genessia | [ action | closed ] terrible things happen to good people every day

PLAN PICKED.

In the blink of an eye, the house seemed to melt away to nothing, wood and brick replaced by swamp and trees, fog hanging heavily in the air, the ground threatening to give way and suck down anyone stupid enough to test it-

An illusion, mind. A powerful one, but an illusion nevertheless, the heretic himself having seemingly vanished from the scene entirely.

In all actuality he'd gone to snatch up an iron poker, counting on the illusion itself to distract his attacker long enough to let Cass stick the goddamn hell out of him.

Well.

That was certainly an interesting trick.

Tannusen was more resistant to this sort of thing than a human, but he was certainly no outer god. The Fae was momentarily disoriented, thrown further by the way his footing seemed completely off. He shut his eyes, since they could only give him false information anyway, and stood quite still.

While the hum and murmur of any swamp was obvious, the distinct sound of soft footsteps on wood could baaarely be heard, just behind it. After all, the spell didn't just cause reality to stop existing.

Just fucked with it.

While Cassian would have no issue with traversing the floor, if Tannusen found himself falling just a little too much into the illusion, he may as well have been walking in a real swamp.

Tannusen had enough willpower to avoid ending up under the heel of any of the myriad nobles who'd tried to collect him. Even this version, though it was bent to less savory goals, boasted a huge amount of the stuff.

He didn't turn his head to track Cassian visibly, but concentrated on those tiny sounds. His knees bent, as though he was struggling to keep his footing--

Then he sprang straight at the human. Smart, when he didn't seem to have working vision? Nope. But still not as dumb as holding still.

No, not a good idea when his vision wasn't working, even worse idea when he had that iron poker and Hastur happily bolstering his swing. Fairy hearts ahoy, right?

The blow was aimed for the chest, an attempt to knock his opponent down adn shatter some ribs in the process.

Make the work after a bit easier anyway.

Tannusen took the hit, and hit the floor with a dull thud. No crunch, though, and now he knew exactly where Cassian was! Eyes still closed, he twisted in place and lashed out with both of his legs in an attempt to bring the human down, too.

Maybe if he bounced the guy off the floor hard enough, it would interrupt this dumb illusion.

Good thing he moved fast too, because the next move would have been ramming the poker right through his chest.

With a curse, he hit the ground, the illusion flickering for a moment, and starting to fade and haze at the edges.

Tannusen moved very fast indeed... and he didn't stop moving that fast! This was no burst of desperation, no surge of adrenaline that would burn away as quick as it hit. This was just how he moved, when he wasn't playing along with a flailing human's attempts to bat him away like a naughty house cat.

He rolled up onto his target, straddling him and putting all of his weight onto Cassian's stomach. Then he aimed one hell of a punch for his face!

At the very least, Cassian had some experience with bar room fights, and this wouldn't be the first time someone took to sitting on him to keep him from jumping right back up again. Also, his face was a very popular target.

Still, not many humans had the punching power of a tiger pooka, so the defense he put up to guard not getting punched didn't... quite... work the way he'd wanted it to.

But at the very least he wasn't unconscious.

His jaw probably was broken now though.

Tannusen wouldn't be surprised if it was. Still, it was safer to punch than to use anything... sharper. He didn't want the human bleeding out, after all. So, his claws stayed inside his gloved fingers, and he kept his teeth to himself, as well.

...For now.

He grabbed for the human's wrists, intending to wrench Cassian's arms up beneath his back.

"I must say," the Fae purred, as casually as though this was just some dumb little slap-fight. The tiger wasn't even out of breath! "I'm quite enjoying this side of you. So much fight!"

It did keep the usual barrage of insults from coming, leaving the heretic mute and enraged as he tried to swing at him again with the iron poker, the illusion flickering again. It wouldn't help him much if he was trapped under a man to be honest, a wrong physical sensation could ruin the whole thing.

The words earned him a glob of bloody spit aimed at his face, slurred and broken words in Gaelic defining what he was doing as an attempt at a curse.

A real one now.

Just hit his target with his own blood after all.

Okay, fiiiine, if you insist, Cassian. Since you're asking so nicely, and all.

Tannusen's response to the way the hairs on the back of his head started to stand up was to drop down further onto the human, choose a spot that probably wouldn't kill the guy too quickly unless he bit too deeply, and then sink his teeth in. Clothing put up about as much resistance as tissue paper; may as well not even be there.

If the sheer pain of even a non-lethal tiger bite could stop Ni in his tracks, Tannusen expected it would stop even this version of Cassian from finishing a spell.

Yeah. Yeah that did the trick pretty well yeah. There was a pained gasp, cutting the spell off right at the root. Whatever it was, it wasn't going to happen now, even as he struggled to get his hands free to shove him off.

Broken jaw, bleeding heavily.

Yeah this night wasn't going how he wrote it in the planner at all.

Tannusen pulled Cassian's arms up slowly and steadily, up toward the back of his head, fully intending to pop his arms right out of their sockets. He really wasn't playing around.

Except for the part where he obviously wasn't trying to out-right kill him. But that... probably wasn't a good thing. Tannusen swallowed several mouthfuls of his target's blood, purring, shifting his weight a bit...

Nope, that was definitely not a good thing. The sick bastard's intentions were crystal clear with their positioning. He extracted his teeth from the bite, now free to bleed even more without anything blocking the way. "Now, as I was saying--"

A shadow fell on the pair from above, and Tannusen had a split second to realize who it had to be before he was rudely interrupted by a garrote wire around his throat. He released the human under him in favor of lunging backwards into the surprise attack.

Virgin or not, he'd been down a road like this several times before. He knew that positioning, he knew what the tiger was planning, and while it didn't sync with his past actions at the moment, Cassian couldn't care less that this seemed out of character for Tannusen.

Just fed the fire that convinced him his actions after this would be for the best. He snarled as an arm popped out of its socket, and the other one surely would have shortly followed, had it not been for an unexpected and sudden interruption in it.

Enraged or not, he was quick to immediately put some distance between himself and Tannusen, grunting at the pain movement caused and trying to pop his arm back into place as he turned to face the dueling pair.

Seelie versus Unseelie, dream versus nightmare, riddler legacy versus stoic legacy. Every Fae where Tannusen was from had that duality built right into them; to reduce either to a single side was a recipe for disaster.

How many 'good' sides out there were willing to murder the other side, flat-out?

This one certainly was.

He wrapped the piano wire around his bloodier self's throat even tighter, and pulled. If it didn't strangle him first, it would gradually slice through his throat. The other version of him gagged and tore at Tannusen's arms, wickedly-hooked claws ripping apart the white dreamstuff sleeves of his coat and skidding over the impossibly light chain-mail that lined the whole thing.

Tannusen gazed down at his worse self with a strangely blank expression despite the other's struggles. Was this really all there was to him? How disappointing. He'd at least expected a good fight on the way out.

He really should shoot the one on the bottom, shouldn't he. Really should, everything was telling him it was for the best, mostly for him honestly, if he just blasted the bottom fae's face clean off. But there didn't seem to be any sort of worry centered around the shot gun before so-

Also this was a lot more gratifying to watch. Cassian had a highly developed sense of revenge before the split. This particular version found himself wishing he was recording it for the future. Nothing brightened up his day more than watching someone he resented getting something they richly deserved.

Another glob of blood spat out and to the side, the smaller man ignoring the sharp pain in his jaw and shoulder as he adjusted himself, just enough to watch the two just a little better, the iron poker still firmly in hand.

One of them would lose.

Just had to wait and see who.

His clone seemed to snap out of the instinctual struggles against the piano wire, and Tannusen had a brief moment of the wire suddenly going empty before he was dropped onto from above. He stumbled, dropping the wire to the floor in favor of grabbing his attacker's wrists before his neck could be snapped. His claws sank into the other's wrists, even as the other's claws sank into his face, dangerously close to an eye.

"You know, I was going to leave you for last," the other one hissed, "but if you're going to be impatient about it--"

Indeed, the pair were in quite the little spat, with Cassian being completely ignored in favor of trying to murder each other. What a nice plot twist that was; whichever one lost, Cassian would win!

The 'good' version managed to throw the other off, and right down the attic stairs. That was a lot of thumping! But Tannusen was too distracted to immediately go after him, dropping to his knees and holding half of his face while blood poured out of the socket of his ruined eye. It didn't matter how composed you were, no one could ignore that kind of pain! His mouth gaped from the sheer level of it, mind reeling in shock.

Edited 2017-01-15 23:07 (UTC)

Okay if these two fuckholes kept trashing the place they were gonna break all his shit and you know what? He likes his shit. Like all of his shit, it's the only things that have steadfastly been there for him when people haven't.

Hip hip hooray for physical belongings.

So with a grunt and wheeze of pain, he hauls himself up from the floor and totters after the two of them, gun loaded and poker in hand.

He really shouldn't be firing this with one hand but-

The boom of the gun going off was like thunder, aimed not just for the man at the top of the stairs, but also directed to catch the fae at the bottom in the scatter shot.

If one looked very closely, and could process the information fast enough, it seemed like... tree bark? flashed into and out of existence where the bullets hit. It negated the raw damage, but not the force, which was enough to topple the already-disoriented Tannusen down the stairs to land on his doppelganger.

The other one just started laughing again, if feebly. Because guns. Guns were funny!

"Shut... up," Tannusen gasped out, his ears ringing from the blast. The problem with having senses sharper than average was when they got overloaded! He clawed his way off the stairs and then gave the whole thing a hard kick upwards. Sure, Cassian could just make them come crashing back down again, but at least it would take a second.

Mission accomplished no more tigers on the stairs. Yes he was going to kick them back down again but he needed a moment to like... stop some of the bleeding and try to pop his arm back into place. He's not very menacing swinging the poker with a destroyed arm, okay.

It just takes propping the poker between two brick columns and putting his weight down on it to snap the limb back into place. Hurt like hell but at least it was back, and so was he, and the stairs instantly came rolling back down again, the battered and bruised warlock stumbling down them-

Aaand instantly going to start activating some wards in his fucking mouse trap game of a house.

In the interim, the two tigers hadn't exactly left each other alone to lick their wounds. Broken bone protruded, gleaming, from muscle and skin and clothing where the duplicate had snapped Tannusen's shin clean in half. He currently had his 'good' version pinned, hands around his throat.

"Come on, Tannu," that version purred, "be a good boy and stop fighting. I've always wanted to see what Trench got out of this... you wouldn't fight him, would you?"

The answer was a gagged expletive.

"Oh hush, we both know you liked it."

Cassian's return to the fray, and the arming of more dangerous wards, went unnoticed by both. A little preoccupied, here!

This conversation sounded pretty gross. He doesn't want it in his house, you two. Clearly he's going to have to be the adult here...

Aaand activate the ward they're busy having their gross as fuck discussion next to.

He's not sorry, not even in the slightest, as the forcibly correctly pronounced activation spell, laced with pain but right on point, clicks on the ward laced into the plug outlet they've gotten so cozy next to.

Have fun with a few thousand volts of fuck off.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the chain mail both versions were wearing lined into their fancy chimerical coats certainly didn't make things any better! Whatever dreamstuff metal that was, it was plenty conductive.

Both froze as muscles locked from pure voltage, the good Tannusen's throat damn near collapsing under the strength of his duplicate's grip on it. His one eye went wide from pain, the other nothing but a bloody socket. Where had the eye gone, anyway? It was probably in the attic somewhere. Gross.

The first to recover was the nastier one, and he vanished from atop the other to reappear behind Cassian and aim a kick for the human's back. Why don't you join us downstairs, asshole!

Edited 2017-01-16 00:15 (UTC)

Actually no he's just fine sitting up here so please don't-

ASSHOLE.

Down he went, probably breaking some of those oh so delicately reset ribs Drake went out of his way to fix. Sorry, Drake.

But the second he hit the floor, another shout activated another ward, this one set for the attic door's threshold. No it's not static.

It's a concussive blast.

Eat it, asshole.

[ action | closed ] terrible things happen to good people every day

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