shot thru the heart
Explicit Violence
and youre to blame cw; some violence. sort of detailed chara death
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“Put the weapon down, Paladin.” The words fell on deaf ears. From behind the cracked black lenses, his eyes fixated on the troops opposite him. Their weapons were aimed, humming and ready to spit something worse than whatever words were waiting to be said. The red glow boiling from within the concentrated weapons should have made him back down, should have in the least caused him to reconsider whatever the hell he was doing. Instead, it only pissed Cass off. Cassius made a point of leveraging his weapon further, some modified minigun that would sooner tear through the unfortunate souls in his path than be pried from his grip. Part of that was thanks to the additional grip supports in his power armor. Part of him quietly thanked himself for upgrading all the systems the night prior. Otherwise, his shaking would quite literally have been the death of him. Pointing a gun at an enemy was one thing. He’d never had qualms with blowing some drugged-up idiot’s head off or putting their mongrel down either. The number of raiders he’d pillaged, the number of ghouls he’d buried six feet under, the number of Gunners he had stared dead in the eye moments before splattering their brains on the wall directly behind . . . never once had he felt bad for it. Never had he felt he was the villain. When it was someone you used to call friends – brothers ¬– begging you not to do it, though . . . That was different. The scribe ahead of him chanced a step forward and while his finger instinctively twitched to fire up the spin of his behemoth weapon, he couldn’t bring himself to dare. Her eyes were large and dewy, face moistened with tears that begun to fall long before they’d found him, and she was as much of a child now that she had been when she joined. She was still so young. She was still his family. And perhaps he might’ve given into their orders. Had the stalemate lasted longer, his walls may have caved, his stupid stubborn demeanor might have faltered. Her face was just so damned sad and he did that. He needed to fix that. But he wasn’t even given the chance. “I said put it down!” This cry was emphasized with the pointed waving of a firearm in the background. Cass’ attention wasn’t directed on it in the least, but it was enough for him to notice the blatant threat. He replied with his own, the familiar haunting echo of wheels turning, oiled gears spinning, and that hellish orange lit up the muzzle of the minigun. It was revving like an engine, and he felt as proud as he did torn. The spikes on the end of it crowned the circling mouths, teeth ready to sink into any flesh that dared to come too close within the range of the deranged animal baring them. It was an instinctive reaction, he realized too late. The way Zhuri heaved her rifle up and poised it was nothing more than a trained habit. Still, it spooked him just enough to put the last bit of pressure needed on the trigger. The bullets sprayed like a geyser. They vaulted out faster than light, spraying wildly yet seeming to always hit the one thing he wished they wouldn’t. The girl’s body convulsed with each puncture, rocking her in a seizing motion while her body lost its ability to stand rigid. And even when he saw it happening, saw the arcs of blood jumping from her back as though it were some kind of sick show, it took him a while to stop himself. The Brotherhood members’ retaliation would have been a welcome distraction. The adrenaline brought on by an attack would have staved off the tears and kept Cassius from feeling as though each bone of his body was liquefying itself and pooling beneath him like a hole ready to swallow him up. Zhuri’s death, however, was a shock to them all. Or, maybe it was the mangled corpse now taking up the space between the two sides that seconds ago was someone they all cared for that stunned them. She believed in him, and he had destroyed her. Just like the rest of the technology they let out of their control, he was dangerous. Tonight, Cassius had proved that. Between the impossibly distant screaming of someone not more than ten feet away and the violent sobs of another that made it hard to get any air into his own lungs, Cassius was aware of the clicking of a rifle. It was a task, a monumental one, to lift his eyes from the worst thing he had ever done, but he managed. It was him or them now. And he’d already made his choice. |