Captains were his favorite. Deadly weapons, unlike Lieutenants, which sort of felt unfair. They were barely into being an officer and throwing rubber balls and plastic toys at him. It was just disappointing, how they were thrown to the wolves--and, yes, he did consider himself The Wolves. He had a thousand years of experience and had held weapons since he was a child; he was, he didn’t think it was an exaggeration to say, a bigger threat than some pathetic human who had no real experience with battle and was often scared shitless because they’d yet to tangle with, one, a real alien, and two, one that was fully capable of fighting back.
It was just unfortunate that these days he was a lone wolf. It wasn’t in his nature, no matter what his uncle had tried to hone him into. Elkaste had wanted a weapon, but Rylafein had insisted on being a person, and a person who sought and longed for connection on top of it, much to his uncle’s eternal disappointment.
He'd hunted with a pack before, but Thalassa was a mess lately, and it felt wrong to take him out on serious business when he was wasted. Tyndareus was--still on the other side, no matter how close Pyrrhus felt he was to convincing him to change that. And Troilus was, as he'd read in a very funny internet meme, the one b***h in the group who wasn't down with murder. Never had been, of course, that hadn't changed in a thousand years, but considering they'd had a whole fight over it, it felt especially relevant.
Besides, Pyrrhus had always been reckless with his own safety, but he was very cognizant that he'd gotten moreso lately. Hunting Captains with weapons that could do damage was more than proof of that, and he'd spent more time than he liked hiding in his room and patching himself up.
Ugh, he had to get himself a hookup with healing magic that wasn't ******** Helene, who would undoubtedly be displeased by everything Pyrrhus had been doing, and who would probably snitch on him to Kaifeng (which was, Pyrrhus had to admit, fair, they were basically married and of course you told your partner that kind of thing. He'd have told Tyn about Thalassa's current state to get some extra backup worrying about him, if Tyndareus was around instead of <******** Chaos.).
Until he did, though, it was awkwardly bandaging himself and hoping he didn't get ******** up beyond what he could deal with or get stabbed somewhere overly visible. Not the face, basically. But that was easy enough to prevent. He just had to give a s**t and be smart.
Not always his specialty, sure, but he wasn't looking to die, and if he said that, he wasn't entirely sure Imnolu or Heibing (or Huanxi or Lianli) would believe him, and that would make this whole thing a ********. He did not want it to be a Thing. It was just the easiest way for him to pull himself out of the darkness that had dogged his step ever since he'd looked into the dark star at the end of the universe or whatever in the webbed depths that had been on the other side when he died fighting the Calamitous Hollow.
He'd looked too far into the abyss. and he'd been far, far too insignificant for it to look back. But that insignificance was what loomed large over his thoughts. The knowledge that he was nothing but a blip in the darkness, a single light that could wink out at any moment.
Realistically, a light that should have winked out a thousand times over and left behind nothing but memories. He should be dead, and he knew it, and not even just all the times he’d dodged death in battle. He’d lived for ages beyond his allotted years thanks to what had happened to his planet, frozen as he’d been the moment he tore it apart, and he wasn’t entirely sure that fixing it wouldn’t mean all those years catching up with him all at once. Sure, it hadn’t happened to Daedalus or anyone else that he’d heard of actually chasing the darkness off their worlds, but that didn’t mean anything. He could, in fact, be the unluckiest b***h in the galaxy.
But he was still alive. Still fighting.
So, every time he danced with death, every time he fought some smug a*****e Negaverse officer, he felt just a little closer to beating that thing in the dark.
If nothing else, if he was supposed to be dead, his continued existence was a scream into the darkness, an insistence that he would not lay down and let the darkness take him. Chaos, the Dark Star, any of it. He would burn until he burned out, however long that was. Whatever time he had left, he would not go quietly into Death’s embrace. He was Pyrrhan. Pyrrhans never went anywhere quietly.
The problem was, he'd gone <******** soft.
Because yeah, he was getting into fights. Winning fights, even. But every time he found himself in the position to finish it, he hesitated.
He'd never had that problem before. He'd never worried about killing. It was something he did because it needed to be done. Because there were people who had made choices that meant they needed to die, and Pyrrhus was the one positioned to make that happen.
But things were different, now. He got them pinned. had them at his mercy. Should have ******** finished them, because he knew Chaos was a dangerous threat that ate worlds and poisoned people and ended lives. It was fair to end the lives of Chaos's soldiers right back.
And yet he couldn't finish the damn job.
There were two major problems, really: Imnolu and Tyndareus.
On the one hand, sometimes his brain conjured up the way Imnolu had looked at him, after seeing him kill someone for the first time. He hadn't liked how that made him feel. How that had made him actually reconsider things.
And if it wasn't his damned too-kind cousin, it was the Chaos-tainted reincarnation of his ******** husband.
Because what if someone else looked at Tyndareus the way he looked at the officers he fought? What if someone snapped his neck before he had a chance to get away?
Someday, he was pretty sure, that hesitation was going to get him killed. Hadn't yet, sure, but it seemed almost inevitable. And yet he kept hesitating. Pulling back. Letting his prey go. Hoping, almost. Hoping that he might change a single mind, make them reconsider, or at least be a little less ******** stupid.
Some of them definitely wouldn't. And violence probably wasn't going to save any souls. Kicking Tyndareus's a** hadn't made him come around; talking to him had. But Tyndareus was special, and Pyrrhus did not intend to drag every useless Chaos idiot to his planet to rub their noses in it like a misbehaving hunting-hound.
It was with a certain air of gloom, matching the sky that had threatened rain all day without ever coming through, that he rounded a corner to find the Chaos aura he'd been chasing tonight. A Captain, he was pretty sure, and the one he found had a knife in one hand, with a blade like shimmering purple glass, and in the other he had something much more interesting--a starseed.
At his feet lay the person it belonged to. A Senshi, Pyrrhus was pretty sure, and she looked young--though he knew that he was no judge. Her pretty brown and pink fuku was stained with blood, but whatever injury she'd sustained hadn't taken her down.
No, losing her soul had done that.
She'd fought. Tooth and nail, possibly literally, because Pyrrhus was pretty sure he saw scratch marks on the Captain's cheek. Maybe that was what made him decide to take her out, or maybe she'd fought to stop him.
One way or the other, she was down, and it was Pyrrhus's job to try to get her back up.
"You're going to want to put that back," he said, coldly. There was an edge of warning in his tone, and he tapped his foot on the ground, an emphasis that his patience was not, at the moment, infinite. Or particularly long.
"Or what?" The Captain asked, turning fully to face him with the kind of confidence that Pyrrhus was eager to snuff out. "You're gonna make me pay?" He looked Pyrrhus up and down, and Pyrrhus raised an eyebrow, waiting to hear this human’s judgement of what was before him. They tended to get a little weird, confronted with something beyond their ever-so-limited experience. "Oh, you're one of those alien freaks, I bet if I bring your starseed back my bosses will be thrilled."
"Probably, yeah," Pyrrhus acknowledged, and he took a step forward. "You've gotta get it first, though, and trust me: I have not spent the past thousand years sitting around and looking pretty." He brought up his fists, cracking his knuckles in his palms. "So put the starseed back and I won't show you what I can do with all that experience."
"Make me," the Captain said.
"Okay," Pyrrhus replied.
He clearly wasn't as ready as he wanted to be, because he did not move in time to stop Pyrrhus slamming his fist into the Captain's solar plexus, making him double over. Next came an elbow to his face, making hims tagger back and drop his knife, but he kept his grip on the starseed. Unfortunate.
Pyrrhus prowled forward, with the energy of a predator seeking his prey.
"Put it back," he said. <******** you," the Captain wheezed. "My ******** ribs. My nose."
"I'll break more than those," Pyrrhus promised. It was not a threat; he would carry it out far too quickly for that to be the right word.
The Captain looked at Pyrrhus. Looked at the Senshi collapsed on the ground. And then his eyes drifted to the hand holding the starseed.
Pyrrhus frowned. What was he doing?
It happened too fast for Pyrrhus to register immediately.
The Captain brought up his hand and dropped the starseed into his mouth.
There was a horrible crunching noise.
And before Pyrrhus's eyes, his misaligned nose fixed itself and his wheezing breaths evened out. <******** you," the Captain said again.
In an instant, Pyrrhus realized: he had just witnessed the total destruction of a starseed. Kaifeng and Helene had said that was something Chaos could do, but it hadn't even occurred to him as a possibility for what was hpapening until it had. Well. Happened.
Whatever Senshi was lying on the dirty alley ground in her cute little ruffly fuku, she was the last of her name. Because in a moment, some arrogant piece of s**t had not only killed her, he had killed every other guardian of her planet that would ever exist.
A light in the universe had winked out.
And, in some way...it was Pyrrhus's fault. He had hesitated. He had let this piece of garbage have enough time to do that. To end a life and every life that would come after.
There was a human expression Pyrrhus had heard a few times since coming to Earth. Seeing red. To be so angry that one's entire vision became hazy. And for a moment, he did experience that.
But a moment later, everything felt very sharp and clear.
He had hesitated. He would not hesitate again.
"You're dead," he said, cold and flat.
Then, he threw his entire body forward, slamming into the Captain and taking him off his feet. He gasped in surprise, but he didn't go down easy--he snapped a hand out to grab the front of Pyrrhus's fuku, yanking him forward and off his feet as well. They landed on the ground, but Pyrrhus was on top, and he gladly took advantage to start raining down punches.
The Captain fought back; he struggled until he'd rolled them over, and Pyrrhus saw a certain madness in his eyes, like he was charged with some kind of vile energy.
Eating that starseed had healed him. Given him strength. He was fueled to fight Pyrrhus by the life he had snuffed out.
That sent Pyrrhus's anger higher. How dare he--how dare he and the entire ******** Negaverse use starseeds and energy for power. How dare they consume lives, like the Chaos that had turned his planet from thriving to a desolate waste.
Pyrrhus felt a hand sink into his chest.
"I'll take yours too, freak," the Captain snarled.
Without an ounce of hesitation, Pyrrhus brought his knee up and drove it as hard as he could into the man's crotch. A cry of pain and the removal of the hand from his chest was more than enough confirmation that he was right about how much that would hurt, and the Captain rolled off him, gasping for air and flopping onto the ground.
"You fight ******** dirty," the Captain accused.
Pyrrhus pushed himself off the ground.
There was no peal of thunder to announce it, but the sky cracked open all the same, rain pouring into the little alley.
It was starting to wash away the blood on the poor dead girl. Pyrrhus wished he knew who she was, if there was anyone he could tell--to memorialize such a brave warrior properly. But she was gone. No one would ever know.
He'd bring her somewhere nicer. Lay her out somewhere she'd be sure to be found, when ribbons and lace gave way to whoever was underneath, so if she had a civilian family, they'd have closure. If Imnolu, or Heibing, or Tyndareus, or even Imnolu's dorky professor Isidor, or any of the other people he cared about died in this stupid conflict, he hoped someone would pay them the same respect.
As for her killer...well. Someone had to handle him. And Pyrrhus was here.
He moved to kneel down, pinning the man beneath him, and as he brought a hand down to wrap it around the pathetic b*****d's neck, the man seemed to remember his weapon--because it vanished from the ground where he'd dropped it and reappeared in his hand, pointed at Pyrrhus.
Pyrrhus caught the Captain’s wrist, stopping the blade with its tip centimeters from his chest.
He smiled.
And then, he wrapped both hands around the hilt and forced the blade downward, into its owner's chest.
[wc: 2524 words]
