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“Just think of all the power we hold now, Meddy! Everything we can do, how much we can create!” Subspace raised his arms, the dramatic gesture nearly knocking a microscope off the table. Medkit caught it in a moment’s notice, letting out a disgruntled huff as he looked towards Subspace’s less-than-caring expression.
The pink-hued demon merely chortled, lifting himself up on his centipede-esq tail. “Don’t you see? We can bend reality if we try hard enough with these–not even the gods will be able to stop us!” Subspace suddenly lurched forward, looming over Medkit as the other demon corrected the position of the microscope.
“And whoever said the crystals were that powerful, let alone should be used for that? Subspace, you need to listen to logic. The powers they hold… this should be used for healing, not for overpowering the Swords.”
Subspace whined in response, reaching forward to put a hand on Medkit’s shoulder. The mint-green demon grabbed his wrist, pushing his arm away. “Don’t act like a child. You’ve seen what I’m capable of while wielding these–the more we format into healing crystals, the better.”
“But Meddy! We don’t need healing, you even said you didn’t like doing that! Why are you all for healing when you don’t even want to be a doctor? Plus!!! Think about those models I concepted! The Biografts–these crystals could power an ARMY!” Subspace tried, staring at Medkit’s hand at first–then his shoulder, then right into his eyes. “Don’t be so mean to me…”
“I’m not being mean, I’m being fair. Listen–the more we heal, the more people will care about our efforts. Making mindless robots built only to fight a silent war will do nothing.” Medkit shifted away from the table, one hand brushing through his hair. “You’re being foolish.”
“Wha--EXCUSE ME! I am not foolish!!! If anything, you’re the foolish one, not seeing how much potential these have. If they could boost you enough to allow you to revive demons, who knows what they could do in the hands of someone with immense power?” The scuttling of Subspace’s extra legs was loud in the otherwise quiet laboratory, Medkit could tell he was following him. The mint-green demon halted, his tail brushing against the floor as he turned to face Subspace again.
The pink demon was trying his all to give Medkit a pleading expression, his hands clasped in front of him. “Please just listen to me, Meddy!”
“No. You don’t know what you’re getting into, thinking you can hand these out to powerful demons with no consequences. If these crystals fall into the wrong hands, the destruction of everything could be upon us. Not just Playground–Blackrock would fall too.” Medkit set a hand on the table rather harshly, accenting Blackrock as he did so. Subspace leaned back, huffing.
“You’re just not seeing my side of this! Give this a chance, Meddy, I mean–we don’t have to heal everyone if they’re too powerful to get hurt! You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and you can get a sweet sweet look at all the coding!” Subspace tried again, leaning forward once again. He was starting to get on Medkit’s nerves, always far too close to the other demon. “I know you like coding! And, and!!! Think of what else we could make! So many inventions–Swords, we won’t have to worry about a thing!”
“Except for the inevitability of injury and death, even to supposedly invincible soldiers. Maybe we will have to worry, Subspace, because people’s lives could be on the line and you don’t seem to care.” Medkit straightened up to his full height, glaring directly at Subspace. The centipede demon recoiled as though he’d been hit, mouth twisting into a distressed snarl.
“I do care! That’s why I’m using these damn crystals! If everyone is too powerful to get hurt--”
“Stop repeating yourself.”
“Stop interrupting me!”
“I have interrupted you once.”
“Gah–just shut up, Meddy! You aren’t listening to me!”
Subspace’s voice raised, and the silence left behind afterwards was far more deafening. Medkit stared blankly for a long moment, before turning on his heel.
“And I could say the same of you. Perhaps it’s best if I contact our manager–and request we work on this separately.” Medkit’s steps were even, sure--
“WAIT!” Subspace grabbed Medkit’s arm, yanking him back. “Just wait–”
Medkit ripped his arm away, taking another step back, his eyes narrowing. In the same moment, Subspace’s eyes narrowed too–slitted pupils widening.
Silence. It’s long, all-consuming, hesitation stretching between the two demons as their eyes locked. The tension was thick, yet fragile, ready to break at any moment.
And break it did.
Subspace pounced.
Medkit launched himself out of the way with a yelp, bracing himself against the floor. Subspace’s shoulder slammed against the closed door, a growl ripped from the pink demon’s throat. “Just LISTEN TO ME!”
The mint-green demon shoved himself off the floor, his tail flicking out behind him to balance. Subspace kept himself lifted, horns nearly brushing the ceiling of the laboratory as he loomed over Medkit.
“I’m not going to listen to you when you’re attacking me!” Medkit barked back in response, quick on his feet as he darted to the other end of the lab. Subspace’s scuttling legs followed him, scaling up one of the walls in an attempt to corner him.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tried to LEAVE!” Subspace growled, launching himself off the wall towards Medkit. The green demon spun on his heel, turning out of the other’s trajectory barely a moment before impact. Subspace hefted himself up–
Only for Medkit to yank his hair back, wrapping an arm around his collarbone, an attempt to restrain him. “You’re only giving me more reasons to leave. You don’t listen to reason, you’re irrational, and you don’t take no for an answer.”
Subspace struggled in his hold, his tail twisting and writhing on the floor as he tried to shove Medkit’s arm away.
“Hhah–I don’t know, maybe because I’m your only friend here? Aren’t I, Meddy? Would you really do this to a friend? I’m all you have here! You don’t even leave the labs–I’m all you have, period!” Subspace’s head tilted up, vibrant pink eyes staring straight into Medkit’s teal ones.
“We’re colleagues, and nothing more. You know I don’t do friends.”
…Medkit was lying. To some extent, at least–he truly doesn’t do friends. He truly felt he was just colleagues with Subspace.
But maybe spending years working in the same laboratories let a bond form. One Medkit now processed was foolish.
Subspace was annoying, rude, rowdy, a complete nuisance, and irresponsible. He held no care for the citizens of Blackrock–or any other faction–just a craving for power and relentless passion. But as irritating as existing in the same space as him was, Medkit had to admit Subspace’s genius was unparalleled.
Medkit had learned how to bounce off his quips and playfulness, how to interact with him in such a way that made them excellent lab partners.
But one simply could not ignore the problem that had been brewing since the two scientists had discovered the crystals.
Subspace, however, seemed to deteste the notion that they weren’t friends. The pink demon hissed, loud, letting out a puff of gas from his mouth. Medkit jolted his head back, letting go of Subspace–
The centipede raised himself on his tail once again, towering over Medkit. Smoke poured from the barely-visible gaps in his sharp teeth, a clear sign of hostility. There’s a shaking hiss from Medkit as he backs up, bracing himself.
Angling his head downward, Subspace jumped again–Medkit swerved out of the way last second, watching the other demon slam into the table. Items rocked and fell as he attempted to recover, mouth twisted to a vicious snarl. Subspace placed his hands against the table–wrenching his head away, his horns out of the wood.
Medkit left his gear in his dorm room. Subspace could summon his from thin air, exude it effortlessly, bar his sensitivity to his own toxins.
The winner was set in stone from the start.
Subspace turned, charging again–but just as Medkit shifted to dart out of the way, Subspace caught one of his horns with his hand, yanking him closer. Medkit yelped, raising a clawed glove to scrape at Subspace’s arm.
The pink demon didn’t relent, he just held, and held, and didn’t let go. Medkit struggled in place as Subspace lowered himself back to the ground, curling his tail around Medkit’s legs.
He couldn’t escape like this, couldn’t run from Subspace’s fit of rage, couldn’t even hope.
But he could try.
Twisting his torso, Medkit slammed the side of his tail into Subspace’s side, knocking the centipede demon off balance. Subspace’s hold on Medkit’s horn didn’t fade, so as the former fell–he dragged the latter with him.
The two hit the floor with a heavy thud, the clatter of Medkit's glasses falling off sounding soon after. Subspace recovered quickly, shoving himself up, his other hand pinning Medkit’s shoulder to the floor. His grip on Medkit’s horn was harsh, only growing stronger.
Struggling under his hold, Medkit tried to push him off–but Subspace shifted to sit on top of his stomach, pinning Medkit’s arms with his knees. There’s a beat of stillness, quiet accented with their heavy breathing, tension taught like a rope.
The rope snaps, the tension peaks.
Subspace lifts his hand from Medkit’s shoulder, slamming his head against the ground via his horn, and digs his claws deep.
Burning, sizzling pain pierces Medkit’s eye. He seizes up, trying to wrench an arm free–but Subspace merely shifts his weight, keeping him down. He knows better than to shake his head, or try to jolt away, he knows better–
But Medkit still flinches, trying to jerk his head upwards.
Something tears. Subspace’s claws rake down his face, cutting through his lip, his hand raising.
Through blurry, suddenly teary vision, Medkit can see his own eye held neatly in the bloodstained claws of his colleague.
His ex-colleague.
Subspace is breathing heavily, staring at his work in shock. At Medkit’s eye, cut away from his face, at the gaping socket and torn open wound. His other hand still holds onto Medkit’s horn, but finally loosens up–he can feel fractured cracks in his horn, splinters falling to the ground as Subspace lets go.
Medkit can’t hesitate.
In that singular moment, he rips his arm out from underneath Subspace’s knee, elbowing Subspace in the side. The pink demon falls with a grunt, Medkit’s eye still held tight in his hand. He shoves himself back up, a feral growl coming from deep within his throat.
Shaking and trembling, Medkit pushes himself to his feet, just as Subspace does the same, launching forward–
Medkit swings his arm back, grabs the first item he feels–a vial of some kind–and shatters it against Subspace’s face.
The glass splinters, embedding itself within Medkit’s hand and Subspace’s face. Something burns against his glove.
Without a moment of hesitation, Medkit rips his glove off, and bolts towards the door. Just as he wrenches it open, he hears a deathly shriek.
He turns back. He stares.
Subspace writhes on the floor, desperate screams bouncing off the walls of the laboratory, clawing at his face with his hands.
Medkit had never heard such an agonized sound.
There’s a beat of nothing but pained howling, guttural enraged noise, filling his ears and surrounding his mind. Suddenly, Subspace falls quiet with a sound akin to a choke–
“You’re fucking dead.”
Rotting pink meets hollowed teal. Medkit turns and runs.
The door slams behind him. The screaming starts again. Blood rushes in his ears, down his face, into his mouth. All he can taste is iron painted green, dribbling down his chin like water from a dehydrated mouth.
The scream shifts from agonized to angry. The door slams again, ripped at the hinges, as Medkit turns down a hall. Another turn, the scuttling of legs so close nearby, closer closer closer–
Medkit ducks low, rips the grate off a vent opening, and climbs inside.
He can hear Subspace slam against the wall, another pained shriek paired with the clatter. He puts his arms in front of him, army-crawling with his head ducked. There’s another bang, another enraged scream, another moment where Medkit freezes up.
If he doesn’t get out now, Subspace will kill him.
He continues his crawl through the vents, shuddering as the very structure of the walls tremble with Subspace’s reckless bolting. Eventually, he can see the vent to his dorm room open up–with an arm slammed against the grate, his first exit opens up.
Stumbling to his feet, Medkit started gathering his most important items. A briefcase to toss clothes in, only what he had quick access to. His gear, the medkit slotted inside the briefcase, the revolver slipped into its holster. With shaking, bloodstained hands, he gathers up the few crystals he’d decided to store in his dorm, slipping them into a safe slot where they had no chance of being lost.
He needed to leave. He just needed to get out. And, preferably, not die. Medkit took off his other glove, cleanly slicing his claws into his bed’s blanket. Any makeshift bandage will work, anything to quench the bleeding. With the fabric wrapped tightly around his head, he quietly opens the door, briefcase held tightly in one hand.
He can hear another slam. Another agonized howl. Pain and anger piling onto each other, coalescing into something deadly.
Medkit can see pink gas creeping through the vent. Another sign, should he stay here any longer his death is set in stone. A rattling hiss echoes off the walls as he opens a door as quietly as possible, inching through it.
If he’s not quiet…
“Meddy…!” Subspace calls, distant. He sounds as though he’s choking on his own blood, voice trembling, barely strung together. “I-I know you’re in here somewhere! Come on out, I promise y-you’ll be fine!”
Medkit held his breath, holding his briefcase to his chest. A beat of silence.
He can hear Subspace making pained whimpers. Audible shudders, gagging and choking.
Wiping away the blood from his mouth, Medkit pressed on. He turned down the hall, keeping his footsteps as light as possible. There’s a shift, a click.
He ducks into a side laboratory just as he hears the door to the hall creak open. A beat of silence, the scuttling of legs, a breaking laugh.
Quiet falls once again as Subspace passes on by, frantic in his search.
If he can just reach the stairs, maybe he could get out through a window? Swords, where would he even go, where could he possibly go?
Click.
Scuttling.
Medkit drops to the floor, wrenches the cover off the nearest vent, and scrambles inside as the door swings open.
Silence. Only the ragged breathing of Subspace, only the sound of his own skin bubbling and sizzling. Only the sound of Medkit’s heartbeat at the back of his skull, the blood in his ears.
Slowly, as though a single noise could cause catastrophe, Medkit starts inching through the vents until he turns a corner. He never really paid attention to the construction of the building, of whether or not the vents reached to the surface, but he knew he had a decent sense of direction.
If he just–
The sound of his own horns scraping against the vents makes him flinch, and judging by the responding shriek, it makes Subspace do the same.
There’s a loud bang soon after, and another shriek. Medkit finds himself frozen in place, hearing a guttural screech come from Subspace, before another loud bang, the sound of horns slamming into metal.
More scuttling. Always scuttling, far too many legs tapping against the ground. Silence, for a moment.
Medkit peeks around the wall of the vent. At first, all he sees is flesh and blood, wiped across the wall of the vent, splattered viscera of neon pink, dripping from the ceiling.
And next, he sees a single vibrant eye, staring through the entrance to the vent, skin sloughing from an ever-spreading rot.
He jerks his head back as Subspace hisses, quickly lowering himself to begin his crawl. He needs to get out now. If he doesn’t, he knows he’s destined to die. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die–
Medkit just keeps crawling. The vents are tight, far too close, his horns keep scraping against the sides and ceiling, he was barely able to fit himself inside. But it was his only way out.
His eyes–his eye stung. He couldn’t get the sound of his heartbeat out of his head. Every slight shift of clothes, every little noise would echo, bouncing around him.
It was overwhelming, all-consuming. Swords, he was trembling, there was so much noise–
Finally, FINALLY, the vent had an upwards opening.
Medkit was quick to stand up, hooking his briefcase to one of his arms. Hesitantly, he placed one of his hooves against the side of the vent, hands pressed against the walls, lifting himself up.
This was so fucking risky.
Slowly, carefully, he inches his way upwards, his heart in his throat the whole way through. He nearly slips multiple times, but his adrenaline keeps him up, keeps him going.
After far too long, the vent opens up on the sides once again. He’s so close to an exit–
Pink gas starts flooding through the vents, coming up from below him. Medkit murmured an expletive, pulling up the collar of his uniform in an attempt to cover his mouth and nose as he inched forward through the vents.
The gas makes everything hazy, makes his already teary eyes–eye–sting even more. It makes him dizzy, nauseous, Swords he needs out right now.
All that was in his way was the grate. Medkit rammed his horns into the grate, dislodging it in an instant–wincing as the horn Subspace cracked fractured further.
The pink gas flooded out at the same time as Medkit tumbled out of the vent, a heap of limbs and muffled breathing. He picked himself back up, squinting through the haze–no windows in the room.
Medkit darted for the door, wrenching it open–slamming it behind him. A shout echoes from across the hall, a chide against slamming the doors, but he isn’t listening.
He keeps his jacket collar over his face, sprinting down the hall. This is a hall of laboratories, smaller rooms with no windows, he needs to get to a different sector.
Hallways upon hallways. Scientists linger past, shouts of confusion and concern echoing behind him. He doesn’t even think to warn them of the gas, he just needs out.
It isn’t until he turns a corner sharply and runs directly into another scientist–someone he recognises, someone he knew–
“Medkit? Oh my Swords, what happened to your–”
“Evacuate the building.” Medkit hissed, shoving Grav out of the way. She yelped, but quickly nodded, running down the hall.
He could hear her distant shouts to evacuate, the blaring noise as she pulled the fire alarm. But he couldn’t care.
Medkit swung into another side room, one he knew had a window. Another scientist in the middle of making their way out yelped, turning towards to grab him. Medkit wrenched his arm away from their reach before they could make contact, barely skidding to a stop in front of the window.
“What are you doing–” The other scientist questioned, clearly panicked, and he provided no response. The window was shoved open with force, and Medkit wasted no time crawling right out.
He hears a confused noise, then silence. The snow is thick, cold. Shaking, he rips off the fabric of his sleeve, shoveling some snow inside and bundling it up. He pressed the frantically made ice pack against his eye socket, shakily standing back up.
Blackrock wasn't safe. Playground surely wouldn't accept him. His creations have done nothing to help the environment, Thieves’ Den is out of the question.
They wouldn't target Lost Temple.
A desert with the richest of the rich, untouchable by even the high-security government of Blackrock. No Blackrock demon would willingly go to Lost Temple, and as such it'd be just as expected of him to avoid the faction.
But it was his only hope.
Medkit couldn't stall, couldn't slow down. He set his sights and ran. Hooves crunched against snow, ferns and pines whipping against his skin, his shark-esq tail barely lifted above the ground.
He doesn't know how long he ran for. Just that he never stopped, even when his muscles burned, even when his ice pack melted as the temperature evened out, even when he started burning up as snow transitioned to grass and grass transitioned to sand.
He never stopped running.
The desert was hot. It was well into the evening, surely not the worst temperature it could be, but he felt like he was burning alive.
He keeps slipping on the sand, tumbling down the dunes. Blood still clings to his hands, drying, and yet more drips from his barely bandaged eye.
Medkit doesn't know if he'll make it.
He's not sure he can.
His vision is blurring. He's drenched in sweat, sand clinging to his fluff and fur. Another step forward and his knees buckle beneath him, adrenaline finally starting to wane.
And he still crawls.
With his briefcase held to his chest, any hope of dignity shattered, he crawls in the sand.
At least Subspace will never find him, if he loses to his wounds and the heat, if his body is buried as the dunes change with the wind.
Eventually he can't even crawl. Eventually his arms give out too, and the shaking and shuddering of his body prevents him from even knowing what direction he's heading.
Eventually he throws up into the sand, dry-heaving toxins from the gas, spitting up blood until his body gives out.
Eventually–
“...Well, what do we have here?”
Someone speaks. There's a tap against his horns, and he barely has the energy to flinch.
“Huh! Still alive… Shame those horns are all fractured.”
The voice snickers. Medkit's face is down in the sand, his body shuddering as he quietly groans.
“...Need.. safety. Asylum. Anywhere.” He mumbles out pathetically.
He's met with a hum, and the rustle of clothing.
“Let me get a good look a'cha first.” He's lifted up by his shoulders.
Through doubling, trembling vision he sees another demon, a cowboy hat propped over her head. She grimaces, sighs…
And pulls out a phone.
“I'll humor you, Blackrockian. Let me make a call, and we’ll see about that asylum, eh?”