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You hear the wood of the bow snap and the clatter as it is discarded and he throws himself into the fray. You would stop to watch or help him but your Action Claws are raking through the grinning face of a pale purple basilisk. You hear the now familiar sound of carapaces crunching and caving beneath a STRONG fist. The ogre he is fighting groans as its exoskeleton splinters and rust colored blood drip, drip, drips from the wound.
You dodge around a serrated tail and leap back in, latching onto the underling’s back and tearing bright blue claws through its hide and deep purple blood rushes out of the wound. You vaguely register the sensation of warm blood smeared on your face. The monster is crumbling beneath you and you disengage as it gurgles out its last, terrible groan. Its corpse lingers only a moment before it shatters and in its wake is left a plethora of resources. You glance across the cloying terrain to Equius and watch as his opponent keens in pain before collapsing reluctantly. Your tail is whipping back and forth, adrenaline pumping, and you’re bristled, looking for the next challenger. The crystalline white ground is spattered with every color of blood on the hemospectrum and it slowly seeps in, no doubt absorbing the sweetness.
Indigo drip, drip, drips from his knuckles and you can see bruises standing out in stark contrast to his dark gray skin. He’s sweaty, but this isn’t anything peculiar. When you look closely, you think you can see his chest rising and falling a bit more rapidly than usual.
There’s a pallet of colors drip, drip, dripping from your Action Claws and pastel bodies with beaks and tentacles, feline mouths, hooves and wings and pincers and gills are all dissolving into piles of grist and tar and mercury and cobalt and chalk and marble. You have only just begun to feel the sting of small wounds on your arms and shoulders. Olive blood oozes from small flesh wounds, mingling with the identical color of your coat and you can’t feel bothered to worry over them.
You are mesmerized and vexed, watching the bruises bloom across Equius’s skin. Though he’s always been impervious to the imps’ attacks, the ogres were able to leave marks on your moirail. Even as he relaxes his stance, drops his arms, and retrieves the broken remains of his bow from the sugary ground, you can see splotches of indigo flourishing and spreading. They are washed out by the gray of his skin and the expanding black as the blemishes age, mirroring the dark circles under his eyes, visible beneath the cracked glasses. Even though his injuries are even more minor than yours, you feel disquiet bubbling in your chest. It’s so rare for something to split his skin, but the hard carapaces of the underlings always do a number on his bare fists. The dark blue mingles with the saccharine ground, standing out in stark contrast.
“Oh, Nepeta. It seems you have been aggrieved.” Your eyes are pulled away from the torn skin on his hands to his face, watching the corners of his mouth turn downwards and you can see a glimpse of broken teeth as he approaches. His hair is in a state of disarray, loose strands falling unkempt and unchecked. You think he should try pulling it up, perhaps in a ponytail. He would certainly agree if you used that terminology.
You recall the time he forbade you from Flarping with your friends and the frustration you felt. Ideally you had hoped you and he could make a team together, but you knew he would never agree. His vehement disagreement with your desire to play was anticipated but left you no less crestfallen. You hadn’t understood what could possibly be so terrible about playing with your friends. You had heard plenty of Team Scourge’s ferocity, but it would have been so fun to play with Tavros and Aradia and Terezi and even Vriska. Of course, Equius’s judgment had proved sound. Vriska had mind controlled Tavros and made him walk off a cliff. The whole session had gone awry and snowballed into a cycle of revenge. At the end of it all, Tavros was paralyzed, Aradia was dead, Terezi was blind, and Vriska lost her left arm and eye. You had been certain you were more than equipped to play a simple game of Flarp with your friends but you maybe a little grateful for Equius’s intervention. You had quickly lost interest in Flarping after that.
You let him look over the small wounds, knowing he will continue to insist if you deny him. You take the opportunity to look over his own blemishes. His knuckles no longer drip, drip, drip, with new dark blue scabs closing the tears. He is no longer perspiring and his breathing has returned to normal and you are happy to try and get him to roleplay with you. He is as unreceptive as always, telling you how you are behaving foolishly and that he has no time to indulge such silliness. You wish he would roleplay and you give him a small pout but let it be. Even though he chides you for it, he does not insist you stop anymore. Perhaps, with time, he will come around.
You roleplay with him, nudging and urging him to let you see his knuckles because the carapaces are sharp, even for a troll’s sturdy skin. He tries to decline, assuring you it is nothing. But you continue to insist and he caves easily.
The gray hide is thick and sturdy, difficult to penetrate. But the underlings with their multicolored carapaces and their horns and teeth and claws and jagged joints, it’s inevitable that there is some collateral. You hold his left hand delicately and you know he is worried he might accidentally hurt you the way he does with so many things. You examine the tears intently, humming a quiet tune to yourself and your tail patiently curling and uncurling.
Indigo streaks have dried on his fingers where the blood drip, drip, dripped down from the wounds. You don’t try to clean it up, you have nothing immediately on hand regardless. After a moment you release his hand and you think you see him let out a breath he had been holding, but you pretend not to notice. You know more underlings will arrive shortly, so the pair of you begin gathering all the various resources dropped by the slain imps and ogres and basilisks in the shadow of a vast teapot, smiling felines watching quietly.