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kinkfestTitle: The Moment to its Crisis
Author/Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
syvia
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Adult language and situations, violence, cannibalism.
Word Count: 4640
Summary: If you were Bat, you’d have hated Embryon too.
Prompt: - Digital Devil Saga; Jinana/Argilla, Jinana/Bat: Jealousy - "Who's sleeping on my side of the bed tonight?"
Author’s Notes: Many thanks toqara_isuke for all the theory chat, which I love and in which never cease to find inspiration. I hope you enjoy this! You have no idea how many times I had to tell myself 'STOP POKING IT'. I still feel like I haven't edited this one enough. Title is a quote from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S.Eliot.
Last but not least, love for my betas,osmandias and crimsoncookie.
"We must eat something."
She lay on her back, and he on his stomach. She stared upward and spread her fingers over her abdomen, pensive.
He argued further, raising himself on his arms and looking at her.
"Jinana, the Tribe is starving. The Solids-"
"Hide in their Citadel, untouchable as they always have been."
"Then the Vanguards-"
"Have been absorbed by Embryon."
"But they are weak, and Embryon has not moved from their hole in the ground. The old Vanguard base is overrun by rookies and would be easily penetrated. We could raid them-"
"Which the Embryon would view as an act of war, and use as an excuse to attack us."
"They do not need an excuse." As well she knew- as they all knew. Only one Tribe could conquer all and achieve Nirvana.
"Let the other tribes slow them down," she murmured.
"As we continue to starve-"
"If they can defeat the Vanguards, they can defeat us."
You mean you, Bat thought, but didn't say. He lay on his side and set a hand on her breast. He began to stroke, physical stimulation, persuasion. In this way he kept her attention long enough to make his arguments in full. To stay her order of cease and desist. Usually by this time he would have pressed his lips to the skin he was touching between points of his argument. She no longer permitted him to put his teeth anywhere close to her, took a position of dominance in every encounter.
"We could eat the rookies that arrive in Manipura," he pressed a thumb to her nipple. "Those newly found- they are not part of the Tribe."
"No."
“Those who have gone mad?” The Maribel had been forced to kill more than one- those gone demon and unable to return no matter how many they devoured. They had lost their reason and attacked any within reach.
“The madness that took them may take those who consume them.”
"Do you prefer the loyal? Those who would give themselves willingly?" The question was flat and lacking emotion. He was Strategist. If there was a problem, he searched for the way to fix it. "They would offer their lives for you." Just as he would- were it ever the most effective way to help his tribe.
"They will give their lives in battle, but their lives are not their flesh," Jinana said before palming the length of his arm, sliding her hand to his shoulder. "The Tribe is strong. They will endure. We will use rations to abate the hunger."
"That will not assuage them. We will starve."
Her eyes slid at last to his face, then she turned her head.
"Perhaps."
Bat would have spoken. Her hand slid over his neck and pressed his chin up, closing his mouth, cupping over it to keep it shut. She pushed him onto his back, threw a leg over and lowered herself onto him. Jinana moved, losing herself in it, and Bat watched her over the fan of her fingers, silent, thinking even as the heat and slickness of her surrounded him, enfolded and laid him low.
Her hand was loose now, but still closed his lips. Tremors rippled through her as he softened. She leaned forward and held his gaze.
"I will hear no more of this."
"Jinana, you can't trust them! If I had more power-"
"I am the one in charge here. Go tend to your wounds."
Tend to his wounds.
He lay there, snarling at anyone who so much as glanced at him. He didn't want their help, didn't need it. A rookie too stupid to know better crouched beside him, demon-shaped and staring.
Bat extended a hand. Without a clear reason for doing so, he smiled.
"Here, pussy pussy pussy."
She hissed before lunging at his arm. Bat raised the knife in his other hand, slashed once across her neck. Then he was at it- drinking, sucking it in too quickly, and his mouth and throat at the same time were thick with it, he was drowning.
She was warm where she'd fallen against his stomach, where the blood fell over his chin. His stomach growled even as he filled it, Camazotz hummed and hissed inside him. The rain fell, and fell, washing away the blood he couldn't catch in his haste to devour his kill. He didn't acknowledge the other Maribel who stared, and stopped just outside his range to watch- drawn there by the scent of blood.
They whispered to each other. They didn't understand what he was doing. He had killed, he was eating.
Jinana had never told them not to devour, but she did not, so they did not. But they would have been authorized to eat Embryon, had they managed to kill any of them... and she had told Bat to tend to his wounds. With devouring the rookie, his wounds were healing. That must be why.
Bat paid no attention until he was done- they weren't approaching, they weren't trying to steal his kill. They didn't matter.
When the only remnants were a little gore, a little blood, stolen away by the unending rain, he looked up. The Tribe continued to stare, grey eyes and colored eyes and a few of them licking their lips.
He got to his feet. He felt normal- better than normal, even with the sick curl of something in his gut that made him want to pull off his armor and find another set- to hide these before Jinana saw them. He had heard about this... a stomach ache? But he couldn't have one if he had never eaten, could he? Your stomach ached, he had learned from one of the Brutes at Sahasrara, when you ate too much. It didn't connect with the impulse to hide his armor.
Bat decided it didn't matter. Jinana hadn't told them not to devour if they were attacked. The little (bitch) one had attacked him. He gazed around at the Maribel still watching him, waiting for a reaction.
"Tasty," he murmured. Bat sucked at the blood remaining on his teeth, swiped a finger through the drops on his chin and licked them off.
He stepped forward and they melted out of his path.
Bat dove off the highest rooftop and clawed through the air, making enemies of the currents and forcing the wind to cool his body, his wings, he burned inside and it felt like hunger. He wanted more but he didn't want it there, didn't want Jinana to know he'd devoured. That didn't make sense. She was Leader, she should know these things- but she didn't like it. But he was still hungry and if he'd been eating before, he would have won that fight.
He wanted to fight them again. They thought they were smart? They thought they were powerful for beating him? He wanted to show them just how wrong they were. Wanted to show her.... She said a few 'beautiful' words and Jinana decided they were more worthy of trust than he was. He'd been with Jinana before the Maribel were recognized as a tribe- he was the only one left of their original group. He was the only one Jinana actually listened to. Then Embryon showed up and offered alliance- like more than one Tribe could ascend to Nirvana- like that had ever been possible. Like it was possible now, when it wasn't. Whatever else changed, there would still be only one winner- one tribe to conquer the rest.
He wanted to know what made her so wonderful. Why did she get special treatment- as if she and her Tribe were any better than the rest of them? As if she didn't have to devour to survive, just like he did. She stopped the two-headed (dumbass) from eating him- and Jinana liked it instead of condemning it as the stupid tactical move it was.
They'd pay for that little mistake. They'd pay over and over and over.
He spotted something moving around just inside the Maribel’s border with Sahasrara. They didn't see him. They were easy prey. He dove, pushing one of them down hard and fast enough to hear bones crunch in his shoulders. He screamed and the other transformed, attacked. Bat took to the air and dodged, caught the demon by the neck and one leg- he bit down and severed the spine.
Blood and flesh- he was halfway through the first of them before he bothered glancing to the disabled member of the Wolves Tribe. Bat could identify them easily now that he took time. Their bared skin and the white paint on it made their affiliation obvious. The broken Wolf lay there dazed, moving haphazardly, as if his limbs didn't work as they should. No threat. Bat slowed and took his time about the meal, hot, thick blood falling easily into his mouth- the snapping crunch of bone in his teeth and warm muscle. Jinana had no idea what she was missing- the Tribe... she had been depriving them of this and she had no right-
No. What?
She was their Leader.
But she was wrong.
Bat drew away from what remained of the torso, intestines falling over the ground and the sluggishly pooling blood that seeped from his prey's body.
Jinana had never been wrong before. No- she had. She was, and she was wrong about this alliance.
He would go to her, tell her that it was better to devour, better not to go hungry- the Tribe would be better for it. They were better alone- better for her to snap the Embryon's leader in half and eat him, and throw his lieutenants to the Tribe. She'd be stronger and they would be one Tribe closer to Nirvana.
The other Wolf had passed out from his pain- woke quickly when Bat set one foot upon his chest, the other around his arm and started to pull.
He imagined the screams to come from a different throat.
Embryon's leader emerged from the vendor- the red-haired bastard (what was it?) close at his shoulder. Bat watched the Maribel ignore them save for a nod or a hungry glance. The lesser Embryon stared at him until they rounded the corner.
Thinking how I would taste? What you missed out on? Keep dreaming (dumbass). But he didn't quite know why he was thinking it, or why his jaw tightened. Then he remembered their fight, how he had crawled, and known he was about to be devoured, and known that he didn't want it, didn't accept it, and hadn't been able to do a thing to stop it.
No one else had seemed to care either.
These words... they didn't make sense. They didn't fit in the context he used for them but they- felt- right.
Bat reached out and snagged the closest man by a shoulder strap, reeled him in.
"Why isn't anyone guarding them?"
The Maribel blinked, had to look where Embryon had disappeared before he knew what Bat was talking about.
"Sir, Leader has taken the woman to assure the good behavior of the men."
Oh she had, had she? Bat smirked. The Maribel he was holding shrank back, as did five others who noticed his expression.
"That's not the only reason." He knew it, but not why or how.
"...Sir?"
Bat shoved him away and stalked off.
Jinana lay on her side when he opened the door. She had been watching it, expecting him. The Embryon (bitch) lay with her back to it, both of them nude, soft and pink. He wanted to have been there earlier, when the room first started to smell of sweat, first began to grow warm. When the bitch's fingers were on Jinana's skin, in her hair, between her legs- no- her mouth, her teeth, touching Jinana, touching her (cunt) the way they were touching her stomach now.
He wanted to raise his knives and cut the bitch out of his bed a piece at a time. Maybe it was Camazotz screaming for her blood, or the strange hunger he felt whenever he stared at her- thought about Jinana's reaction to her. He wanted to tear her apart.
He didn't.
Bat stared and remembered acts he had never seen before, had no words for but they made people, men and women, scream. Pleasure or pain, he didn't know. Maybe the bitch did- maybe that was how she'd replaced him. Her eyes had been pink (and that meant something) when Jinana started to pay attention and he wanted to know what she had done with/to his Leader.
Bat stared and wanted her to turn over so he could see her bared and vulnerable. She was sleeping- so trusting- soft and pliant where Jinana wasn't, where he wasn't. He wanted to see that calm face wide and open with fear- wanted to see the expression when she realized they hadn't been taken in by Embryon's deception. He wanted to see her breast between his fingers and the look on her face as he swallowed it in front of her.
"Did you find her pleasurable?" he asked, baring his teeth a little.
Jinana's expression never changed. "She pleased me."
"Do you think she would please me?" he was standing beside the bed without a memory of having walked the distance. Didn't matter. He flexed his fingers and didn't reach for his knives, extended a hand. He ghosted it over slightly damp pink hair, flicked a tendril over pale skin. The bitch's breathing had changed. She only pretended sleep now. He smirked and something slipped into his voice that made her shoulders flinch. "I think she would be tight enough."
"We are allied," Jinana reminded him.
"Share and share alike," he said as if he were agreeing. "We offer our bodies to their fight, they offer theirs for this," he waved a hand at the bitch's tense back, at both of them, "it sounds like they're even getting the better end of the deal."
"I doubt," Jinana said firmly, "that you would please her."
Bat smirked, not laying a hand on either of them but leaning forward, exposing his neck, his chest, to them, to speak laughingly in Jinana's face.
"I wouldn't even try."
He left before she could order him out, threw a group of Maribel from the next closest room and stripped out of his armor. He lay down and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
When they betrayed- when he heard the sounds of a fight in the next room- he would be ready to kill.
For some reason he felt almost unhappy when the weight of Jinana's stare woke him.
He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, but he felt hungry again. Bat said nothing as he took in the sight of her- fully armored- standing just outside his reach. He lay there, waiting. She had come into the room for a reason. She could talk first.
"Embryon will infiltrate the Solids' base while we attack the front gate."
He felt his lips curling. "If you've already made up your mind-"
"I require you to point out my oversights, as always."
He raised himself on his elbows, slid backwards to sit against the headboard. He laughed. "Bullshit. You haven't listened to anything I said the last five 'meetings'."
Her eyes narrowed slightly and her chin fell. She stared at him like she'd never seen him before.
"But since you're here, you might as well go through the motions." Bat raised his knees, ignored the blanket straying from his limbs and rested his elbows on his bare legs. Her eyes stayed narrow- those grey, lifeless eyes that could still choose someone else over him. She should have been loyal to her own Tribe first and another's not at all.
"Embryon will use a hidden entrance to gain access to the Solids. Once inside, they will sneak through to Mick, and kill him. As they do so, we will launch our offensive."
"We'll be fodder for the Solids that Mick chooses to send out against us," he sneered. "You'll throw our Tribe against the wall like you threw them at Embryon," Bat said, "and they'll all die. Inside the Citadel, Embryon fails and dies, Mick gets stronger after devouring them, comes out, and eats all of us."
Her face was untroubled. "They are stronger than you- they will be stronger than him." But she didn't deny the first part. Bat planted a fist in the bed and was out of it, standing before her, staring up into her face.
"Then they kill Mick, and they wait until the Solids kick us around before they come out to finish the job," he said.
"I trust them to uphold the alliance-"
"You'd rather let them kill Mick for you. You're stronger than he is and you know it," he hissed, "but if you killed him, you'd have to eat him, and you're too weak to do that."
Her eyes were green, wide and something- that he wanted to call 'shocked'.
Then his face throbbed and he was staring up at her from the flat of his back. She had hit him. His Leader had struck him. Jinana, had- not even struck- slapped. Like... a disobedient animal.
Bat lifted a hand to his cheek, feeling the pulse of it as it bruised, a softer echo to the throbbing in his wrist, against his lips.
Jinana stared impassively down and her eyes were dumb again.
Why? Why did she go back to that? He'd seen differently. She was capable of more.
She lowered her arm. "Be ready to mobilize."
Manipura was mostly sleeping when Bat transformed and flew off. No one to see him leave. No one to see him flying into Anahata.
He killed two Solids with little fuss and less noise- one by sweeping past and knocking him into the wall hard enough to break his skull, the other with a claw tearing off his head. He made short work of their bodies and felt no... guilt, was the word, about it. They were enemies, enemies were meant to be killed and devoured.
Bat moved inside carefully, a few more deaths and quick meals found him inside the 'throne' room.
Mick was aptly named, draped over one arm of his chair, snoring, his bulk expanding and contracting beneath his armor. No guards- none of his men inside the room. He was either confident or paranoid. Bat decided the latter.
He moved forward slow and easy, watching the shadows for an ambush. That idea had potential, but Mick obviously didn’t think that far. There was nothing- no defense, and Mick didn't wake up. Bat walked right up to him, stood there for minutes before pulling one of his knives.
This didn't speak well of Jinana. Mick was this easy- now that they had Atma- and Jinana had never ordered Bat to make the attempt. Bat wasn't generous enough to think she valued him too much to lose him- or that she didn't want to be forced to kill him; the leader of a rival Tribe. She had given him to Embryon without hesitation.
No, she didn't give a shit about him. She didn't want to devour. She wouldn't take any action that forced her to make that choice.
Well, he'd just take that choice out of her hands.
But not that way. Not as a Leader. He could have killed Mick and taken the Solids- if he wanted to lead a Tribe. If he wanted to be a target for Varin and Lupa and Serph who claimed to be allied with them.
No way in hell.
"Wake up, Mick."
The Solids' very solid leader did, opened his mouth, sucked in a breath to call his men. His dead men- but no reason to have the noise. Bat flipped the knife in his hand and gut-punched Mick with the hilt. The Slug coughed, and Bat lay the knife on his throat as he tried to get air back into his lungs.
Bat kept the Atma in his peripheral vision. If Mick started to glow, Bat would make him sorry.
"I could have killed you in your sleep."
"What d'you want?" Mick got the point. Finally.
"I want to give you Embryon and the Maribel on a silver platter." He didn't know what that last was- neither did Mick, it seemed, but the rest of it appealed to him. "The Maribel are going to mobilize against you, soon. This time though, it's not another stab at the defenses," Bat smirked, because it had been a good idea. It might have worked. Make the Solids think it was a typical raid and let Embryon come in and slap Mick down. He wouldn't have expected a damn thing. Shame that Jinana had cast him aside. Now they were going to do things the hard way.
"Embryon's gonna sneak in through your back door and find you. Hiding. Then they're gonna eat you."
“The Maribel,” Mick said, “and the Embryon. Acting together.”
Bat smirked at his blank incomprehension.
“This isn’t done,” Mick scoffed, eyes darting from Bat’s face to his wrist.
“Oh, they’re doing it alright. It doesn’t look like you’ll put up much resistance,” Bat angled the knife a little, admiring the shine of it in the lamps. Mick flinched and his dumb grey eyes stared. “But do what I say and you’ll get both their leaders for the eating.”
“This is a trick.”
Mick was less trusting than Jinana. Bat wondered why the Solids hadn’t killed them all cycles ago.
“You wouldn’t betray your Leader,” Mick said, sure of it. Well, it was Law.
“The Laws have changed. Jinana won’t devour, and she won’t transform,” he hated Mick for sneering even as he hated Jinana for making his words true. “She’s weak, and the first Leader to fight her is gonna kill her. Someone is going to take over the Maribel sooner or later. I’ll take you over Embryon.”
Mick stared at him, searching for something. Eventually his eyes went small and knowing, he smirked. Bat withdrew, sheathed his knife.
“Then we have an alliance,” Mick said.
Only until Jinana eats you.
He wasn’t betraying her or the Tribe. The Maribel would be stronger for the fight and for losing the weaker members to their opposition. The Solids were good eating for those strong enough.
Not many were. They followed Jinana’s lead, and she wouldn’t transform. She was strong enough to fight demons hand-to-hand and kill them. The Maribel as a Tribe were not. They used guns, they fought as demons, and they managed a kill now and again. Some finally gave in to the hunger, others went mad with the smells and pains of battle surrounding them and dove into the thick. They were still losing.
Bat watched the Slug crawl from his hole in the ground. The battle grew steadily worse for the Maribel as the Solids grew more fearce. They fought better with their Leader at their side. Not because of any particular respect or love for him- Mick ate any Solid too weak to keep fighting.
The Maribel’s fear increased. Mick never fought and they knew it. They had known the plan and, thinking Embryon had failed, their confidence shattered.
Jinana found Mick on the field. Bat waited, watched and she refused to change.
The battles continued below him, and the Maribel died, and Jinana wouldn’t fight to win. She didn't want to. Bat knew suddenly that she had never wanted to. She didn't kill when she didn't have to, and although she didn't stop others from fighting, she didn't often send them to kill. When she could keep them shut in Manipura, she did. Maybe she thought they were better off dead than having to take lives. He didn't know.
He didn't give a shit.
Bat hung from the archway high above the Citadel gates and he was better off without her. The Solids were stronger than the Maribel.
But the Brutes were stronger than the Solids.
Jinana lay on the ground and bodies of dead Maribel surrounded her. Surrounded Mick, who reverted and stood over their Leader.
He kicked her.
Stupid. Weak bitch.
Mick's strike lifted her from the ground- he gave her another blow to the kidney.
She still wouldn’t transform- wouldn’t lose consciousness. Jinana wouldn’t die, no matter how hard she tried to let other people kill her.
Mick leaned down and lifted her with one hand in her jacket, backhanded her across the face.
Just die already! Fucking- Bat hissed in frustration, listening to bones cracking, breaking, and she still breathed.
Jinana groaned softly as Mick wrapped a hand around her neck, smirking, lifting her from the ground and raising his fist.
Then Embryon showed up and it was bullshit- all bullshit.
"I'm like you- I won't kill needless..."
That bitch was nothing like Jinana. She was the same as he was- killed to survive and it didn’t matter if she said she didn’t enjoy it. She still did it. Then finally- finally. Bat snickered in derision and Jinana transformed, attacked her little Embryon bitch and the idiots with her and Mick had used Embryon the same way Jinana had meant to. Let your enemies kill each other so you don't have to put yourself at risk.
It was a waste. She had power and didn’t want to use it- could have killed them- just like Bat could have killed them, if only they’d actually been eating. He had thought she was better than this- better than Mick, better than Embryon and maybe she was, because it took three of them to kill her.
But she was still dying.
Embryon killed her and the bitch was sobbing over her body.
"There's a girl back at our base who can help you control this power-"
Oh was there? How nice of her to say so. Mick would find the information useful. Or maybe Varin should hear it instead.
Stupid, stupid bitch. He watched Jinana speak to her, watched the sense leave her eyes and her body went limp, empty. Her blood... he could smell it.
"Devour her."
Fuck him- fuck him and fuck his Leader and fuck the bitch- all three of them and Bat didn't hear what they said next through the effort of staying on that archway, waiting. Watching to see what they would do, but they were walking away, leaving Jinana there.
They were lucky they had. She didn't belong to them.
Bat waited until they were gone. He fell from the arch, unfolded his wings and drifted the rest of the way down. He stared at her with his fractured vision, creeping up a bit at a time- as if she would transform again, or move, disappear just as he got close. He was small and human when he crouched at her side, staring for a while at the ever-widening pool of blood at her side.
Bat lay down on his side next to her, one arm bent, propping up his head.
With his free hand he grabbed her wrist, curled her lax fingers over his chin. The warmth was fading.
He threw his leg over her body, heedless of the blood seeping from her stomach, soaking his armor, his leg and torso.
He stared into her dead eyes- green again, green for her and her tears.
Bat saw things that weren’t there and opened his lips under her motionless fingers. He slipped the first between his teeth.
Jinana had wanted her, listened to her, finally transformed for her.
But the bitch wasn't here anymore- had rejected Jinana in the end.
He stared into her face and started to bring his teeth together. Now she couldn't choose someone else. She couldn't choose anything. Bat was all that remained.
She belonged to him.
Author/Artist:
syviaRating: NC-17
Warnings: Adult language and situations, violence, cannibalism.
Word Count: 4640
Summary: If you were Bat, you’d have hated Embryon too.
Prompt: - Digital Devil Saga; Jinana/Argilla, Jinana/Bat: Jealousy - "Who's sleeping on my side of the bed tonight?"
Author’s Notes: Many thanks to
qara_isuke for all the theory chat, which I love and in which never cease to find inspiration. I hope you enjoy this! You have no idea how many times I had to tell myself 'STOP POKING IT'. I still feel like I haven't edited this one enough. Title is a quote from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S.Eliot.Last but not least, love for my betas,
osmandias and crimsoncookie."We must eat something."
She lay on her back, and he on his stomach. She stared upward and spread her fingers over her abdomen, pensive.
He argued further, raising himself on his arms and looking at her.
"Jinana, the Tribe is starving. The Solids-"
"Hide in their Citadel, untouchable as they always have been."
"Then the Vanguards-"
"Have been absorbed by Embryon."
"But they are weak, and Embryon has not moved from their hole in the ground. The old Vanguard base is overrun by rookies and would be easily penetrated. We could raid them-"
"Which the Embryon would view as an act of war, and use as an excuse to attack us."
"They do not need an excuse." As well she knew- as they all knew. Only one Tribe could conquer all and achieve Nirvana.
"Let the other tribes slow them down," she murmured.
"As we continue to starve-"
"If they can defeat the Vanguards, they can defeat us."
You mean you, Bat thought, but didn't say. He lay on his side and set a hand on her breast. He began to stroke, physical stimulation, persuasion. In this way he kept her attention long enough to make his arguments in full. To stay her order of cease and desist. Usually by this time he would have pressed his lips to the skin he was touching between points of his argument. She no longer permitted him to put his teeth anywhere close to her, took a position of dominance in every encounter.
"We could eat the rookies that arrive in Manipura," he pressed a thumb to her nipple. "Those newly found- they are not part of the Tribe."
"No."
“Those who have gone mad?” The Maribel had been forced to kill more than one- those gone demon and unable to return no matter how many they devoured. They had lost their reason and attacked any within reach.
“The madness that took them may take those who consume them.”
"Do you prefer the loyal? Those who would give themselves willingly?" The question was flat and lacking emotion. He was Strategist. If there was a problem, he searched for the way to fix it. "They would offer their lives for you." Just as he would- were it ever the most effective way to help his tribe.
"They will give their lives in battle, but their lives are not their flesh," Jinana said before palming the length of his arm, sliding her hand to his shoulder. "The Tribe is strong. They will endure. We will use rations to abate the hunger."
"That will not assuage them. We will starve."
Her eyes slid at last to his face, then she turned her head.
"Perhaps."
Bat would have spoken. Her hand slid over his neck and pressed his chin up, closing his mouth, cupping over it to keep it shut. She pushed him onto his back, threw a leg over and lowered herself onto him. Jinana moved, losing herself in it, and Bat watched her over the fan of her fingers, silent, thinking even as the heat and slickness of her surrounded him, enfolded and laid him low.
Her hand was loose now, but still closed his lips. Tremors rippled through her as he softened. She leaned forward and held his gaze.
"I will hear no more of this."
"Jinana, you can't trust them! If I had more power-"
"I am the one in charge here. Go tend to your wounds."
Tend to his wounds.
He lay there, snarling at anyone who so much as glanced at him. He didn't want their help, didn't need it. A rookie too stupid to know better crouched beside him, demon-shaped and staring.
Bat extended a hand. Without a clear reason for doing so, he smiled.
"Here, pussy pussy pussy."
She hissed before lunging at his arm. Bat raised the knife in his other hand, slashed once across her neck. Then he was at it- drinking, sucking it in too quickly, and his mouth and throat at the same time were thick with it, he was drowning.
She was warm where she'd fallen against his stomach, where the blood fell over his chin. His stomach growled even as he filled it, Camazotz hummed and hissed inside him. The rain fell, and fell, washing away the blood he couldn't catch in his haste to devour his kill. He didn't acknowledge the other Maribel who stared, and stopped just outside his range to watch- drawn there by the scent of blood.
They whispered to each other. They didn't understand what he was doing. He had killed, he was eating.
Jinana had never told them not to devour, but she did not, so they did not. But they would have been authorized to eat Embryon, had they managed to kill any of them... and she had told Bat to tend to his wounds. With devouring the rookie, his wounds were healing. That must be why.
Bat paid no attention until he was done- they weren't approaching, they weren't trying to steal his kill. They didn't matter.
When the only remnants were a little gore, a little blood, stolen away by the unending rain, he looked up. The Tribe continued to stare, grey eyes and colored eyes and a few of them licking their lips.
He got to his feet. He felt normal- better than normal, even with the sick curl of something in his gut that made him want to pull off his armor and find another set- to hide these before Jinana saw them. He had heard about this... a stomach ache? But he couldn't have one if he had never eaten, could he? Your stomach ached, he had learned from one of the Brutes at Sahasrara, when you ate too much. It didn't connect with the impulse to hide his armor.
Bat decided it didn't matter. Jinana hadn't told them not to devour if they were attacked. The little (bitch) one had attacked him. He gazed around at the Maribel still watching him, waiting for a reaction.
"Tasty," he murmured. Bat sucked at the blood remaining on his teeth, swiped a finger through the drops on his chin and licked them off.
He stepped forward and they melted out of his path.
Bat dove off the highest rooftop and clawed through the air, making enemies of the currents and forcing the wind to cool his body, his wings, he burned inside and it felt like hunger. He wanted more but he didn't want it there, didn't want Jinana to know he'd devoured. That didn't make sense. She was Leader, she should know these things- but she didn't like it. But he was still hungry and if he'd been eating before, he would have won that fight.
He wanted to fight them again. They thought they were smart? They thought they were powerful for beating him? He wanted to show them just how wrong they were. Wanted to show her.... She said a few 'beautiful' words and Jinana decided they were more worthy of trust than he was. He'd been with Jinana before the Maribel were recognized as a tribe- he was the only one left of their original group. He was the only one Jinana actually listened to. Then Embryon showed up and offered alliance- like more than one Tribe could ascend to Nirvana- like that had ever been possible. Like it was possible now, when it wasn't. Whatever else changed, there would still be only one winner- one tribe to conquer the rest.
He wanted to know what made her so wonderful. Why did she get special treatment- as if she and her Tribe were any better than the rest of them? As if she didn't have to devour to survive, just like he did. She stopped the two-headed (dumbass) from eating him- and Jinana liked it instead of condemning it as the stupid tactical move it was.
They'd pay for that little mistake. They'd pay over and over and over.
He spotted something moving around just inside the Maribel’s border with Sahasrara. They didn't see him. They were easy prey. He dove, pushing one of them down hard and fast enough to hear bones crunch in his shoulders. He screamed and the other transformed, attacked. Bat took to the air and dodged, caught the demon by the neck and one leg- he bit down and severed the spine.
Blood and flesh- he was halfway through the first of them before he bothered glancing to the disabled member of the Wolves Tribe. Bat could identify them easily now that he took time. Their bared skin and the white paint on it made their affiliation obvious. The broken Wolf lay there dazed, moving haphazardly, as if his limbs didn't work as they should. No threat. Bat slowed and took his time about the meal, hot, thick blood falling easily into his mouth- the snapping crunch of bone in his teeth and warm muscle. Jinana had no idea what she was missing- the Tribe... she had been depriving them of this and she had no right-
No. What?
She was their Leader.
But she was wrong.
Bat drew away from what remained of the torso, intestines falling over the ground and the sluggishly pooling blood that seeped from his prey's body.
Jinana had never been wrong before. No- she had. She was, and she was wrong about this alliance.
He would go to her, tell her that it was better to devour, better not to go hungry- the Tribe would be better for it. They were better alone- better for her to snap the Embryon's leader in half and eat him, and throw his lieutenants to the Tribe. She'd be stronger and they would be one Tribe closer to Nirvana.
The other Wolf had passed out from his pain- woke quickly when Bat set one foot upon his chest, the other around his arm and started to pull.
He imagined the screams to come from a different throat.
Embryon's leader emerged from the vendor- the red-haired bastard (what was it?) close at his shoulder. Bat watched the Maribel ignore them save for a nod or a hungry glance. The lesser Embryon stared at him until they rounded the corner.
Thinking how I would taste? What you missed out on? Keep dreaming (dumbass). But he didn't quite know why he was thinking it, or why his jaw tightened. Then he remembered their fight, how he had crawled, and known he was about to be devoured, and known that he didn't want it, didn't accept it, and hadn't been able to do a thing to stop it.
No one else had seemed to care either.
These words... they didn't make sense. They didn't fit in the context he used for them but they- felt- right.
Bat reached out and snagged the closest man by a shoulder strap, reeled him in.
"Why isn't anyone guarding them?"
The Maribel blinked, had to look where Embryon had disappeared before he knew what Bat was talking about.
"Sir, Leader has taken the woman to assure the good behavior of the men."
Oh she had, had she? Bat smirked. The Maribel he was holding shrank back, as did five others who noticed his expression.
"That's not the only reason." He knew it, but not why or how.
"...Sir?"
Bat shoved him away and stalked off.
Jinana lay on her side when he opened the door. She had been watching it, expecting him. The Embryon (bitch) lay with her back to it, both of them nude, soft and pink. He wanted to have been there earlier, when the room first started to smell of sweat, first began to grow warm. When the bitch's fingers were on Jinana's skin, in her hair, between her legs- no- her mouth, her teeth, touching Jinana, touching her (cunt) the way they were touching her stomach now.
He wanted to raise his knives and cut the bitch out of his bed a piece at a time. Maybe it was Camazotz screaming for her blood, or the strange hunger he felt whenever he stared at her- thought about Jinana's reaction to her. He wanted to tear her apart.
He didn't.
Bat stared and remembered acts he had never seen before, had no words for but they made people, men and women, scream. Pleasure or pain, he didn't know. Maybe the bitch did- maybe that was how she'd replaced him. Her eyes had been pink (and that meant something) when Jinana started to pay attention and he wanted to know what she had done with/to his Leader.
Bat stared and wanted her to turn over so he could see her bared and vulnerable. She was sleeping- so trusting- soft and pliant where Jinana wasn't, where he wasn't. He wanted to see that calm face wide and open with fear- wanted to see the expression when she realized they hadn't been taken in by Embryon's deception. He wanted to see her breast between his fingers and the look on her face as he swallowed it in front of her.
"Did you find her pleasurable?" he asked, baring his teeth a little.
Jinana's expression never changed. "She pleased me."
"Do you think she would please me?" he was standing beside the bed without a memory of having walked the distance. Didn't matter. He flexed his fingers and didn't reach for his knives, extended a hand. He ghosted it over slightly damp pink hair, flicked a tendril over pale skin. The bitch's breathing had changed. She only pretended sleep now. He smirked and something slipped into his voice that made her shoulders flinch. "I think she would be tight enough."
"We are allied," Jinana reminded him.
"Share and share alike," he said as if he were agreeing. "We offer our bodies to their fight, they offer theirs for this," he waved a hand at the bitch's tense back, at both of them, "it sounds like they're even getting the better end of the deal."
"I doubt," Jinana said firmly, "that you would please her."
Bat smirked, not laying a hand on either of them but leaning forward, exposing his neck, his chest, to them, to speak laughingly in Jinana's face.
"I wouldn't even try."
He left before she could order him out, threw a group of Maribel from the next closest room and stripped out of his armor. He lay down and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
When they betrayed- when he heard the sounds of a fight in the next room- he would be ready to kill.
For some reason he felt almost unhappy when the weight of Jinana's stare woke him.
He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, but he felt hungry again. Bat said nothing as he took in the sight of her- fully armored- standing just outside his reach. He lay there, waiting. She had come into the room for a reason. She could talk first.
"Embryon will infiltrate the Solids' base while we attack the front gate."
He felt his lips curling. "If you've already made up your mind-"
"I require you to point out my oversights, as always."
He raised himself on his elbows, slid backwards to sit against the headboard. He laughed. "Bullshit. You haven't listened to anything I said the last five 'meetings'."
Her eyes narrowed slightly and her chin fell. She stared at him like she'd never seen him before.
"But since you're here, you might as well go through the motions." Bat raised his knees, ignored the blanket straying from his limbs and rested his elbows on his bare legs. Her eyes stayed narrow- those grey, lifeless eyes that could still choose someone else over him. She should have been loyal to her own Tribe first and another's not at all.
"Embryon will use a hidden entrance to gain access to the Solids. Once inside, they will sneak through to Mick, and kill him. As they do so, we will launch our offensive."
"We'll be fodder for the Solids that Mick chooses to send out against us," he sneered. "You'll throw our Tribe against the wall like you threw them at Embryon," Bat said, "and they'll all die. Inside the Citadel, Embryon fails and dies, Mick gets stronger after devouring them, comes out, and eats all of us."
Her face was untroubled. "They are stronger than you- they will be stronger than him." But she didn't deny the first part. Bat planted a fist in the bed and was out of it, standing before her, staring up into her face.
"Then they kill Mick, and they wait until the Solids kick us around before they come out to finish the job," he said.
"I trust them to uphold the alliance-"
"You'd rather let them kill Mick for you. You're stronger than he is and you know it," he hissed, "but if you killed him, you'd have to eat him, and you're too weak to do that."
Her eyes were green, wide and something- that he wanted to call 'shocked'.
Then his face throbbed and he was staring up at her from the flat of his back. She had hit him. His Leader had struck him. Jinana, had- not even struck- slapped. Like... a disobedient animal.
Bat lifted a hand to his cheek, feeling the pulse of it as it bruised, a softer echo to the throbbing in his wrist, against his lips.
Jinana stared impassively down and her eyes were dumb again.
Why? Why did she go back to that? He'd seen differently. She was capable of more.
She lowered her arm. "Be ready to mobilize."
Manipura was mostly sleeping when Bat transformed and flew off. No one to see him leave. No one to see him flying into Anahata.
He killed two Solids with little fuss and less noise- one by sweeping past and knocking him into the wall hard enough to break his skull, the other with a claw tearing off his head. He made short work of their bodies and felt no... guilt, was the word, about it. They were enemies, enemies were meant to be killed and devoured.
Bat moved inside carefully, a few more deaths and quick meals found him inside the 'throne' room.
Mick was aptly named, draped over one arm of his chair, snoring, his bulk expanding and contracting beneath his armor. No guards- none of his men inside the room. He was either confident or paranoid. Bat decided the latter.
He moved forward slow and easy, watching the shadows for an ambush. That idea had potential, but Mick obviously didn’t think that far. There was nothing- no defense, and Mick didn't wake up. Bat walked right up to him, stood there for minutes before pulling one of his knives.
This didn't speak well of Jinana. Mick was this easy- now that they had Atma- and Jinana had never ordered Bat to make the attempt. Bat wasn't generous enough to think she valued him too much to lose him- or that she didn't want to be forced to kill him; the leader of a rival Tribe. She had given him to Embryon without hesitation.
No, she didn't give a shit about him. She didn't want to devour. She wouldn't take any action that forced her to make that choice.
Well, he'd just take that choice out of her hands.
But not that way. Not as a Leader. He could have killed Mick and taken the Solids- if he wanted to lead a Tribe. If he wanted to be a target for Varin and Lupa and Serph who claimed to be allied with them.
No way in hell.
"Wake up, Mick."
The Solids' very solid leader did, opened his mouth, sucked in a breath to call his men. His dead men- but no reason to have the noise. Bat flipped the knife in his hand and gut-punched Mick with the hilt. The Slug coughed, and Bat lay the knife on his throat as he tried to get air back into his lungs.
Bat kept the Atma in his peripheral vision. If Mick started to glow, Bat would make him sorry.
"I could have killed you in your sleep."
"What d'you want?" Mick got the point. Finally.
"I want to give you Embryon and the Maribel on a silver platter." He didn't know what that last was- neither did Mick, it seemed, but the rest of it appealed to him. "The Maribel are going to mobilize against you, soon. This time though, it's not another stab at the defenses," Bat smirked, because it had been a good idea. It might have worked. Make the Solids think it was a typical raid and let Embryon come in and slap Mick down. He wouldn't have expected a damn thing. Shame that Jinana had cast him aside. Now they were going to do things the hard way.
"Embryon's gonna sneak in through your back door and find you. Hiding. Then they're gonna eat you."
“The Maribel,” Mick said, “and the Embryon. Acting together.”
Bat smirked at his blank incomprehension.
“This isn’t done,” Mick scoffed, eyes darting from Bat’s face to his wrist.
“Oh, they’re doing it alright. It doesn’t look like you’ll put up much resistance,” Bat angled the knife a little, admiring the shine of it in the lamps. Mick flinched and his dumb grey eyes stared. “But do what I say and you’ll get both their leaders for the eating.”
“This is a trick.”
Mick was less trusting than Jinana. Bat wondered why the Solids hadn’t killed them all cycles ago.
“You wouldn’t betray your Leader,” Mick said, sure of it. Well, it was Law.
“The Laws have changed. Jinana won’t devour, and she won’t transform,” he hated Mick for sneering even as he hated Jinana for making his words true. “She’s weak, and the first Leader to fight her is gonna kill her. Someone is going to take over the Maribel sooner or later. I’ll take you over Embryon.”
Mick stared at him, searching for something. Eventually his eyes went small and knowing, he smirked. Bat withdrew, sheathed his knife.
“Then we have an alliance,” Mick said.
Only until Jinana eats you.
He wasn’t betraying her or the Tribe. The Maribel would be stronger for the fight and for losing the weaker members to their opposition. The Solids were good eating for those strong enough.
Not many were. They followed Jinana’s lead, and she wouldn’t transform. She was strong enough to fight demons hand-to-hand and kill them. The Maribel as a Tribe were not. They used guns, they fought as demons, and they managed a kill now and again. Some finally gave in to the hunger, others went mad with the smells and pains of battle surrounding them and dove into the thick. They were still losing.
Bat watched the Slug crawl from his hole in the ground. The battle grew steadily worse for the Maribel as the Solids grew more fearce. They fought better with their Leader at their side. Not because of any particular respect or love for him- Mick ate any Solid too weak to keep fighting.
The Maribel’s fear increased. Mick never fought and they knew it. They had known the plan and, thinking Embryon had failed, their confidence shattered.
Jinana found Mick on the field. Bat waited, watched and she refused to change.
The battles continued below him, and the Maribel died, and Jinana wouldn’t fight to win. She didn't want to. Bat knew suddenly that she had never wanted to. She didn't kill when she didn't have to, and although she didn't stop others from fighting, she didn't often send them to kill. When she could keep them shut in Manipura, she did. Maybe she thought they were better off dead than having to take lives. He didn't know.
He didn't give a shit.
Bat hung from the archway high above the Citadel gates and he was better off without her. The Solids were stronger than the Maribel.
But the Brutes were stronger than the Solids.
Jinana lay on the ground and bodies of dead Maribel surrounded her. Surrounded Mick, who reverted and stood over their Leader.
He kicked her.
Stupid. Weak bitch.
Mick's strike lifted her from the ground- he gave her another blow to the kidney.
She still wouldn’t transform- wouldn’t lose consciousness. Jinana wouldn’t die, no matter how hard she tried to let other people kill her.
Mick leaned down and lifted her with one hand in her jacket, backhanded her across the face.
Just die already! Fucking- Bat hissed in frustration, listening to bones cracking, breaking, and she still breathed.
Jinana groaned softly as Mick wrapped a hand around her neck, smirking, lifting her from the ground and raising his fist.
Then Embryon showed up and it was bullshit- all bullshit.
"I'm like you- I won't kill needless..."
That bitch was nothing like Jinana. She was the same as he was- killed to survive and it didn’t matter if she said she didn’t enjoy it. She still did it. Then finally- finally. Bat snickered in derision and Jinana transformed, attacked her little Embryon bitch and the idiots with her and Mick had used Embryon the same way Jinana had meant to. Let your enemies kill each other so you don't have to put yourself at risk.
It was a waste. She had power and didn’t want to use it- could have killed them- just like Bat could have killed them, if only they’d actually been eating. He had thought she was better than this- better than Mick, better than Embryon and maybe she was, because it took three of them to kill her.
But she was still dying.
Embryon killed her and the bitch was sobbing over her body.
"There's a girl back at our base who can help you control this power-"
Oh was there? How nice of her to say so. Mick would find the information useful. Or maybe Varin should hear it instead.
Stupid, stupid bitch. He watched Jinana speak to her, watched the sense leave her eyes and her body went limp, empty. Her blood... he could smell it.
"Devour her."
Fuck him- fuck him and fuck his Leader and fuck the bitch- all three of them and Bat didn't hear what they said next through the effort of staying on that archway, waiting. Watching to see what they would do, but they were walking away, leaving Jinana there.
They were lucky they had. She didn't belong to them.
Bat waited until they were gone. He fell from the arch, unfolded his wings and drifted the rest of the way down. He stared at her with his fractured vision, creeping up a bit at a time- as if she would transform again, or move, disappear just as he got close. He was small and human when he crouched at her side, staring for a while at the ever-widening pool of blood at her side.
Bat lay down on his side next to her, one arm bent, propping up his head.
With his free hand he grabbed her wrist, curled her lax fingers over his chin. The warmth was fading.
He threw his leg over her body, heedless of the blood seeping from her stomach, soaking his armor, his leg and torso.
He stared into her dead eyes- green again, green for her and her tears.
Bat saw things that weren’t there and opened his lips under her motionless fingers. He slipped the first between his teeth.
Jinana had wanted her, listened to her, finally transformed for her.
But the bitch wasn't here anymore- had rejected Jinana in the end.
He stared into her face and started to bring his teeth together. Now she couldn't choose someone else. She couldn't choose anything. Bat was all that remained.
She belonged to him.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 01:42 pm (UTC)Damn, now I officially like the bastard. *headwall*no subject
Date: 2008-06-11 06:17 pm (UTC)It was the wrong one- but we can't say he didn't have reasons for it!
I'M NOT SORRY~XDno subject
Date: 2008-06-10 01:52 pm (UTC)Damn, that was a good read :D. Oh *Bat*. I never knew I could sympathise with you until I did it by accident and now, omg, I just want to fix you, you broken, broken creature.
*flails!*
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 06:30 pm (UTC)I know! ;_; I don't hate him anymore- I just feel sorry (and afraid) of him. It's a tragic situation! He made the choice he thought was best and it was, unfortunately, the wrong one. He's just in a sucky position to be in!
:( Yay XD I'm glad you liked~
no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 05:34 pm (UTC)Here, have the keys to my Brain and have my Immortal Soul while you're at it. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
PREPARE FOR MOLESTING THE MOMENT I SEE YOU ON AIM. ZOMG.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 06:30 pm (UTC)