Chapter Text
“Watch out!”
“Damn it!”
The tail-end of the Trash Beast whipped around slamming into him and sending him flying.
It’s the cold season and they were on a mission in a Polluted Zone where reports of a high number of large Trash Beasts have been popping up. Sure enough the second they stepped out of the car the Beasts started stirring.
It was chaos from there. Trash Beasts of all sizes ambushed them, rising from the land of trash, one right after the other.
Now Rudo was soaring through the air, only stopping as he crashed into a trash pile.
“Damn it!” He cursed out, pain shocking its way up his back, “That hurt…”
“Rudo! You okay?” He heard Riyo call out, guess she got flung back as well, “or do you need help?”
“I’m fine!” He shouts back, pulling himself out of the pile he noticed they landed quite a bit away, “How about you?”
“I’m fine!” She pants out, breath visible due to the cold and her mask being knocked askew, showing a feral grin. The blood dripping from her mouth down her chin making the sharpness of her glowing green eyes more intense. “I want payback!”
And off she went back to the chaos after fixing her mask.
Rudo follows her, much slower since he doesn’t have her insane speed and agility. His side was throbbing a bit as he clambered over or around the piles of trash but he wasn’t bleeding so he’ll count that as a win.
“Haaa….” Rudo huffs out as he gets over another, “Why did I have to be flung so far away…”
He’s been looking around, trying to find something he could use with 3R… Everything he’s carried with him for this mission were for heavy hitting at distance and close combat, not movement… and he was admittedly running out of items.
“Found one!” Rudo ran over to what caught his eyes. “You’ll do…”
Rudo kneels down to pick up a piece of the broken wood and tattered thin clothes of the kite he spotted near the base of a trash pile. He’s seen them in the air back at the spear, flying high above the Wall on windy days.
*click*
Rudo’s knee hit something and suddenly his leg was nothing but pain. He couldn’t help but let out a scream as fire raced up his leg.
“What the hell...!”
He felt sick looking at his leg, the pain growing worse. Clamped around it was a rusted, jagged ring of metal teeth. It bit into both the upper and lower parts of his leg, thankfully missing his knee. It looked like some kind of spring loaded trap.
Rudo tried moving to get a better look at it but even the smallest shift sent him into agony.
“S-shit.”
Rudo gritted his teeth and finally moved around so he could sit on the ground and see it better. It looks like something someone cobbled together out of scrap metal. Blood oozed around where the teeth of the trap were around his leg. Each twitch of his leg sent pain through it, making him feel how deep they were. It had a chain anchoring it to the ground, probably to keep it in the area… and there was a blinking light on it…
“Damn it.” Rudo tried to pry it off to no avail. Someone put this here, and someone was going to come back for it. “Can’t stay here!”
Rudo pulled the chain, unanchoring it from the earth. If he can’t get it off then he’ll at least make sure he’s not near here. He needed to get back to the others anyway, even if he ends up useless in the fight, he’ll still do his best.
He could ignore pain, Rudo thinks to himself as he pushes himself up, he always had… Compared to his hands this was nothing. He could do this…
The first step was torture. It almost made him black out but Rudo bit his lip and limped forward. He wasn’t going to let something like this stop him.
The closer he got to the fighting the more the ground shook below his already careful and unsteady steps. One particular shake had him stumbling to the ground, jarring his leg and sending his world black for a moment… or at least what he thought was a moment.
It was darker when the world came back to him. Rudo could still hear everyone fighting as he laid on the ground shivering from the cold. It was hard to breathe and his leg felt like burning needles as he tried to move… only to find that he couldn’t.
Thanks to the unstable ground one of the surrounding piles of trash toppled over at some point he wasn’t aware… he’s trapped under it.
It smelled…
Coughing and grunting Rudo tries moving again, pushing himself up. He can’t be that buried right? It sounds like the fighting stopped too… or at least the impacts shaking the ground has stopped, everyone will be looking for him, but the pain in his leg quickly stopped him as darkness almost reclaimed him.
Rudo did his best to curl into himself, riding out the wave of pain and coming, making him tremble. The others will find him. They’ll dig him out.
No.
He can’t always wait on others.
Rudo pushes himself up again, gritting his teeth as the shifting of trash on him moves a bit and his leg flares in pain again.
“Fuck.”
He managed to shift enough to get his good leg under him and soon enough he was popping out of the pile of trash. He was drenched in sweat from the effort, making him shiver again as a breeze blew by.
Rudo just needed to find someone, then he could get the stupid trap off his leg and deal with it.
“Well, well, well.” Something grabbed the back of his uniform, dragging him painfully the rest of the way out of the trash making himself scream as the contraption on his leg snagged on items. “And here I was just thinking the trap only caught worthless trash.”
There were three people standing on the pile he was just in. All were dressed the same, in dark cloaks and black masks and wide brim hats.
“Fuck off!” Rudo snarls, trying to wiggle free, “Let me go!”
Where were the others? He was getting a bad feeling about these guys.
“A Cleaner, huh.” The man holding him said, voice muffled by his mask. “And here I thought my trap just caught more worthless trash.”
His choker suddenly went off.
“You won’t be needing that anymore.” Before Rudo could answer his collar the man ripped it from his neck, tossing it to be lost among the trash. “Tie him up, you know what to do.”
Rudo was flung to the other two, crying out as he hit the ground hard. One of the other men pinned him down, arms painfully twisted behind him as the third guy tied his wrists and ankles.
“Now hold still.” The third guy says, holding a knife, “Not unless you want to be hurt more than you already are.”
His heart was pounding as the man brought the knife closer… and there was nothing he could do.