#shardhearted

“You know,” Zagreus grunts, shoving the tip of Varatha through something—he doesn’t even know what; he’s barely looking anymore—and ripping it savagely free, only to toss it another direction, without awaiting its return, “I’ve thought about it, I really have and this neighborhood…” He shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “Unsavory.”

Hawker crashes headfirst through the wall of the warehouse, taking the dilapidated structure down the rest of the way and shrugging it off as if it is cardboard. The Tyrant is too big and moving too fast to alter course as it charges the agent, but the quadrupedal beast flings her tail sideways like a rudder and intercepts it so close to impact that one of the tendrils comprising her mane brushes Leon’s back as she hurtles past. The impact is tremendous, like a locomotive crash, and the fight is short. There is a struggle, snarling, a horrid cacophony of tearing and crunching, and the Manticore liberates most of the Tyrant’s upper half from the rest of its twitching corpse. Only when the voluntary kicking and thrashing stills beneath her taloned hands does she raise her head, scanning the dark with her many eyes. She did not miss his presence. It is hard to hide from a beast so well-evolved to hunt and kill.

There is a deft, almost birdlike toss of her head and a snap of tri-directional jaws and the beast swallows the mess of gore and fabric she is holding. A multitude of black tongue-tendrils sweep some of the blood from her muzzle and retracts back within her arsenal of dagger teeth with a metallic snap, and she rumbles softly, the sound punctuated by a snort.

Show yourself.

It took a lot, those days, to surprise Leon Kennedy. He'd seen and killed more nightmares than the average person ever had in their lifetime. But life had a way yet of throwing shit at him that he wasn't prepared for.

Something bursting through the collapsing warehouse he was partially sheltering against was absolutely not something he was prepared for and as such, the panicked dive away from the collapsing structure was instinctive so that he didn't get caught in falling debris.

He barely caught sight of the creature that had come barreling through but he definitely heard the sound of it crashing into the tyrant that he'd been facing off against - the last of the assortment of creatures bearing down on him and the second of two tyrants, if the motionless, mangled body lying a ways off was anything to go by.

A single glance over his shoulder was all he spared to make sure he wasn't about to get flattened by two monstrous and inhuman things before he was ducking into the still-settling ruins of the warehouse he'd already fought his way through earlier that day.

He remained hidden even while he heard the unmistakable sounds of meat and bone being consumed, not particularly needing to see that in detail.

When the victorious beast didn't move off though, he knew then that it was waiting for him, displaying an intelligence that worried him in what he assumed was another tyrant of some description. Arias had maintained his intelligence after becoming a tyrant too which suggested a worrying trend in the biggest and most dangerous bioweapons.

Noctis's arms are wrapped tightly around himself, shielding his body from the cold, expecting Shiva. This man is not Shiva. The young king's comrades look to him as if he has gone insane, as if he is somehow to blame for this strange turn of events.

"I..." Dumbfounded, he looks back to his friends. Even the Imperial troopers surrounding them seem taken aback by the sudden appearance of something which is clearly not one of their traditional gods, or anyone's gods to their knowledge. The only beings who continue forward are the magitek soldiers, whose every movement is accompanied by the muted screams of the damned and that strange creaking noise which seems to suggest they could use more lubrication in their joints. It would be comical, if not for their shambling gait.

"Noct," the bespectacled one grunts, moving closer to his charge, weapons outward, back facing Noctis. "Perhaps now isn't the time to question the form of divine intervention."

"Yeah just ask the guy for a hand or we're toast!" The small blonde is the only one of the four young men bearing a firearm and the seems the most sensible, although against these odds, how much sense can there be? They appear to be in the middle of a military base, of all places, not a single one of them wearing any kind of tactical gear or armor. In their defense, the armor of the opposition appears almost medieval in nature and if not for the mechs and flying apparatus all around, it would be almost comedic.

"No time for this," snarls the biggest of the four, gripping the hilt of a sword that is easily as tall as he is, though it seems he has little trouble wielding it. His eyes narrow as he surveys the enemy. If this creature who has just appeared is also the enemy, then they are truly "toast".

"Uh... ah..." Noctis stammers. "I didn't mean to... I... dammit--can... are you a..."

Jake was bored. There was had been no one to bother all day, stuck doing school worksheets and his piano practice after having been coldly informed that everyone was busy, he needed to entertain himself. So, the howling late into the day was essentially music to Jake's ears; finally, someone who wasn't busy! Jake made his way unimpeded through the labs before sneaking his way past the final layer of security. Everyone was so focused on nervously checking the 16 didn't breach it, they didn't realize Jake had breached the security until he was already at 16's side, carbon fiber gloves on to protect from any numbing goop.

Ever since whatever the fuck had happened in that conflict, Jack hadn't been feeling... Right. He couldn't eat, the sun was starting to give him more than just mild sun burns, and people around him had started to smell... Different... Enticing, even. That is what scared him the most.

IT WORKED.

YOU MAY NEED TO CALL FOR DECON.

“You followin’ me?”

He'd known that she was there somewhere but he couldn't quite put his finger on her exact location and even when he did finally pinpoint where she was, it was too late.

The grunt as his back hit the wall was cut off by the grip around his throat and he gurgled as he struggled for breath, reaching to loosen the grip only for both arms to be immobilised, not that he could turn his head to see what had hold of them. The strong suspicion, given that the thing that had him wasn't entirely human, was that they weren't hands.

Despite the rather unfortunate situation he was in, there was no fear in his pale blue eyes, only perhaps a kind of resignation.

"Yeah," he rasped around the grip on his throat. What was the point in trying to deny it after all. He did flex his hands to test the grip around his arms and concluded that he actually wasn't going anywhere any time soon, so he relaxed.