#dih au

Alarms are blaring, causing ringing in his sensitive ears. Bullets whisk past his now-only, blurry peripheral. Pushing himself off wall corners, he gains more speed while leaving a sickly soft pastel verdant trail. He reeks of blood, the nausea makes him gag.

“GET HIM! GET HIM! HE’S GETTING AWAY!”

Shouts of his fellow employees add to the cacophony of distress and utter chaos. He doesn't know if the red overlay on his vision is from the flashing lights, or his hollow, bleeding left eye socket. The light green-horned demon slips on a puddle of blood, but it’s not his own. He shakily lifts himself by his elbows - glances at his once pristine white coat, now drenched and looks up behind him to see soliders still shooting but no longer at him. More bullets and beams from various gear abilities shoot out from the hallway he just passed around the corner. He shakes himself from his confusion and scoots back when a severed hand lands right next to him. Pick up the pace Medkit.

The entire left side of his face is bleeding and throbbing, he chokes on his spit, tears, and blood at the torturous sensation. Struggling to withdraw more crystals from his coat's pocket while running, and crushing them against his skin's surface to relieve the agony for at least a second. Slowly losing feeling from the onslaught of conflicting messages his pain receptors and brain are receiving.

Sprinting through the halls he nearly crashes when all the lights give out, the alarm however choosing to continue to destroy his fragile deer eardrums. Not faltering for a second when he bumps into a wall, he tries to not trip on the possible corpses on the floor. Various shouts overpowering the sirens. Noises of what sounds like a minigun. Suddenly he can pick up a cock of a shotgun to his right and he swerves, ducking and kicking his leg to hopefully catch the possible assailant off balance. His thoughts jumbled, acting on pure instinct from obligatory self-defense training.

“WAI-” A mumbled yelp is heard while they fall to the floor, despite the loudness of the environment Medkit holds his breath and as quietly as he can, runs away from the slightly darker patch of black in the void.

Running and tripping down a flight of stairs he thinks he sees a small patch of light in front of him before his hairs flare up and he hears the sound that he thought he would never have to hear again.

The sudden blaring scream ended with an echoey sigh - almost as if relieved from some sort of temper tantrum, just like always, and the ground shook. Subspace's tripmine went off.

Those are the only things his brain processes as deafening rumbles and more of Subspace's tripmines go out in quick succession and suddenly he can feel dust in his nostrils and weighing on his eyelashes. He looks up to see the nauseating pink standing out in the darkness. Then warnings of the ceiling being seconds away from collapsing. Medkit stumbles in panic.

A timer starts ticking in his head to 5 seconds, the alarm rings louder, and the screams start to sound like one loud shriek - a symphony straight from hell accentuating his betrayal, his grave mistake. He launches forward with arms stretched out in front of him but doesn’t fall to the floor and get crushed by tons of pink bricks and cement like he expected. The sound of glass shattering kills his ears.

He flinches harshly and stiffens when he instead lands in a soft dark blue mass that burns and sends all his senses alight with static. As he gasps for air, his body kicks into survival mode and instinctively tries to swim upwards. However, he quickly realizes that something is amiss. He is buried in a thick layer of fresh, powdery snow. With slight relief, he starts to make sweeping motions with his arms, trying to create enough space to breathe freely.

When his head is finally above the biting mass of ice, he coughs and hyperventilates - the frigid cold making it hard to breathe in.

He looks up to see thousands of lazy snowflakes clouding the night sky.

He’s acutely aware of the situation he’s in. Scrunching his face in discomfort, he slowly trudges through the snow. His ears ring for a solid minute because of the vast difference in volume before he can pick up the still faint hellish alarm, motivating him to keep moving while the snow numbs his fingers and bruises. He goes as fast as he can, making large leaps in the snow pile.

He blinks his eye a couple times and squints to get rid of the snowflakes stuck to his eyelashes, thank The Swords there’s no blizzard today— Blackrock weather is no joke. If there was, his idiot self would be doomed, and it would all be his own fault. But then again, it’s not like he thought and planned to escape his place of employment since graduation today. He knew leaving would never go smoothly but honest to Swords he never expected THIS turn of events.

A particularly strong gust of wind whisks by, making his teeth clatter. Treating every spruce tree passed as a checkpoint, he tries to take his mind off of his stinging body, littered with tons of minor injuries he doesn't even want to think about getting infected. His breaths come out in quick puffs, making clouds before him. The looming darkness of the night dragging him further into ruin. He keeps looking back frantically. The lab now further, a pink stain against the white-black rocky backdrop, smoke rises high into the air clouding the starry sky.

He wonders if it was worth it, defying everything his faction stood for in an emotionally immature moment. The grand medical research department’s head scientist, reduced to a shivering grey stain on the pristine white snow, moving at a snail’s pace. What he did was stupid and reckless he thinks, a vile thing that was avoidable. And he doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t.

Finally making it out of the deep snow he lays stomach down and hyperventilates.

This is what I get, he thinks.

This is what happens when you go against All Mother Blackrock.

Fuck...

Freezing, he curls up on the snow. The snowflakes continued to fall like confetti for his demise.

His body twitches a couple times before he's plunged into an even darker void.

“I will not stand for this any longer Subspace.” A young man with washed out green-deer-like antlers roughly throws a paper folder on the table, rattling the spoon in Subspace’s coffee cup.

Subspace wipes the blood off his forehead with the hem of his glove, further smearing it. “Medkit, those are the only biological subjects Blackrock could get their hands on, quit being a whiny baby and get to work.”

Subspace pauses his bloody work on the still conscious patient with no jaw and looks back at Medkit, the white blinding light of the operation table headlight casting a dark, black shadow on his face. From Medkit’s perspective, he looks like a faceless, eldritch creature. He might as well be one, Medkit huffs.

Medkit shakily takes a breath. “We are using anesthesia if I’m going to work on them.”

“Oh, cmon! That would just be a waste of resources! And they are already pretty scarce after your last blunder!” Subspace’s demeanor suddenly shifts, and he smiles with his eyes, mouth obscured by a mask. Recently he’s been wearing that thing more and more often.

“You’re way too costly for Blackrock, you know? They might just get rid of you someday!” He hums and continues his work.

Medkit furrows his eyebrows and looks at the stained floor, thousands of thoughts conflicting in his head. When he looks up he still doesn’t make eye contact with Subspace, instead choosing to stare at the blood and coffee stained table. Some of the blood despite once holding all sorts of color and valor, decayed in the same way any other demon's would -growing brownish, blending perfectly with the latter. Multiple trinkets, Subspace's bombs and vials with various hazardous substances lay on the table in disarray.

He finally takes a deep breath. “They won’t have to.”

More clicking from Subspace’s tools in the room, the headlight making a light buzzing sound.

“I’m quitting.”

The clicking stops. And suddenly the silence feels like tons of lumps of Euclir, freshly delivered to be worked on. The buzzing light gets louder, and Medkit thinks it might be his migraine coming back.

“What?” Subspace starts with a chuckle and after a moment, turns back.

“Those are my resignation papers.”

“They won’t let you leave just like that.”

“I’m getting recommissioned to the military as an on-field medic.”

Subspace stops leaning on the operation table and straightens up, his magenta-black soulless eyes looking straight through Medkit, even the pseudo zombie on the table stops twitching in agony and looks at Medkit with those wide eyes full of primal fear.

Subspace takes off his bloody gloves. “Oh, ho ho ho”

Medkit swallows as Subspace starts giggling.

“HAH! WooOow, Meddy! You’ve really outdone yourself this time!” He rests his hands on his hips while he folds in half laughing.

“Who would’ve thought you could get any more disappointing!”

Medkit starts packing up the papers that have spilled out of his folder as Subspace has his fit, not noticing him inching closer.

“All that fucking potential and self-assurance, years of people carrying your ass all the way to the top and you’re resigning out of your DREAM” He throws his arms around. “JOB to become a little errand boy in the military.”

Medkit flinches at the volume, his ear flicking, and his expression sours but he doesn’t respond. He can’t give Subspace a reaction when he’s like this; having been through this multiple times. Ever since Subspace’s condition started to worsen, so did his mental stability, Medkit likes to think there’s a correlation there. He wasn’t always like this- he was just a bully, not a psychopath. The thought is a comfort. He doesn’t know if it’s delusion or Stockholm syndrome.

“You’re a pathetic coward Medkit.” He whispers,

“A little bitch.” Subspace speaks with such contempt that he would’ve spit all over Medkit if not for the obstruction on his mouth.

“As soon as there’s any obstacles you fucking run, give up right away with no fight.”

Medkit turns to leave when Subspace grabs his wrist, pulling him back roughly- their faces inches apart. Medkit’s distressed reflection with ears downturned in Subspace’s void black large pupils, like a predator about to pounce on its prey.

“You’re a deer in headlights.”

A wolf’s howl echoes throughout the mountains. The morning sun rises over the horizon, shining on the bloodied snow, making it glitter in an alluringly morbid way. Finally, the sun creeps up high enough to shine on his face and he cracks his singular eye open. He feels strangely comfortable and warm, albeit wet. What was he doing again?

He jolts up, startling all the fawns around him. A bolt of pain flashes through his left leg’s tendon and he yelps startling even himself. As the poor young man writhes in pain, groaning, grabbing his leg with eyebrows scrunched up, the deer around him come up and sniff him - he feels chilly. He squints his eye through the pain and notices a bloody rip on his pants, his blood runs cold (-er, if that's possible) and his eye widens in realization. Scrambling to lift the material and get a better look at the wound he sits up, the pant leg sticks to his fuzzy skin from the dried-up blood and he grimaces at the feeling.

Slowly unsticking the disgusting material, Medkit sees a gaping wound with a glass shard sticking out of his lower left calf. How he fell asleep with that astounds him. Letting out an unsteady breath he grabs his cheeks and looks away for a second. He was never one to be queasy around blood and gore. Hell, his job demanded everyday contact with those types of things since he was a child. But stranded somewhere with no professional medical equipment, the wound makes his head spin. And it's not like he got injured..ever, back at the facility. Not enough to break through skin at least.

The deer are still watching him, for some reason it makes him even more hysteric. The older deer presumably on the lookout for threats looks at him with something akin to pity. How can an animal look at him with such concern? How can an animal even LOOK concerned?

“Shoo! Shoo!” He makes large motions with his arms to scare the animals but most don’t budge.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” Standing up too quickly he pathetically falls on his face into the snow. He flips onto his back and lays there; blowing to get the tiny snowflakes and a hair strand off his face. Thoughts of worry about his own sanity slip by him.

Luckily, most of the fawns and deer get the memo and run into the woods. He sighed and summoned his gear to patch himself up, it would surely come in handy. Though he dislikes his gear for the kind of life it chose for him, moments like this make him feel ungrateful. This kind of injury would typically be a death sentence for roaming Blackrock’s harsh, icy mountains. Any kind of open wound would be.

Taking a breath and a magnifying glass from his gear, he carefully inspects the wound, prepared for the worst.

After a moment of looking that lasts way too long for his liking; he might've gotten rusty, The demon leans back on his palms and lets out a large exhale that rattles his bruised ribcage. He doesn't catch any more shards stuck in his flesh, nor any bullet holes, nor any infections yet. Miraculously so, thinking back on the barrage. How the hell did they miss? They had to be aiming at him. Why did Subspace's mines go off? What the fuck actually happened there.

As he goes through the muscle memory motions and precisely works on disinfecting, taking out the glass, and wrapping the wound; he lets his mind wander away and back to the situation at hand. What do I even do now?

He mutilated his co-worker with the intent to incapacitate him, he escaped the police force and enforcers when they were shooting at him, were they even shooting at him? Doesn't matter you went against the entire regime. Medkit bites into his wrist and shakes, he's a traitor. A traitor to his Motherland.

The greenish demon hugs his knees and sits solemnly in the snow. The quiet howls of a morning breeze are the only company to his overwhelmed psyche. The young demon cuts off a sob with a breath. Coldness seeps into his bones and he shivers involuntarily.

Medkit looks around his area and is immediately greeted by a vast horizon covered by the edge of the cliff, he slowly limps to it and looks out to see the enormous wilderness of Blackrock, not a man-made structure in sight.

The facility he was employed at was built far away to prevent distractions and interference from ordinary pholk, but he cannot recall ever seeing this view. Granted he didn't really have time to ever explore. Medkit is astounded at how he made such distance from the isolated laboratories he lived in for years, it was pure adrenaline he reckons. Must've blacked out of exhaustion at some point.

Looking out at the radiant landscape- very much unlike the faction it belongs to, he feels it's not over yet. Burning with a determination to stay alive; he opens his gear again and wraps his bruised knuckles with feverish drive. Hiding the rest of the gauze and bandages. I want to live.

He rubs his gloved hands together and huffs out a warm puff of air on them. Medkit hasn't left the comfort of his laboratory since he turned 15, ever since he was assigned to the crystal research- sterile rooms and dissected insides of demons on operation tables is all he knows. He's equipped with barely any survival or combat skills. The obligatory military training every child assigned to Blackrock gets suddenly seems a lot more useful, and he tries his best to recall all the details.

His mind eventually wanders back to the deer from before, wondering if they mistook him as part of the herd, with him having deer-like DNA and qualities. Back when he was a child and had the semi-freedom to research whatever he wanted, he read some books about animals adopting stranded demons in the middle of a jungle and raising them as their own.

The thing he's confused about is how those reindeer, elks, and other species he hasn't identified yet- could just crowd him like that with absolutely zero fear. Aren't deer supposed to be prey animals? The older deer even seemed to guard him while he slumbered earlier.

Deciding to use that to his advantage, he looks in the direction of the woods he saw the animals run off to. Medkit limply stalks into the forest, his highest chance of survival is if he at least has those animals nearby, even if they are less than intelligent based on what he's gathered. That way- he can at least lead a potential predator chasing him into the herd and get it off his tail. He doesn't pay mind to the primal instinct in the back of his head that makes him feel somehow safer with the animals. 

Following the herd might also prove to be beneficial in gathering food since they probably know this area and all it has to offer. Attempting to traverse these lands alone is impossible for him, years of being locked away in a laboratory stripped away his sense of direction. Not like he had any in the first place. As a young healer, he was rather sought after and prohibited from wandering around like the less fortunate children of Blackrock freezing on the streets. He forces himself to push away those thoughts of indignation he just had. He had it so good compared to others. Always the one to be spoiled the most. 

The adults around him assured him he was special, they would tell him how he was one of the only healing gears to grace Blackrock in almost a hundred years. Smothering and observing him like hawks. The few times he did interact with the military division; they all treated him like glass. Medkit even years later cannot get a read on his past caretakers, whether they were pitying him or forced to live in delusion- he shall never find out. They wasted so much of their time to make him great. Look where all that belief got them, he's a wanted criminal by the government.

The other children in the kid's military would scoff and roll their eyes whenever someone complimented him. They would yell profanities at the young antlered demon and call him a spoiled brat. Medkit learned to never engage with them, and if he ever did; the adults around him would scold:

'Your worth is way higher to be paying any mind to those run-of-a-mill useless gears, dear.'

'Stop being so childish, you're ruining your image. Behave like a good young man you are!'

Medkit stops for a second in his trot and exhales shakily. His status and reputation. He starts clawing at his left cheek.

The things he threw away the second he pushed Subspace. The things he threw away the second he grabbed his arm. The things he threw away the second he grabbed that scalpel from his gear. 

He really had everything, didn't he? So foolish. So ungrateful. So....Selfish.

If he only stayed in line- he would be getting his morning coffee just about now and watching the news while Subspace annoyingly rummaged through the kitchen complaining they were out of milk again. Medkit would wish that's all he would complain about for the day. Medkit wishes he could escape the white watercolor painting before him and be back at the sanitary white of his office and working station. This might be pretty, but it sure as hell isn't paying the bills, or letting him live and relax.

Blackrock at least provided one of those.

Reminiscing- he doesn't notice the large sticking-out tree branch in front of him and crashes face first into the snow once again, wailing as he feels his battered left leg hit the frozen rock-sturdy wood. His yelp echoed and ran away further into the woods, startling a few midnight crows from their spots. He hisses and flinches harshly at the ice rubbing into his sensitive and still aching face. He might get hypothermia if this trend of doing involuntary snow angels keeps up. Medkit thinks his pinky finger will fall off soon if it already didn't. The numbness makes him unsure, and he finds he rather not take off his gloves to spare himself another mental breakdown.

Medkit glares at the tree branch and as if to inflict some sort of petty punishment, rips off a smaller branch protruding from it. Leaning on the stick- he wobbily stands up and continues his march. Each step feels like someone digging an axe deeper and deeper into his calf, with no other choice, he pushes on. His vision swayed occasionally and little dizziness-inducing stars floated around his peripheral.

Focused on his steps, he stumbles around the bushes and various fauna, Medkit is astonished by the diversity of life in this hidden-away ecosystem. The cold wind blew and ruffled a couple of still intact- frozen leaves on some trees, making a pleasant creaking sound that eases Medkit's jumbled nerves. Seems even summers in Blackrock aren't kind to its plant life. A loud grumble from his stomach is a sudden reminder that he hasn't eaten in a long time. Well, he hopes they are kind to some of its plant life then.

Breaking away from his sightseeing, he swallows and nervously looks around for any kind of sustenance. If it comes down to it, he's gonna have to turn back to that damn tree and eat pine bark for breakfast. He steps over some branches, scanning the ground.

Fortunately, Medkit spots some berries hanging off a bush and carefully crouches to examine the fruit. Blackfrost berries, native to Blackrock mountains and edible. Eating them straight from the bush though, very unhygienic. A lovely snack full of bacteria. Medkit pushes away his repulsion and shoves the berries into his mouth, grimacing at the bitterness as he chews. He clears out the entire bush and feels some weight settle in his stomach. Satisfied; he goes to wipe his mouth on his sleeve but finds it unpleasantly stiff from the frigid cold. He decides to leave his lips sticky and ignore proper etiquette as he limps further into the woods. 

Despite the weather being unusually kind and sunny, he is still several phimeters over the sea level. If he doesn't find shelter and change out of his clothes, he will get sick and probably die a painfully slow death of hypothermia. His gear can only hold so much, it's in the name; first aid kit.

Medkit is terrified at the thought of dying slowly in agony in the middle of nowhere and freezing solid, like some homeless no name. At least the trees, his natural hard Blackrockian skin, and some fluffier peach fuzz from his origin provide enough protection for now.

Deep in his head again, he slips on a glossy surface and cannot keep the balance with his injured limb. Hitting the rock hard ice, he hisses and clutches his throbbing left leg, and after a moment; gazes at the frozen solid stream under him. His reflection looks back. Tufts of hair sticking in random directions- matted with blood, frost coating his entire horns- making them into an even dimmer and depressing shade of green than his usual color. Nauseating light verdant splotches all over his lab coat and uniform. If anyone happened to run into him they would probably think he's some forest cryptid from Blackrock pholklore. They've got one about forest ghouls, don't they?  

Or a mental ward escapee there's no in-between.

The first thing his twitching eye notices, however, is the revolting hole that was once his left eye. He exhales sharply and stares into the bloody void. How does one even go about patching that thing up? Medkit has seen his fair share of eye trauma but he anticipates that operating on himself isn't an option. So far he's been fine after he numbed it with the remains of what little crystals he managed to stuff into his coat.

He stiffens and his brain shortcircuits. Medkit's eye twitches even more as he thrashes. He runs his hands down his pants and pockets, praying to find a small piece of paper that could've fallen out at so many intervals. A flock of birds' distant chirps echo through the forest joyfully while the former scientist frantically wrestles with many pockets of his ruined work uniform, nature oblivious to the terror the young demon is experiencing. The claws on his gloves inconveniently and repeatedly get stuck in his coat's material as he searches- making indents and pulling threads.

Medkit exhales slowly while leaning on his makeshift cane as he fishes out the small piece of scrap paper. The exact chemical formula and compound for his crystals. If there's anything Medkit cared for in that hellish facility, it's his ideas and projects. Medkit cherishes these small pathetic diamonds more than he does his own life it seems. His gaze softens at the gloomy thought. 

With the precision of a surgeon, he unravels the scrawny paper and looks at the diagrams and notes, suddenly finding it weirdly blurry and hard to examine. His head vibrates with discomfort, the sensation akin to a drill working its way into his frontal suture. His hands move to massage his temple. He grimaces at the feeling of a thousand pin needles digging into his face's left side which has been screaming for proper care. The feeling of a missing eye grew more apparent. Unnerved, The demon folds the paper and clutches it in his fist for now, choosing to not risk it falling out. The brittle weight of all that his life amounted to in his hand, brings him small comfort.

He notices fresh dents of hooves on the snow and gets up with a groan, leaning his entire body weight on the stick. Roaming the forest once more, pushing away branches from his face harshly and letting them snap back to their position after he's through, he thinks about all the ways he could be mauled by the wildlife. A Sawtooth perhaps, they're pretty infamous for roaming Blackrock forests and attacking isolated villages.

"Freeze and put your arms in the ayer!" 

A voice behind him hollers.