Thread: //.ghost/ECHO::Murphy_Was_Right:// [ClockworkCadence x Ryees]

RE .ghostECHOMurphyWasRight Exhaustion. Up! Wake up! You forsaken lump of flesh, pathetic excuse for a body, will you please WAKE UP!? Kirins mind screamed at him, bellowing into the blackness in hysteria as he slowly watched the womans figure phase through the door. How, he did not know, but it was clearly the nature of her mods that allowed to her to melt right into his atelier without so much as glancing at the three pounds of plastic explosive strapped to his door frame. Some part of him tried to admire that ability, but it was quickly outscreamed by the gross lack of sanity maintained by the parts of his mind insisting that he at least make an attempt to not die. Step by step, she climbed the stairs, expertly ignoring his room in clear single-minded determination. Who she was, who sent her, and her motivations were all unknown factors. He had never seen her beforeunfortunately, for she was quite attractive, as his ateliers field washed over her and revealed the images under her heavy clothingand she wore no marks of allegiance. He sensed the knife before he saw it, a wicked curved blade with a gut hook at the base that he truly did not want to imagine entering his body. To his floor she arrived, and straight to his bedroom she floated. His door was ignored she simply phased through that, too, and indignation blasted in his soul. Seriously!? This is how I go out? Some cunt that can just walk through walls like a blood-forsaken .WRAITH comes in and guts me like a tired fish? For fucks sake! He saw her move, saw her draw that blade. And an idea flashed to him. Fuck you in advance for making me do this, bitch. Fuck you greatly. With a mental flex, he shoved the perception of his time just a few seconds forward. In fast forward, her blade plunged into his chest, tearing muscle and stopping his heart in place. The pain of that arced through his soul like wildfire, but it was not enough to move his body. Not yet. His shift, this time, took him just a few seconds back. The knife came down again. Fire. And again. Agony. And again. Misery. And again. Torment. And again. Discomfort. And again. Numbness. And again. Tingling. And again. Warmth. And again. Bliss. Lost in the throes of insanity, he replayed that sensation over and over and over again, the bonds of his soul fraying at the edges as it perceived its death time and time and time again. Time that dwindled, though, as the stretch of time he had controlled perception over dwindled and reality closed in. But his body was stirring, mind coming alight with pain and attempting to stir his body to action. Twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten. Five. Finally, muscle response. Finally, nervous response. Three. A twitch in his arm. Two. His eyes fluttered open. One. Zero came with the inhalation of breath that powered his limbs. He threw them forward, tossing himself aside and down, towards his feet. The blade slammed into his core, tearing through the muscles just above his left lung and mutilating his rotator cuff muscles. Somewhere in his mind, liquid-fire agony tried to destabilize all that was real. He shoved that reflex away with a blood-curdling scream that, in his post-insanity state, came out more as a deranged cackling. He did not know the orientation of his assailant, but he knew there was a knife in his back, and her hand would be attached to it. It was with surprising dexterity that he used is one good arm to whip around, snatching at her hand. Nowhere to be found, he finally laid his real eyes on his assailant, who had reflexively recoiled from the carnival laughter ripping from his throat. The carpet snaked up from the ground, wrapping around his ankles, and with an Empire-strength yank, dragged him off the mattress, onto the floor, and between her legs. He stood, and she whirled to face him, knife cleanly drawn from his back and well on its way to finishing its job already. Whomever this woman was, she was no slouch, and her fear response was cleanly tempered. Killing Kirin was the only thing in her mind, and she was well-trained in adaptation to her environment. Her adaptation was matched, it seemed, only by his paranoia. The plasm saturating the entire apartment had come alive as soon as he became conscious. As he slid from the bed, the mattress yawned, waking up from its slumber as the woman spun around to attack him again. Seeing its owner in trouble, the mattress sprang to its feet and launched itself at her, wrapping its corners around her upper back and sending her sprawling forwards, quickly slipping out of its grip and spinning to follow Kirin, who had darted to one side. To one side, to his nightstand. He haggardly lifted the MP7 and jerked the trigger back, firing a hail of bullets directly at the mattress that separated the pair. The mattress smiled at him, thankful to serve a wonderful, helpful, life-saving purpose such as this, and collapsed, falling towards the woman. The weapon fell from his hands as he slumped to the floor. All that manipulation of time perception had drained his natural stores to dangerously low levels. Here, there was no raw plasm, long since harvested by himself and others that lived in the area. The closest place to find the energy he needed to stabilize his body would be the badlands. His mind tried to rally against that particularly terrible idea, but his body was already moving. The plasm flowed form his fingertip in a circle, tracing a three-odd-foot circle on the floor in a jagged, uneven circle. Completed, the ground within crumbled away, revealing a hole that fed through not to the floor below, but to a thicket of trees isolated away in the no-mans-land to the north. The MP7 fell through the hole, and he inched forward, tumbling haphazardly through himself. As he fell, consciousness left him.