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…His hands are sticky.
Before anything else happens, that’s the very first thing M1g-621 notices. Well, no, that’s not quite true. He’d noticed a few things before his hands got sticky, after all. It’s why there’s this… red stuff on his hands. Because he’d noticed something.
He thinks red stuff, because honestly? He’s never really been sure if Milkman was human. No human could ever put someone through as much pain, as much suffering as Milkman had caused him, so, yeah, Milkman bleeds red, but he’s not really convinced this is human blood.
“M1g?”
Right. The other things he’d noticed. M1g snaps his head up towards the voice, teeth bared in one of those grins wild animals give that is far more of a threat display than a pleasant expression (heh, pleasant expression, yeah, that’s a good one).
“Viking,” he snarls. The name tastes bad on his tongue. He hefts the axe in his hands (good, solid diamond – Kale had gotten it for him. He’d have to thank him later) and stares the man down, wings snapping out from their folded position.
“Uh,” Viking says ineloquently. “Hey, buddy. Whatcha got there?”
M1g takes a step forward, wings flared outwards to make himself look larger, half braced for the disconnect, the feeling of crashing down. “That answer depends on if you still have it on you.”
Viking looks different than he’s used to. More casual dress, tacky floral-print shirt and bucket hat. His eyes are weird, the heterochromia in his left eye seems to be only partial, his elytra look more like phantom than vex wings. He raises both his hands in the air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Great,” M1g says. “Then I’ll give you a head start, how about that?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m out,” Viking says, taking several steps backwards and off into the… Void… huh. Right. That’s there. M1g can hear rockets firing off as Viking retreats from the island. He’s leaving. He’s leaving, he doesn’t have that thing or he’d have used it already, and that means M1g is safe.
His hands are still sticky. He feels something bubbling up in his chest and goes to cough, only that cough turns into a sort of hoarse, wild laugh. “I – I did it. I did it.”
“You just killed Milkman!” a voice responds. Not a familiar one. M1g-621 turns, head tilted to the side, and looks towards the speaker. Sunglasses. Red-orange dyed hair, undercut showing dark brown. Multicolored cropped jacket – he reads red, purple, blue, clock pendant. Strange. They look almost like if Viking was… no, but they’re innocent. They weren’t there.
M1g’s grin is no more comforting than it was five seconds ago, teeth so tightly gritted his jaw will probably be aching later (that’s the concern of the others, though). He lowers the axe, doing his best to try and – something? Seem approachable? His grin is too tight, too braced, he knows it. “It’s okay! It’s okay!”
“How is it okay! You just–” they sputter, gesturing at the fading bloodstain on the ground “–he wasn’t doing anything!”
“Wasn’t doing anything yet,” M1g says. His chest is still tight. Maybe it wasn’t just laughter, it feels almost hard to breathe. “I got to him in time. You’re – for now at least. Safe for a little bit. He should – I think he should know better than to be over here for a little while.”
Their (wasn’t their name Ruby? Ruby, yeah, that was it) eyes widen beneath their near-opaque sunglasses. “Safe!? You just committed axe murder! M1g! What part of that screams safe to you?”
There’s something itchy on his face. M1g absently reaches up to swipe at it with his sleeve, staining part of his face red in the process. Right. Still covered in might-be-blood from Milkman. “The part where he’s not trying to rope you into something anymore. Sell you on some stupid idea. Trap you in a box. I don’t know what he was planning.”
Ruby shakes their head slowly. “Everyone on this server is insane.”
“Yeah,” M1g says, wiping his face with his sleeve again, managing to scrub off enough of the blood that the faded glow of his freckles shines through, “well, you can thank Milkman for me, at the very least. Though you shouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve it.”
They stop, looking M1g-621 up and down, and their face – doesn’t exactly soften, doesn’t exactly harden either. Becomes a sort of cold understanding.
“What?” M1g says, hands tightening around his axe. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you that,” Ruby says, voice oddly inflectionless compared to their near panic before. M1g takes a step back, tight feeling in his chest intensifying, wings flaring out wider.
Their expression changes for the definitely softer this time. Still sharp, the kind of sharp that makes M1g wonder if he’s made a mistake, but it’s a little warmer. “I don’t know if I can tell you that,” they repeat. “But I think I get what’s going on here. I’m not mad, just… I’m going h– back to Cherry now. Don’t follow me.”
M1g watches as they launch off the island, allay wings flaring outwards, springboarding through into the air like a swimmer off a diving board into the flight equivalent of a freestyle stroke. He watches, tense and braced, as they vanish out to the horizon, until they’re little more than a moving speck against the sunset.
His chest still feels just as tight, breath still feels heavy. It almost feels like he’s made a mistake, even though he’s sure he’s done the right thing, sure of it. Milkman’s just – he knows Milkman all too well. Something bad would have happened if he was left unchecked, M1g’s certain of it.
A low, calm whistle from across the path. M1g’s head snaps up once more, eyes focusing on another unfamiliar person leaning against the railing. Gold drips from his fingertips onto the ground before blowing away in flakes as he very clearly sizes M1g up. Milkman’s island partner. M1g raises his axe, ready to defend himself if need be, but the other Birch islander just leans back against the railing, fake-inspecting his fingernails as his other hand leaves a faint gold stain along the cobblestone.
“This a revenge thing?” Fool says, raising an eyebrow at him with an easygoing, relaxed smile. He radiates a sort of calm M1g wishes he was feeling right now.
“You’re not,” M1g-621 says, and then has to heave for breath because he’s nearly forgotten to breathe in the time it’s taken him to realize who Fool is, “mad?”
Fool shrugs, rolling his eyes (or at least one of them – the other one, M1g notices, is fixed in place. Uncharacteristically silvery, probably a prosthetic). “M1g, buddy. I assume your name’s still M1g. You ever heard the expression play stupid games, win stupid prizes?”
“…Yeah,” M1g says slowly. “Uh. To both of those things.”
“Different color than usual,” Fool says, giving him another once-over. “I’ll remember that.”
The tight feeling in M1g’s chest spikes up again. Something about that feels like a threat. He takes a step back, hefting the axe. “Don’t. Don’t – stay back. Stay away from me.”
“Personal space, got it,” Fool says, spreading both his hands as if to show he’s unarmed, even though M1g suspects he’s anything but. “No, but really. Milkman’s an expert at playing stupid games. It’s about time he started winning some stupid prizes. So by all means, if you’ve got a grudge, don’t let me stop you from following through.”
M1g tilts his head to the side, wincing slightly as his neck pops. “Why?”
He’s not sure exactly what why question he’s asking. Could be a lot of things, because he really doesn’t know anything about Fool, and something about how calm he is still unnerves him just a little.
Fool shrugs again. “Birch Kingdom’s godless country, but I’m no godless man. Retribution’s a sacred thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to mess with – hang on a sec.” His bow’s in his hands, fully drawn and pointed at a speck on the other end of the bridge before M1g can so much as flinch.
“I’m having a private conversation,” Fool drawls. “If you don’t mind.”
The approaching figure that is Milkman stops dead in his tracks, head turning from M1g-621 and then snapping back to Fool as an arrow lands right between his feet. He yells something indistinct, something M1g can’t hear over the blood rushing in his ears.
“If you don’t mind,” Fool repeats, barely raising his volume, and shoots again. The arrow hits Milkman square in his left arm this time, and M1g stifles a panicked bark of laughter, hands gripping the handle of his axe so tightly he can feel splinters digging into his skin.
“Alright! Fine!” Milkman yells distantly, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration as he retreats back into the Birch Kingdom.
“Where was I?” Fool says, slinging the bow casually across one shoulder. M1g watches as the gold stains on the bowstring flake away.
“Retribution,” M1g-621 says, dry-mouthed. He’s never really talked to Fool before now. A little part of him wishes he’d headed back to Bamboo Kingdom to collapse and let another M1g deal with the fallout for his actions. Something feels wrong in a new, different way. Like something’s wrong with Fool in a different way than Milkman (or Viking, or Kale, or–).
Fool snaps his fingers. “That! Yes. If you have beef with Milkman, I’m not going to interfere. As long as you keep it between the two of you and don’t start dragging kingdom politics into this. I don’t want to pick a side this early, you know?”
M1g takes a shaky breath in. Something feels like it’s gnawing at the back of his head – he probably has limited time before he’s forced out of this body again for a while. It takes him a while to settle on what he can actually say without too much trouble.
“Okay,” he says. Raises his sleeve to try and wipe dried blood off his face again. Fool gives him a look and taps a spot on his own cheek a bit lower than where M1g had been aiming with his own sleeve.
“If you ever want to talk,” Fool says, staring at M1g, and M1g absently notes that the gold markings on his face look almost like blood dripping from a forehead wound. He waits for Fool to finish the sentence for several seconds before he realizes that’s the entire sentence already, and that it was more of a question than anything else.
“Here’s fine,” M1g says. “Or one of our bridges.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Fool promises, tapping his face next to his silver eye. He straightens up, drops his bow off his shoulder into his inventory, and then stretches. “Right. I’ve still got some building to do.”
M1g looks over towards the Birch Kingdom, feels that tightness in his chest returning. The idea of leaving anyone alone with Milkman doesn’t sit right with him, even if that anyone is the other Birch islander. Almost especially, though he isn’t sure why.
Fool follows his gaze and snorts. “I’ve been dealing with him since day one,” he says. “If anything, you should be worried about him having to deal with me.”
M1g-621 grits his teeth in one of those fixed-point smiles again. “That’s what I thought, too. That’s what I thought, and then he –”
He trails off with a barely suppressed shudder, wings flaring out defensively.
“You should talk to Ruby about that sometime,” Fool says. “When you haven’t just axe-murdered someone in front of them. I’ll be honest – there have been better first impressions. At least it was Milkman. If you’d gone for Viking first, who knows?”
“They’re close?”
“They’re not not close. I don’t know.” Fool shrugs yet again. “None of my business.”
“Right,” M1g says, and turns back towards where Bamboo Kingdom should be, somewhere further beyond the horizon. His hands fumble with a rocket, still sticky with blood – it’s mostly dried by now, feels even more unpleasant to the touch.
“Try not to kill Kale too much,” Fool says dryly.
M1g-621 lets out a soft huff of laughter that strains against the tension in his jaw, the ever-tightening feeling of panic gripping at him. “No promises.”