The Tender for Another's Pain

"The Tender for Another's Pain" is a [SEASON NUMBER] thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary==
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==Full Text==
Liam was sat on a fallen tree inside a well-hidden thicket, elbows on his knees, forehead in his hands, staring at the ground intently while he thought hard, trying valiantly to understand what was happening. There was only three of them in the impromptu meeting he had called–Deoiridh, who had originally planned to disguise herself to sneak inside High Central’s walls, and Akkey, who was going to pair with Liam to aid on their own scouting mission, using their recently discovered harmonic powers. He’d asked for both plans to be delayed, while the trio talked.
He sat up a little further, and instead covered his mouth with his paws, eyes still narrowed and unfocused. 
“Well,” he finally said, “this isn’t what we planned to face, exactly, is it?”
hubwalker1
Deo scuffed her foot against the earth as she frowned. “Not exactly, no. Ah was expectin’ to deal with some fecking gangs, not High Central proper. What the feck even happened, why are they all buddy buddy now?”
tree-the-cat
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” Liam was almost angry, the logic was so nonexistent. “I mean, strength in numbers, enemy of my enemy, blah blah, I get it.” He got to his feet. “But why now? Why after so many years of killing each other off and fighting for the finish line? It’s…it’s not natural.”
hubwalker1
The red head shrugs. “We could take a looksie, find out.” Deo suggested.
tree-the-cat
He tossed his paw in the air. “Sure. I’m positive they’ll tell us if we just go ask them.”
hubwalker1
She rolled her eyes. “Hey none of the sass.” She said as she gave him a light slap to the back of the head. “I meant reconnaissance, Mr. Arnason.”
tree-the-cat
“Shut up.” Liam waved her hand away and then ruffled his own curly hair, glancing at Akkey. “We can, but it’ll be way more dangerous than usual…”
hubwalker1
“Oh come on, don’t be a pussy. We was just about teh head in there 5 minutes ago and now yer all scared. C'mon we’ll be fine.” She insisted.
akkeyagentofhelheim
Akkey had been silent the whole time, green eyes flicking from side to side as she processed the recent discoveries made, then grinning up at both bickering younger rebels with a raised brow, “Our purpose was to get as much helpful information as possible. And what we have are a bunch of new questions and barely any answers…”
“We can limit it to us three. Less bodies to get hurt,” she placed a hand on her hip, “We’re already here. Might as well.” 
hubwalker1
Deo grins at this. “Yes, that’s what ah’m fecking talking about.” The red head says excitedly. “You might wanna darken that scarf o’ yers kid.” Deo takes the spy glass and starts looking for a space for them to portal into.
tree-the-cat
Liam rolled his eyes and grinned in annoyance, getting to his feet. “Okay, sure.” One of his paws shook out and started gathering shadows around the claws with a low hiss. He hoped nightfall would come quickly; that way he would be able to more easily fend off any watchful eyes. “But what’s the plan now? We’ve got all kinds of assholes over there that’ll be looking for us. We have to be ready for anything. AMFs, constructs, whatever.” 
hubwalker1
“We’ll be fiiiiiine.” Deo insists, not looking away from the spy glass. “Things go teh shite we’ll head for the sewers and escape the way we planned to get in.” She closes up the spy glass and tosses it to one of the Rangers as she found the place that seemed relatively barren. “‘Sides, I doubt they’ll have built another o’ either o’ those since we took the Jaw.”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“No, Liam has a point. Constructs, weapons, freaking other mages, we can run easy if things get even slightly awry. But if they activate an AMF, then I can’t portal us out, which is the biggest thing I want to avoid, even if by some convenient chance our original entry route was still accessible,” she stretched her thin arms above her head, “We’ll blend in as much as possible, minimal engagement. Steal a uniform, pretend to be a faction member if we have to, eavesdrop and find information about what’s really going on with them and this apparent non existent siege,” She looked at Liam with a wry quirk of her lips, glancing at his feline features, “Any way for you to hide those?”
“I’m sure Deo’s got some shenanigans that can hide us,” he said with jerk of his chin towards her, “but I feel like we’re gonna get mind-read if we don’t watch ourselves.” He turned back to High Central, folding his arms while his claws snagged into the edge of his scarf, and veins of black like ink started to soak up through the white fabric, slowly dying it darker and darker, while he kept thinking. “So yeah, as long as we don’t attract any attention, no one will figure out that–”
Then he stopped, completely mid-sentence. There was an awkward silence, as the shadows crawling up his scarf stopped. 
Liam abruptly turned on his heel, eyes jumping first to Deo, then to Akkey. His pupils contracted. And then the underbrush rattled as he sprinted straight for the nix, grabbed her around the neck, and slammed her to the ground with his full weight, completely intent on choking her out. The look in his eyes was wild, unfocused, and deadly.
akkeyagentofhelheim
One moment Akkey was standing lazily on two feet, and in the next her back made painful contact with ground in such immense momentum that her cry was cut short into nothing, as he dug into her skin, constricting her airways so forcefully that her vision spotted way more quickly than normal. One hand pulled at his to try and pry it free, legs kicking underneath, but to no avail, as small as she was. Wide eyes stared at him as she threw a free arm up, pulling whatever water she could reach and shooting it straight into his side in an attempt to send him flying.
hubwalker1
“Liam!” Deo exclaimed in surprise. Sure Liam could be an asshole and go off some times, but never unprovoked, and never this intense. She didn’t know what was going on but they could find out in a minute. She went to tackle him off of Akkey and tried to grab his wrists and pin him down.
tree-the-cat
Deo’s weight only shook him, and he practically ignored her despite almost getting tackled away, but with the added shove of the water that Akkey drew from a nearby ditch, he was thrown sideways, rolling roughly on the ground. He kicked away from Deo, and his gaze snapped right back to Akkey. “She’s a traitor!” he yelled, getting to his feet and sprinting for her once more, but by then, the scuffle had drawn the attention of the nearby scouts, and one of them interrupted his headlong rush by hooking elbows with him and clenching his wrist to yank him back, buying some time trying to hold him while the rest picked through brush in order to help. Liam ripped away from him easily, uncharacteristically fixated and almost desperate.
akkeyagentofhelheim
Akkey rolled over with the release of pressure, coughing with a retching sound and struggling for air as water trailed down her dark hair onto the thick ground. The chaos around her slightly muffled as other soldiers came to their aid, but even through her blurry vision she could see Liam gunning for her with killing intent in his eyes, and the instinctual terror of predator upon prey crashed into her. Portal. Open a portal. Run–
hubwalker1
Deo quickly grabbed him around the waist and held him tightly. “Goin’ after Akkey huh? Alright, fair enough.” Suddenly his surroundings went dark few moments before returning to the thicket, only now he stood alone. “But which one is the real Akkey?” Deo’s voice echoed as several identical copies of the Nix appeared, all of them taunting him to strike.
tree-the-cat
At the sight of multiple Akkeys, a piercing headache shot Liam through each temple and right between his eyes, and he twisted his head at the sensation, stumbling back and gasping, not realizing within the hallucination that the rest of the scouts had caught up and assisted Deo in restraining him, wrestling his arms behind his back. His chest heaved in and out rapidly, and he threw himself uselessly towards the copies again, a line of blood tracing down from his nose over his chin.
“Too many of them…” he panted raggedly.
hubwalker1
As the other scouts managed to secure by manacles or rope, or whatever they had on hand Deo dismissed the illusions of Akkey, especially when she saw the effect it had on him, and created one of herself sitting across from him. “Hey kid, do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
Akkey cleared her head and caught her breath, helped to her feet by another scout as one redhead was restrained and another sat to interrogate, and the sudden heat of survival simmered. She saw how he looked, the manic pain he had, and wanted to confront him, but at that point her appearance would have been more harm than help, so she quickly stepped out of sight, but stayed close enough for her to hear. She caught what he yelled beforehand, and it made her even more confused.
Traitor.
tree-the-cat
Liam bent over and caught his breath, allowed to fall to his knees but still held down, everyone nervous about his next unpredictable behavior. He squinted at Deo, and then back at the nonexistent hold on his wrists. His pupils were nearly invisible.
“Are you hiding her?” he said, breathing heavily. “You can’t do that, she’s a half-breed.”
hubwalker1
She cocked an eyebrow at that. The fuck was he talking about. “Ah hate teh break it to ya kid, but, yer also a Half-Breed. Yer sister’s a Half-Breed, yer mum, is a Half-Breed. What makes Akkey special?”
tree-the-cat
He stared at her blankly for a moment; another bead of blood trickled from his nose. “Huh?” he managed to say.
hubwalker1
His bloody nose worried her but she pressed on. “This is you kid.” She said as her illusory form changed and became identical to the young man it sat across from.
tree-the-cat
His teeth immediately gnashed and he lurched forward, making it halfway towards her before the scouts managed to get him back under control. In the frenzy, one of his legs slipped out from underneath him, and he stared bug-eyed at his claws and rough paw pads for a moment before yanking his head up to stare at his own face, starting to shake.
“D-Deo?” he said hoarsely. “What the fuck? What just happened?”
hubwalker1
With that Deo dismissed her illusions, everyone but Akkey reappearing. “Ah don’t know kid, you kinda went nuts there fer a minute. You attacked Akkey, said she was a traitor, that she was a Half-Breed… How do you feel?” She asked.
tree-the-cat
“No, I remember all that, but…” He licked the blood from his lips, staring around at everyone uneasily. “Shit. That was…a trip. I…I felt something in my head, and the next second, I…” He sagged his shoulders. “Is she okay?”
akkeyagentofhelheim
“What, you think a measly chokehold is gonna take me out?” she stepped out from her cover and grinned at him infuriatingly to keep it lighthearted, ignoring whatever pain pulsed through her, but the worry and wariness over whatever oddity that just occurred peeked through while a scout brough him a handkerchief to wipe his face. She took several steps towards him, hand on hip and one boot toe tapping on the ground, but still maintaining a two leap distance between, just in case, “You were normal one moment, then the next you flipped.”
Her eyes narrowed in hard thought. When that happened… He activated his magic, but we all did at some point. His shadows? He was in the middle of saying something. “As long as we don’t attract any attention, no one will figure out that–” she murmured under her breath, her gaze sliding to the side, “–we’re half breeds? Rebels? What were you going to say?”
"...half-breeds. Yeah."
His gaze slid to her, looking apologetic, but fully understanding that what happened couldn't have been his fault. There was no rhyme or reason to what happened. "I don't know why, but I just...had to kill a half-breed." He twisted his face and stuck his tongue out, like he'd just chewed on a piece of garbage. His ears flicked and he used the sensation to further ground himself, thinking quickly in a whole new direction than before. He recognized the channel that the insensible emotion had come through.
"...the mind web. The Conclave's network. The one they connected me to. That's gotta be it. Only Central assholes would make someone do that."
Deo scowled at that. Of course it was Central, it was always Central. But how did they even do it? He'd been disconnected for months. "Well if it's got to do with that is it possible that the one we set up will be affected?"
“I don’t know, Nala said it would be fine, but...I don’t know any more.” He looked uncertainly at the scout behind him that was still anxiously holding one of his elbows, both a show of support and a worry that he would try to do the same thing again, and looked to the other two for a sign of approval to release him. “I don’t know how they knew I was here...or if they even knew at all.”
"Ah dunno, but fer now I think we should head back teh the Jaw until we figure this all out." She looks around at the small group. "The scouts can stay fer now. Get as much intel as they can. That work fer everyone?"
"Not the half breeds," Akkey waved a hand, and the scout cautiously released his grip on the redhead. She was on heightened alert now, should things go awry once again, and the recognizable hum floated lazily from indecipherable directions, not quite tangible yet but ready, "I can come and go often to check on things, but for now we'll reconvene with Lila, then see from there."
“Okay.” Liam’s arms went slack as he was released, and after a moment, he phased through his bindings, rubbing his wrists in front of him as they re-formed, and wiping away any extra blood on his face, leaving a scarlet smear above his lip. What little of his hackles that could be seen were raised, bristling around his scarf, though it seemed to be out of uneasiness rather than aggression. He could’ve seriously hurt someone. He met Deo’s eyes first, then Akkey’s, and they were grim, but determined.
I’m not gonna let them get the better of me.