#test-shot

The heat of the sun against the tens of teenagers gathered around swallowed the area with sweat as crimson spread throughout the battlefield. Who thought teenagers, some no older than 14, could be more brutal than the adults of this world? Whoever imagined that children had such urges to kill, manipulate, and harm those around them. Were teens at your age not supposed to be hanging around arcades, laughing about the stupid things in life, complaining about school, smacking each other playfully, insulting one another, even getting into small fights that resulted in both sides pouting? Why were you here… why were any of you here?

Your hands swung, hitting their mark here and there. Occasionally wiping blood from a busted lip and cussing out an opponent or two. Everything was going fine, everything was right. Outnumbered, most of the members were feeling the pain, the dread, humiliation, and exhaustion begin to set in. Even though you were starting to tire. Underneath the sun that beat down on the day, a day that should have been for costumes and roughhousing among friends, wild parting, and pranks, was turning into a bloody battle. Why? That answer would never be settled beyond… this world was too cruel. Your eyes occasionally jumped to Mikey, who fought just as brazenly as you. Though he covered more ground while focused on an upper member, occasionally looking out for his friends.

You never backed him up, he didn’t need it… he was the great Mikey… the invincible Mikey. Your cheeks always rose in warmth when he flung his head back, hair bouncing as he dodged a hit and swung a kick. You were distracted, but not too distracted as to not avoid attacks. Sure, a few landed, but nothing brutal. Your eyes locked with his, and he flashed you a small confident smile, helping your energy slowly return.

Time went on and your limbs were growing sore, bruises sure to form along your face, a real pity. You were able to catch a break, slow your breathing, and stretch your ever-falling stamina. It was in that moment where you saw an old friend… somebody who you hadn’t known too long before they ended up in juvie. Panic set in when you noted the knife in his hands. His feet were slowly moving across the pavement towards another friend, somebody close to Mikey… if it had been another extra, you probably wouldn’t have taken too much attention. But the man’s dark hair pulled into a ponytail only belonged to Baji, a founding member.

Without thinking your feet were moving, pushing past those who hadn’t noticed yet. Somewhere inside your mind, the thought that you were not worth enough planted itself in your mind.

What had been racing, slowed, every movement too slow, stretched out before you. The way you skidded to a halt in front of Baji just seconds before the blade shoved itself into your stomach played out with little to no speed. Though it took only a second, it felt like hours as Kazutora, horrified, and stepping back, pulled away the blade. He mumbled things to himself you couldn’t care to listen to as you gripped the wound and sank to your knees. “Y/n!” His voice was… a little soothing as the pain spread its webs around your nerves. Considering you’d jumped before him, the wound wasn’t exactly where it had been aimed, off to the side, but it unquestionably punctured something important… based on the pain, it had to… or did being stabbed always feel this way? You’d experienced cuts before, hell broken ribs, broken noses, busted lips… this was new… middle-schoolers didn’t usually aim to stab people… that was usually not something that happened in fights. Weapons were actually pretty rare in fights… Most people had too much pride to pick one up.

“Fuck…” You mumbled out before familiar blond waves etched in your blurring vision… oh, blurring vision… you hadn’t noticed how weak your body was feeling, considering you were so focused on thoughts of how, why, and just when this happened.

“Why did you…” Baji’s voice stopped being static as you blinked away the dots in your vision and looked down to see how coated your hand was with your blood. Is this all mine? You asked yourself the question within your mind

“Who… who did it?” Why did… Why did Mikey sound so… different? You smiled, tilting your head.

“I’m…” it hurts to talk… Why did it happen? Were you dying? No, you’re not even in high school yet! You haven’t gotten to tell Mikey about your stupid crush, haven’t had a lover, there’s so much left to do… you weren't… you’re too young to die… all of you are too young to die! “Gonna be okay…. R-right?” The tiny stutter in your voice must have snapped something in Mikey. His head looked so clouded… blinded by rage and regret, and the pain of both the mental and physical kind swallowing him.

“… yeah...” though the grip of the boy you’d protected tightening around your arms and the way he wasn’t looking at you… that told a different story… shit, were you really about to…?

“Sorry, Mikey...” Your throat stung… like somebody was shoving acid down it… the cough that eventually left wasn’t clear saliva leaving your throat… the familiar color of blood dripped from your lips and panic began to set in. “M-Mi-Mikey… I don’t… I…. oh god… I don't wanna die…”

“Somebody already called an ambulance… Mikey… we should-”

“Shut up…” he’d been hanging his head, staring down at the blood seeping from the upper right of your stomach, but now his eyes had shot towards the kid holding the dripping knife.

His foot kicked in his signature movement. A kick so lightning quick, the eye couldn’t see it coming. The poor kid landed on the ground, eyes dizzy looking around, no time to react when Mikey grabbed his collar and swung his fist onto their face before your eyes. You reached out, realizing just how weak you were… so pitiful, like a breaking doll. “Mikey… stop… Mikey… M-Mi...” As blood spilled from your lips again, your position was shifted by the man behind you.

“Stop trying to talk, you fucking dumb-ass! Stop worrying about others and focus on yourself, you selfless idiot! You shoulda let me be stabbed, Mikey… Mikey’s got a crush on ya dumb-ass!” Baji spilled the words, his hair still held up as he continued pressing on the wound. There was some specific routine for this… but what? What was it?

“He’s… he’s gonna kill him Baji…”

“So what? He stabbed ya.”

“But we won’t get a happy ending if he goes to jail when I'm all f-fixed up… m'not gonna die.” Baji’s hands were shaking… his hands… never shook. You shivered in your spot… it was getting cold and you were… sleepy. Your eyes still focused on Mikey, pounding down on the boy's face. Over, and over, and over again… he was genuinely going to kill Kazutora… his old friend. It began to feel like breathing through a straw. You couldn’t exactly tell when the air in your lungs began tightening and the oxygen in your body led to further fatigue, but your eyes hardly kept themselves open. How long had it been since you’d been stabbed?

“Hey… you can’t close your eyes!”

“I’m tired…”

“Keep watching Mikey then! Do something, just not closin your eyes, you dumb shit!”

“C-can… tell Mikey m’love’m?” Baji couldn’t make too much sense of those words, slurred together as the rasps in your breath got louder and you teared up. You honestly were going to die here… without getting to see the world through adult eyes…

You must have closed your eyes, fallen out of it for a moment… Mikey’s knees buckled beneath him as he dropped next to you. Your eyes were open for another moment as he took your body from Baji… As you looked up with half-lidded eyes, you met eyes deprived of anything. There wasn’t any rage, no sense of despair… just an empty void of darkness. His face splattered in blood, along with his fists. “Still…here” you croaked, trying to nuzzle closer, but he held you in the same position.

Sirens wailed in the background and there was a small bit of hope… you wanted to hold onto it, but you couldn’t keep your eyes open or get too much air in. You could only let tears drip as your eyes closed and the rest of your body went completely limp in his arms.

The last you heard of the outside world contained the many voices contained in the static of people trying to save you before your thoughts led you to the end. I’ll protect him in another life… keep his eyes from looking like that…

~

Your eyes opened in a gasp reaching down to your stomach. Expecting hospital walls, you were all too surprised to be shielding your eyes from the sun, laying on a field of grass. “Jeez, you take long naps.” Mikey… you went to sit up, but arms around you kept you laying on your back. “Mmm, don’t feel like getting up!” Mikey chuckled before another familiar voice clicked his tongue.

“Jeez, stop flirting and making the rest of us feel single as fuck.” Your eyes lifted to spot Baji sitting on a wall, one leg dangling, his hair moving with the breeze, down around his shoulders.

Mikey sat up looking away. “We weren't flirting! Y/n was shaking in their sleep, so I was keeping them warm!”

“Flirting…” Draken pointed to Mikey with his typical scowl. Now tears started to drip from your eyes. Draken… was alive… you were alive… everybody was here. Was this a dream?

You pinched yourself, and Mikey dropped his jaw before hitting your hand away. “O-Oi! Y/n! Why’d ya do that?”

“Checking if I was dreaming...” you mumbled before hugging him, and everybody glanced a bit creeped out.

“I think they went crazy…” Baji huffed, pointing to you as you chuckled.

“Just had… a bad dream...” Yeah… now you could find a way to help him without getting yourself killed. You didn’t want to die again… not like you had there. “Mikey… I have a crush on you.”

“Woah! Did they just-” Baji had his mouth covered by a familiar blond female.

“Shhh,” she hissed, watching the two who had become the utter center of attention.

Mikey smiled, patting your head before pressing a kiss to your forehead, turning away giddily… right… This was Mikey before all his friends were killed, like Draken… and yourself. “Then I guess we're dating.” You smiled, at least that… whatever it had been, gave you enough confidence and urgency to tell the boy how much you wished to never leave his side.

“Aaaa! This calls for Sushi!” Emma hummed as you chuckled, pink spread throughout your face as you possessed everything.