[ the visage of the woman continues burning - no visible flames, just the impact of them, just the fright on her face, the light in her eyes bright and present and terrified, as her mouth forms the syllables of the name bren, too. ]
[ when beau turns around to face caleb, her teeth are gritted, and her eyes have shifted from their usual color to dark black voids. the words are almost spat out of her mouth, her hand tight on her mic; the visage of his mother stays behind her, slowly burning, burning. ]
You said they were traitors, and they just wanted to help you - they just wanted to love you. I'm your friend, I've been with you all this fucking time, we've been through so much shit together, and now you think I'm a traitor, too? What're you gonna do, Caleb, you gonna burn my shit down too cause some guy got in your head? Who's after me? Jester? All of us have just been your enemies all along, huh? I should've fucking known!
[ if caleb hasn't blue screened too hard, he'll feel a weight in his pocket - there's a throwing dagger there that wasn't there before, small and sturdy.
beau pulls the microphone up to her mouth. ] You killed them, and you were just gonna kill us, too!
[ and shouting the words pushes forward a sudden sonicboom - the soundwaves are fierce and sharp, and though there's nothing physical to cause damage, it feels like taking a knife in the gut - the cut appears in his clothes as if he was stabbed. ]
[He is blue screening pretty hard! He is blue screening pretty hard.
Hard enough that he's not exactly focused on the words Beau is saying. Just the tone, and the emotion behind it, and the gist of the accusation. Caleb is pretty good at still going through the motions of keeping himself alive while dissociating, able to respond and communicate even fight if he has to. So he's hearing Beau, just through a faraway lens. The part he understands is that he's being yelled at by her, and she's questioning their friendship, and she's calling him selfish and untrustworthy, all of the things they used to fight about, and it is pissing him off. He has tried so hard, he has done everything he knows how to do, to prove to her that he cares for her and all of the Nein, and he thought they were through with fighting about this. He's a disgusting person, he is a murderer, but he has genuinely tried and apparently it isn't enough for anyone.
He just goes silently and furiously angry while he's being berated, letting her words wash over him, a thousand things running through his head.]
Stop -
[But then he takes that wound to his gut, doubles over - what? He's still confused and disoriented, all he knows is that half of him is watching his mother burn and half of him is in a fight with a friend and now he's being attacked. And there's still a piece somewhere trying to hold on to his knowledge that it isn't real, but that's a fool's errand at the moment. He doubles over and clutches his stomach and stares at her balefully, although he doesn't move to throw the dagger. Less because he doesn't want to hurt her and more because the self-preservation part of him that's always running in the background even through all of this knows that him attacking Beauregard with a throwing dagger is not going to end any better for him than curling into a ball and dying.]
[ caleb is having a really bad time and we love that for him
the smell of smoke and fire starts to fill the air. even with no flames visible, the scenery around them begins to fill with it; the screams of people in the buildings, the smell of burning flesh rising with the wind. sparks dance across this street-made battlefield, flickering embers of a fire that doesn't seem to exist. wood pops and burns; his mother's eyes roll back in her head. ]
[ and beau. oh, beau's fury makes her voice crack - almost in desperation. in misery, at the idea that caleb was like this all along. like she can't even believe it. ] That's it? That's all you've got? Fuck off? You're just going to run away, you - you...
[ she grips the mic even harder and shouts into it; ] Are we not worth fighting for?!
[ again, the sonic boom comes out like a thunderclap. pop, pop - two hits per word, a flurry of blows worthy of a monk this time without a single sword or fist involved. hits to the temple, to the ribs, over that stabbing like pain in his gut.
beau inhales to scream, again - but then she stops. ] Nngh - [ and takes a stumbling step backwards, her hands coming up to her head. her eyes flash - going from that dark, voided black back to their normal color, just for a second, and her head whips up to look at caleb in a resonant clarity
and then she doubles over again and shouts, gripping her head-- ] Stop - stop it, stop! Get out of my head! [ -- as the world around them wavers and flickers like an old television screen, then settles back into place. ]
[A really bad time. I can keep going with my descriptions but my answer to all of this is just. It's bad, fam. He's confused, and dizzy, and when he's hit he just feels like a wounded animal, cowering, snarling, but too afraid to bite with what little he has.
But it's that last thing that somehow cuts through all of that. Some lucid part of him that's still holding on sees the waver, knows what it looks like when someone is resisting some sort of control, and he looks up at her, eyes going wide.]
Beauregard!
[Not an illusion. That's what cuts through. This is not an illusion, this is actually her, and she needs his help. The rest is all backdrop to that, all dressing. He reaches, a little helplessly. He doesn't have any spells for this. The knife might break a charm, if it hits her, but if it's something else it might make it worse. So instead he just reaches and puts his hand on his shoulder.]
[ beau's hands claw tighter into her hair as she struggles, eyes screwed tightly shut, bent over as she tries to fight, and fight. as caleb comes closer and puts his hand on her shoulder, she grabs onto his wrist like a lifeline. beau takes a deep, painful breath and shouts, trying to get free, relying on that grip - her head snaps up -
and a smile curls across her face, the light completely gone from her eyes as they fill with that same, dark black void when she looks at caleb. ]
Gotcha.
[ and this time, there's no mic needed, because beau just takes the stand like her quarterstaff and slams it into caleb's gut, and hard. the beau who is absolutely not beau pulls the mic back up to her mouth but doesn't speak into it afterwards, jerking her head back. ] C'mon, aren't you supposed to be smart? Can't do that either? What good are you? You're a shitty weapon and a shitty friend. Being smart doesn't do you much good if you're fucking crazy, does it?
[ in his pocket, the dagger starts to feel a little warmer; the mic in his hand does too. the mic, especially, feels familiar, like a charged spell. warm, with the familiar heat of a flame, as beau pulls the mic up to her mouth again. ]
[He doubles over again, the staff digging right into the wound that is starting to bleed down his chest, with an ugly grunt. He can't tell if - if Beau just went under again? Or no, no, it was never her. Or it - was it?
He's confused, and he can't tell. He can feel that heat in his pocket, and its comforting. He wants to burn this place to this ground. It should make him sick to think of using fire like this, but he has always loved the way it makes him feel powerful, not frightened and angry and bleeding with a mind at the mercy of this thing. But he doesn't - he doesn't want to hurt Beauregard - not sure enough, not quite enough. In an ordinary fight, if she was charmed, he wouldn't hesitate to hit her knowing she could take it. But here, he has a feeling that the moment he casts a spell, she will be screaming and bubbling and burning to death too, and he doesn't want to add a new memory to his old ones. He hesitates a little longer.]
[ poor caleb. beau's voice falls into that modulated, low growl as she lifts up the quarterstaff again. ]
You're pathetic. [ and her eyes are still that horrible, black void as she touches something on the microphone - a bright blue light blazes up the fabric wrapped around it, like it's charging up. ] You know there's really no forgiving you, for what you did. Not by your family.
[ she takes a step forward - the sonic boom effect is returning, now, a hit on family ] and not by us, either. [ another step forward, another boom of a hit on us. ]
I always thought you were like a brother to me, Caleb. Bren. Whoever you are. [ she swings the microphone back around to her mouth; the bright blue light suddenly finds its way to the copy of her tattoo etched onto the mic, and turns a bright, searing red. the eyeball in the center blinks open and staring, and the not-quite beau grins, the red light reflecting back on her face. ]
But if you're my family, I guess that means I've got to kill you before you kill me first, huh?
[The thing is, one small detail that shouldn't pierce through the haze so much but does, is that Beau has never called him Bren. Not once. All of them have known his name for a long time now, but they do not call him that. He's long since stopped thinking of that as his name, who he is. Even if Caleb is a pseudonym, Caleb has people who love him, and Bren is nothing more than a curse for an old man to spit at him to force him to remember life before that.
She could be under some kind of curse. Maybe. A strange curse, because if she wanted to hurt him, she doesn't need the mic to do it, to charge up any sort of magic, and instead she's just talking at him, saying things that claw at his insides but that he's confident enough in now she doesn't believe. None of them believe that. They all know what he's done and they still care for him, and it is disgusting to twist it this way.
Disgusting, doesn't deserve to continue to exist. He pulls that mic out of his pocket, somehow feeling as though he understands what he's supposed to do with this little toy. Because Beauregard wants to fight him using magic instead of fists.
And he's just going to shout into it.]
Fuck off.
[A ragged pant of breath while he sees if it did anything, but he still goes on - ]
Fuck off. You're speaking nonsense and lies, you know nothing, your little game is tiring me. Get out of my head, get out of my friend. Dissolve into ashes and choke on them.
[ caleb did such a beautiful job of describing his hypnosis microphone that it works beautifully. the mouth of the frumpkin shaped attachment opens as he speaks - amber sparks shoot of of the sides of the microphone, and the flames on the side seem to heat up warm under caleb's hand as he speaks. fuck off makes the mic spark brilliantly bright, once, the heat like a flash in a pan, and then as he keeps going, the metal warms and warms and warms. and then as he reaches dissolve into ashes and choke on them, all of the sound in the area seems to disappear, like it's in a vacuum, and everything freezes for one perfect, crystalline moment --
the air before a lightning strike brings to focus the crowd around them. the members of the crowd's faces turn to red hair and fear and terror, until every face left is caleb's parents, staring
and beau, who stands in the middle. she looks at caleb for a millisecond, just long enough for all of the black to melt out of her eyes. just long enough for expression to contort into utter, complete fear.
-- and then there's an explosion of flames that rip out of the microphone. they tear through the scenery like paper and roar through beau, through the crowd, as everything in a mile radius is incinerated in a matter of a second.
and as the light from the explosion fades, caleb gets one last final glance of what's left of the street he was standing on --
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
You said they were traitors, and they just wanted to help you - they just wanted to love you. I'm your friend, I've been with you all this fucking time, we've been through so much shit together, and now you think I'm a traitor, too? What're you gonna do, Caleb, you gonna burn my shit down too cause some guy got in your head? Who's after me? Jester? All of us have just been your enemies all along, huh? I should've fucking known!
[ if caleb hasn't blue screened too hard, he'll feel a weight in his pocket - there's a throwing dagger there that wasn't there before, small and sturdy.
beau pulls the microphone up to her mouth. ] You killed them, and you were just gonna kill us, too!
[ and shouting the words pushes forward a sudden sonicboom - the soundwaves are fierce and sharp, and though there's nothing physical to cause damage, it feels like taking a knife in the gut - the cut appears in his clothes as if he was stabbed. ]
no subject
Hard enough that he's not exactly focused on the words Beau is saying. Just the tone, and the emotion behind it, and the gist of the accusation. Caleb is pretty good at still going through the motions of keeping himself alive while dissociating, able to respond and communicate even fight if he has to. So he's hearing Beau, just through a faraway lens. The part he understands is that he's being yelled at by her, and she's questioning their friendship, and she's calling him selfish and untrustworthy, all of the things they used to fight about, and it is pissing him off. He has tried so hard, he has done everything he knows how to do, to prove to her that he cares for her and all of the Nein, and he thought they were through with fighting about this. He's a disgusting person, he is a murderer, but he has genuinely tried and apparently it isn't enough for anyone.
He just goes silently and furiously angry while he's being berated, letting her words wash over him, a thousand things running through his head.]
Stop -
[But then he takes that wound to his gut, doubles over - what? He's still confused and disoriented, all he knows is that half of him is watching his mother burn and half of him is in a fight with a friend and now he's being attacked. And there's still a piece somewhere trying to hold on to his knowledge that it isn't real, but that's a fool's errand at the moment. He doubles over and clutches his stomach and stares at her balefully, although he doesn't move to throw the dagger. Less because he doesn't want to hurt her and more because the self-preservation part of him that's always running in the background even through all of this knows that him attacking Beauregard with a throwing dagger is not going to end any better for him than curling into a ball and dying.]
Fuck off, Beauregard.
no subject
the smell of smoke and fire starts to fill the air. even with no flames visible, the scenery around them begins to fill with it; the screams of people in the buildings, the smell of burning flesh rising with the wind. sparks dance across this street-made battlefield, flickering embers of a fire that doesn't seem to exist. wood pops and burns; his mother's eyes roll back in her head. ]
[ she grips the mic even harder and shouts into it; ] Are we not worth fighting for?!
[ again, the sonic boom comes out like a thunderclap. pop, pop - two hits per word, a flurry of blows worthy of a monk this time without a single sword or fist involved. hits to the temple, to the ribs, over that stabbing like pain in his gut.
beau inhales to scream, again - but then she stops. ] Nngh - [ and takes a stumbling step backwards, her hands coming up to her head. her eyes flash - going from that dark, voided black back to their normal color, just for a second, and her head whips up to look at caleb in a resonant clarity
and then she doubles over again and shouts, gripping her head-- ] Stop - stop it, stop! Get out of my head! [ -- as the world around them wavers and flickers like an old television screen, then settles back into place. ]
no subject
But it's that last thing that somehow cuts through all of that. Some lucid part of him that's still holding on sees the waver, knows what it looks like when someone is resisting some sort of control, and he looks up at her, eyes going wide.]
Beauregard!
[Not an illusion. That's what cuts through. This is not an illusion, this is actually her, and she needs his help. The rest is all backdrop to that, all dressing. He reaches, a little helplessly. He doesn't have any spells for this. The knife might break a charm, if it hits her, but if it's something else it might make it worse. So instead he just reaches and puts his hand on his shoulder.]
Let's get out of here, let's go!
no subject
and a smile curls across her face, the light completely gone from her eyes as they fill with that same, dark black void when she looks at caleb. ]
Gotcha.
[ and this time, there's no mic needed, because beau just takes the stand like her quarterstaff and slams it into caleb's gut, and hard. the beau who is absolutely not beau pulls the mic back up to her mouth but doesn't speak into it afterwards, jerking her head back. ] C'mon, aren't you supposed to be smart? Can't do that either? What good are you? You're a shitty weapon and a shitty friend. Being smart doesn't do you much good if you're fucking crazy, does it?
[ in his pocket, the dagger starts to feel a little warmer; the mic in his hand does too. the mic, especially, feels familiar, like a charged spell. warm, with the familiar heat of a flame, as beau pulls the mic up to her mouth again. ]
no subject
He's confused, and he can't tell. He can feel that heat in his pocket, and its comforting. He wants to burn this place to this ground. It should make him sick to think of using fire like this, but he has always loved the way it makes him feel powerful, not frightened and angry and bleeding with a mind at the mercy of this thing. But he doesn't - he doesn't want to hurt Beauregard - not sure enough, not quite enough. In an ordinary fight, if she was charmed, he wouldn't hesitate to hit her knowing she could take it. But here, he has a feeling that the moment he casts a spell, she will be screaming and bubbling and burning to death too, and he doesn't want to add a new memory to his old ones. He hesitates a little longer.]
no subject
You're pathetic. [ and her eyes are still that horrible, black void as she touches something on the microphone - a bright blue light blazes up the fabric wrapped around it, like it's charging up. ] You know there's really no forgiving you, for what you did. Not by your family.
[ she takes a step forward - the sonic boom effect is returning, now, a hit on family ] and not by us, either. [ another step forward, another boom of a hit on us. ]
I always thought you were like a brother to me, Caleb. Bren. Whoever you are. [ she swings the microphone back around to her mouth; the bright blue light suddenly finds its way to the copy of her tattoo etched onto the mic, and turns a bright, searing red. the eyeball in the center blinks open and staring, and the not-quite beau grins, the red light reflecting back on her face. ]
But if you're my family, I guess that means I've got to kill you before you kill me first, huh?
no subject
She could be under some kind of curse. Maybe. A strange curse, because if she wanted to hurt him, she doesn't need the mic to do it, to charge up any sort of magic, and instead she's just talking at him, saying things that claw at his insides but that he's confident enough in now she doesn't believe. None of them believe that. They all know what he's done and they still care for him, and it is disgusting to twist it this way.
Disgusting, doesn't deserve to continue to exist. He pulls that mic out of his pocket, somehow feeling as though he understands what he's supposed to do with this little toy. Because Beauregard wants to fight him using magic instead of fists.
And he's just going to shout into it.]
Fuck off.
[A ragged pant of breath while he sees if it did anything, but he still goes on - ]
Fuck off. You're speaking nonsense and lies, you know nothing, your little game is tiring me. Get out of my head, get out of my friend. Dissolve into ashes and choke on them.
no subject
the air before a lightning strike brings to focus the crowd around them. the members of the crowd's faces turn to red hair and fear and terror, until every face left is caleb's parents, staring
and beau, who stands in the middle. she looks at caleb for a millisecond, just long enough for all of the black to melt out of her eyes. just long enough for expression to contort into utter, complete fear.
-- and then there's an explosion of flames that rip out of the microphone. they tear through the scenery like paper and roar through beau, through the crowd, as everything in a mile radius is incinerated in a matter of a second.
and as the light from the explosion fades, caleb gets one last final glance of what's left of the street he was standing on --
ashes.
there's nothing left but ashes.
the next time he blinks, he'll find himself standing somewhere else entirely. ]