#jericho mesoin

This was obviously meant to entice Jericho out of the building. And it was working, if only to ask why this loser was throwing rocks up two floors to his dorm window in the middle of the night.

There was no point in wasting time. It was dark in his room and it was night outside, so Jericho shifted to shadow, allowing him to travel along the length of the building’s side. This was faster than if he were to walk about the school grounds itself; he manifested himself still several feet above the ground, dropping onto his feet with a bit of a crunch. He felt no pain, which was why he was always fine with such large drops; his body still cried from the contact, though, even if he could not feel it.

The figure was farther away than Jericho had calibrated; he had expected to land some several feet before them, but now the person was several yards away. It was clear, now that Jericho wasn’t several floors above, that the person was dressed in all black and trying very hard to not be recognizable. It was a pathetic attempt in Jericho’s eyes, as it was a mere mockery of his daily style. A dark hoodie made the person look like an amorphous blob, and Jericho’s nose scrunched in distaste at the idea that someone in sweats was calling the shots in the middle of the night. Their hoodie was up, but something else was covering their face, so that only their eyes were visible. At this distance though Jericho could see nothing more than the glowing whites in the night.

Jericho could travel faster while he was a corporeal shadow, but that seemed disingenuous. There was no point in hiding when this person obviously wanted to be followed. And so follow Jericho did, though several feet behind, his walk a bit stiff with the use of his ancient cane. Minutes passed and it became obvious that he was being led to downtown, the school falling out of sight. As if this person and Jericho were cut from the same mould, Jericho was being led in a way that kept them out of the light--out of sight of any stragglers, or streetlights that were on. He did not feel fear, but instead a twinge of respect--at the very least, this person was trying their best at ambushing him.

After being ignored for the entire walk to the town--which was dead, deserted, dark, possibly some other d-word that would describe how uninhabited it looked and felt--Jericho was more than a little shocked when the man turned around with a gun in his hand. He lifted his eyebrows in surprise, eyes widening ever so slightly. The person was just a few feet in front of him, and the lower half of their face was covered with a black bandana; the hand holding the gun was shaking. Whatever respect Jericho had had for them was gone. They had obviously not done their research on him, they did not know he was impervious to pain and to death.

“You killed my brother,” The man choked out, his voice low but cracking, shaking. He wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was getting emotional. But that meant he was also becoming unstable, and that made Jericho just a bit nervous.

“No, it was probably not me,” Jericho held up his hands, palms facing out to the man. “More likely, it was--”

And then the gun went off. It wasn’t as loud as Jericho had expected, had remembered guns to be, much more muffled. If anything, he had heard the bullet when it passed through him clearer than when the gun had gone off. There was no sensation accompanied with it, just the mere tearing of fabric, of flesh, and of more fabric, with the spraying of some fluid onto his shirt and onto the ground. Jericho looked down, picking at the edges of fabric next to the wound, wondering just how long it would take for this to heal.

The masked man’s hand was still shaking, the gun clacking with how strong his nerves were. He was also breathing heavily, though Jericho couldn’t tell if it was because he had started crying or if he was in shock at actually firing the weapon. So Jericho reached for the weapon with one hand, and raised his other hand--glowing black--to urge the man towards him. “Let us not continue in this manner. Drop the weapon, or give it to me, and let us settle this like distinguished men.”

“Fuck you,” The man said, or moreso choked out, the sound of his teeth chattering reaching Jericho from several feet away. It was a grating sound, further souring Jericho’s mood. “Do you feel nothing? You fucking ruin lives.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Jericho muttered, almost through gritted teeth. He was getting angry--most victims did not have heroes avenging them, and he was beginning to realize how frustrating it was, how much of a nuisance. “It was nothing personal, not on my end. I just do as I am told.”

“No, you’re not sorry yet,” The man spat, and now it was clear that he was crying, tears were running down his face and blurring his eyes. “But you will be.”

Jericho raised one eyebrow slowly. “You are threatening me?” It was in this moment that Jericho was most frightening; he was not infamous by accident. Although the light did not shift position, shadows seemed to grow and stretch across his face, creep along his hands, the shadow by his feet grew twice as long, three times as long. Jericho was already tall, and now he seemed impossibly tall, impossibly dark, barely human. He wasn’t quite using his powers yet, but when he became angry Jericho lost part of his control--the darkness, the shadows that gave him his powers took over. He would not be intimidated.

The man held up the gun, still shaking. “I hope you suffer like I did once you lose someone so close to you.” Before Jericho could comprehend the situation, the man turned the gun on himself, and pulled the trigger. Blood spray and brain matter coated the ground beneath him, and up to several feet away. His body fell, rocking back from the shot’s impact and falling on his back. Blood pooled out slowly, more black than red in the night.

Candace entered his mind first, kind and naive and knowing nothing about his job meant that she was the most vulnerable. December flickered in afterwards because, though she knew what Jericho did and who to consider dangerous, she was reckless. Just because she knew better did not mean she would do the safe thing. And then the girl that was a mix of both his sisters, a girl who put others in front of herself even if it meant endangering herself--

The same girl that had not been in bed despite the moon being high in the sky.

Jericho’s stomach lurched.

And then he threw up. Black matter mixed with the man’s blood on the ground, truly masking the scene. It was thicker than blood, clumpy, but it was what kept Jericho animated. His hand reached for his chest where the bullet hole was still clear and open--he wasn’t about to poke around in it though to really investigate whether it had started healing. Since he felt no pain, it was hard to determine when he would next get sick because it tended to just happen without a moment’s warning. Jericho wiped his mouth with his sleeve, black sludge slicked on it. He had no idea where to start looking for Evie.

Now that there was nobody about, Jericho felt comfortable roaming the city as a shadow. There was no remorse in leaving the body behind; he did not know the man, and though Jericho found it regrettable that his bodily fluids were being left behind, he was confident that they were not traceable. And the man was an obvious suicide. He preferred when things were simple like this. It meant that he did not have to dirty his hands.

Being in a form that put him closer to his element meant that he would sense when Evie was nearby. It wasn’t so much pain that he felt, and even moreso it wasn’t that he felt anything; his element juxtaposed Evie’s, they complemented each other as much as they opposed each other, and the tingling and discomfort was just his feeble human brain trying to understand what his element was telling him: warning, danger, keep your eyes open.

There was not so much of a hint of her for ages, ages, it was agonizing to wonder whether she was locked up alone somewhere or being tormented by one of that man’s allies. His mind went to the worst thing imaginable, only to remember that she had elemental powers--and then to remember again how inoffensive they were, and how feeble she would be during the nighttime.

But all Jericho had to do was think like a criminal. That was not outside of his forte. He already lived outside the boundaries of the law, both naturally and socially, and he certainly knew the layout of this area better than Evie, probably better than its inhabitants. With that in mind, Jericho realized there were only a few places they would take her; those places narrowed even more if the kidnapper(s? Jericho did not know how many people he would find, if any) knew that she was an elemental who was weak at night. And if they knew that she was important to Jericho, then they knew exactly that.

He had to expect a capable opponent because even if Evie was weak at night, this was his prime hour; and any enemy of his would prepare for Jericho at his worst.

There was one place here in the clouds that Jericho loved above all else, one place where he felt most himself and most powerful at the same time. The very thought that someone would use this against him, would know this about him, made him feel the most vulnerable he had in almost a decade. It was a strange feeling, this weakness, he had taken to power so obsessively that being a victim had never been an option. But what he considered a haven in the night would be cruel to Evie.

On the outskirts of town, all nature and sense of life fell away. There was nothing manmade out here, and there was nothing living out here; it was the clouds and the rocks and the ice that formed the base of everything Elemental Castle was built on, and it was the empty space and void that went on for light years, stars seemingly no closer than if they had been on Earth. It was here in the middle of night that Jericho revelled, where the sun’s rays did not reach and there was not a single lamp light. There was the dark sky above and the surrounding blackness, and nothing.

Except for tonight, where a small beam of light was shining feeble, fighting against the overwhelming dark surrounding it. A tool for those who did not live for the night, did not have a piece of the darkness settled in their soul to make it so that their vision was uninhibited by the dark. It took him seconds for Jericho to be within feet of Evie and her captor.

“Shocking. The diablo of the night really will come save his will-o-wisp.” The man had a decidedly latino accent, and thus not related to The Alleywayman. He was barely taller than Evie, stocky, but still managed to have a good grip on her, one arm wrapped just under her chin and the other around her waist. She was wrapped in his arms like a pretzel, as if just a simple movement would snap her in half.

Jericho did not hesitate from pulling the gun out of his back pocket and shooting at the captor. The bullet caught in his shoulder, blood spattering forward, some of it dripping onto Evie because of the way he held her. Her eyes went wide, but she was shock still, not even trying to free herself in the captor’s momentary weakness. He was breathing a bit heavier, and Evie was trying to lean away as his face was leveled with hers.

“Let her go and you can walk away with that as your only memory of me,” Jericho said without lowering his gun. “I will not give you a second chance.”

“Jeric--” Evie started before the man covered her mouth with his grubby hand. She squirmed a little against him until the man stomped hard on her foot, which quieted her except for a muffled squeal.

“You don’t know loss, but you will.” The man’s hands slid up so that he was entirely gripping Evie by her head. Blood and grime on his hands caught in her hair.

This change in position exposed his chest enough for Jericho to land another shot. The man did not drop down immediately, but he did stagger, or sputter, his body shuddering. His grip loosened enough for Evie to drop to her knees, protectively curling herself into a ball by his feet. Jericho shot again, and this time the man’s eyes rolled backwards before he fell, hard, to the ground. He did not immediately move to Evie, or call out to her, as he barely had the strength to lower the gun and return it to his pocket. It felt only too plausible that another man would come running out from the dark, and Jericho would need to be ready.

But one minute passed, and two, and only then did Jericho make his way over to Evie. He gripped her hands and pried them apart off her head, then grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look up at him. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were stained, but she was no longer crying. “They didn’t even tell me what they wanted, I had no idea what I had done--”

[ keep me in your heart ]