an awfully lot like the Death Lead. They stood up immediately as Rep and company made their way in, chair clattering to the ground.

"Hello," said the weird short-haired crossover between Gale and Mimsy, scooting to pick up the chair and awkwardly position it a few times, "Are you here to help?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"I didn't touch anything." Rep protested as they went along the corridors. Maybe he had but it was possibly an undying and it had been trying to eat him at the time, it sort of touched him, if you thought about it.

Rep stopped in his tracks in the doorway as he saw the kid inside. He remembered him from the dream he'd had last time with Circe and knew immediately who he was looking at. This was his fault. He took a deep breath.

Still, there was something in Rep that - for all his absolute dickishness to everyone else from women to anyone remotely different from him - couldn't be cruel to a child. "Hey." he said, his expression softening somewhat. "Aye, I'm here to see what I can do to help you out. What do you remember from what happened dude?"

 

[Zoobey]

"Carl," Mark interrupted, "We're calling him Carl."

Oz rolled his eyes. "No way, his name is Ebony."

"Ebony is a girl's name."

"I know."

'Carl' blinked at Rep a few times before realizing that they were talking to him. He was still trying to figure out if he should just sit back in the chair or continue standing. "Um, no, but they said you'd explain things?" He sounded a little hopeful. "I mean, if it isn't too much trouble or anything."

Mark was giving Rep the throat cutting neck symbol, which probably meant either someone was going to die or really, there was a possibility that explaining too much was bad.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Carl. He couldn't believe he was dealing with this madness. He caught Mark's gesture though and decided to curb the explanation to generalities. Circe seemed to be gone for the time being, it was the only thing he could take away from their current situation, so bringing her up right now would potentially be a very bad decision given how tangled in Cael's memories she probably was. It was better to start over.

"Okay well, I'll try." he took a deep breath. "Basically there was a huge ******** fight, things happened, I almost died but somehow we made it out, now you are here. This is Deus by the way, I don't know if you remember being here before. It's an island, a tropical island." It was absolutely uncanny to have Cael being polite and nervous, it felt like the world might shatter at the edges any minute and reveal all of this had just been some nightmare.

"It might be a little bit before we get you back to normal again, it's a slow thing. But don't worry, we'll do it, we are Death division, we always figure s**t out in the end. I've got your back anyway, anything you might need you just ask me. Mark'll help you out too."

He found himself checking around the room for the strange flitting totem form of Circe but she was still nowhere to be found. It surprised him that he was worried about her. She had saved his life, he had no doubt, and now he wasn't sure she was around. "If you hear anything in your head, don't worry about it, that's pretty standard here, most people have weapons who talk, so if you hear someone talking to themselves they aren't crazy, probably just talking to their weapon. You might have one, we aren't sure right now but we'll figure that out too."

He gave the kid a big toothy grin. "We'll get you a coat like ours too, I'm sure Gale's got a spare somewhere, he's a wee blonde English guy. I'm Rep. Don't get into any fights and you'll be fine. If you want you can stay at my place till you feel a bit better, we have loads of movies and games and s**t. No end of stuff to do."

 

[Zoobey]

There was a very long pause.

"Okay," said 'Carl' finally, caught in an eternal loop of being so confused but not confused enough to be rude and ask more questions. It was probably Rep's accent that wasn't helping too much. "Wait, who's Mar-"

-"Cool," said the Death Assistant, "you guys are bonding already. Just uh, text me the details of what happened and stuff, we gotta figure out you know, hierarchy and like things."

"Don't kill him," stated Oz bluntly, already out the door.

"Oh right," Mark too had one foot out the door, and tossed a spare cellphone to Rep. "Your new friend can have this to contact us. Cool? Cool. Bye!"

'Carl' stared at them the entire way out. "That guy needs a shower."

Baneful