Before The Blood Runs Dry (Kabe)

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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"Too physically? Augh. You sound like Nero." Kabe groaned, but listened nonetheless as Vocado explained what he thought the problem was. It's a spiritual thing. Kabe couldn't understand that— not the way Vocado could at least. Not the way Nero could, not the way most fighters who actually learned how their energy works seemed to be able to.

He was practical. Things were things to him, not these emotional wobbling ephemeral forces with names and many faces. A valve was a valve. Flight wasn't airy and happy like it was for Nero or something to understand on that level like it was for Zhalla, for Kabe it was a muscle. Something he tensed, flexed, pulled. Something he could grab, and shake about in his hands to understand how it worked.

How was he going to do this?

The machine hissed and Kabe hadn't said much back to Vocado, listened and tried to grapple with understanding it all. "Ride the thing bareback, got it." He nodded, as he tugged in his chest on that anger that was always waiting, ready to stop fighting it and try to focus on 'controlling the flow'.

---

The next few bouts were somehow more desperate and frenzied as Kabe didn't resist the beast at all, letting it control their body in full as it made every attempt it could to try and get a single retaliative bite in on the man that had been beating it for what felt like days. It never tired, never stopped coming at Vocado, but every now and then an energy blast it would come up short, or a strike would land with less power than the beast meant to give it.

Kabe didn't really understand it. Everything was a mess of feelings he could barely put to words. But he could contol the flow. Like a wrench on the pressure, he could wind back what the beast could draw out from his body.

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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It stared at the drone, then back at Vocado, then back to the drone with those burning red eyes. It was frustrated. It was sick of this game, and not having the choice to leave because the vessel could only burn this energy that kept him loose and easy for a limited window. It didn't want to listen to anything the meatsack it was stuck up against had to say, it didn't want to take any offensive little out he gave.

But it was so, fucking hungry. Medical machines could only do so much for the body to stave back the preternatural hunger the vessel experienced. And hours and hours of continuous energy use burned calories. So many calories that things were starting to be fed upon within gullet space just to keep Hoshikui going.

So even though it was offended, and disgusted at being offered free time like some kind of child or beast of burden, it needed to feast. It lunged and was gripped by the tail. "AGH, fUck!" It gave little more than an animal squeal as Vocado tossed the paralyzed body down to the dirt. Kabe kept the muscle tensed in the back of their shared mind, and the beast couldn't fly to stop itself and they slapped against the dirt like meat being tendered.

And while it stuffed it's face with the earth, tasting dirt and rock and clay as it sucked what little lifeforce it could from the planet to satiate that desperate craving, Kabe listened to what Vocado had said. Reigns. Synaptic fibres tangled up in his own and knotted, he gripped at the thoughts as they flit between the two of them, and yanked.

Kabe's body jerked back away from the dirt, before he felt the tug and the beast took control back from him. He yanked again as it moved to spit an attack of crackling red energy, and it went off into the distance towards nothing important. By the third time he yanked, making the beast wretch up the bug it was trying to down before Vocado could get down there and smack it around, Hoshikui was snarling inside. Scared, maybe. The anger was overwhelming. Kabe could feel jaws snapping down on him in the hazed underplace where his mind sat like this, but he didn't care because he knew whatever Vocado was trying to teach him was working.

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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"We do not do hungry. We are hungry." It indulged, as teeth ripped into the ration, eating the container as well as what was inside. As it slurped down it trained those eyes back on Vocado, a look like an animal whose food might be taken from them. "We are older than pursuits. Older than boredom, or words and the backs of boxes. We act to act. But we enjoy things beyond what we are. We covet, in vices. We feast and hunt beyond our unending self. We take things, we keep them. We fight to hurt, to ruin. We care not for the inventions of your kind. Honor and law are worthless."

When the ration was gone, which took little time at all even as it spoke with it's mouthful, Kabe jerked at the reigns and tugged the beast back up to it's feet. Kabe wasn't sure why the beast was answering Vocado's questions, but he could feel the burning curiosity they shared in his mind. Kabe couldn't understand the beast, and the beast seemed to not quite understand Vocado.

Instead of attacking endlessly, like it had before, it circled him again. Eyes watching, stalking. "You play games with us. You hope to teach the vessel, yes? Wither us away...? Why does our control matter? Do you care so much for honor of flesh that you would risk so much for kin? We have not feasted yet, but this body is persistent. Your game can only go on so long before we taste such... succulent, earned flesh. The hunger for it is not ours alone... he thinks of it. How you all will taste, his kin. We delight in it."

Kabe's body jerked forward faster than Kabe could think to tug the rains or close the valve, teeth bared and aiming for Vocado again. The beast was clever. It had distracted him, filled him up with conflict. He never knew where his own thoughts ended it it's began, and he was frozen in the morbid, awful thought that maybe it was right. Was he just as much of an animal as it was?

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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There was little to be said at first, as they thrashed in the iron grip of the Super Saiyan that had them. Predator turned prey, backed into a corner and writhing as the hunter pinned them down, desperate to escape. As they were thrown they clawed at the dirt, ripping it up from beneath them and under their fingernails, scrambling to their feet. Vocado's words were infuriatingly right. The law of the jungle. The first law, the law of flesh, and he was right to call the beast out. But laws, no matter how old, were not rigid or simple. Flesh moved, twisted, bled and broke. Laws did too.

"This vessel would have died on Duria without us. We earned this body." It spat, watching with flickering eyes as Vocado reigned in that golden roar of energy that burned off so violently from their own body. Fear ebbed from the beast's eyes, instinct withering as they listened, and smiled. "We know what you are... we feel it in each blow. A hunter, yes. A hunter with no real prey. Even we are not prey enough for you... so bound by honor of blood to kin... you delight you say... yet you will not feast."

Whether Kabe thought his uncle was the same kind of monster he was himself, the beast didn't say. But a little part, deep inside in the backseat, felt a terrible relation to his uncle like never before. That gnawing, empty hunger. That hunger that hurt so much you clawed at trees and sucked at the amber until it dehydrated you without you. The hunger that made rules fall away, and fed you no matter the cost.

The beast sensed this too. No matter how well this went, it's pull was cemented. Kabe had learned it long before they'd met. And it had a respect for the thing that had tormented it these endless hours. The beast left no parting words as gold ebbed away and Kabe's eyes returned to him. He took a deep breath. "You're... getting really good at that. You... didn't, no, nevermind..." he went to ask, but realized he didn't really want to know the answer to his question.

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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Kabe held onto the hug a little too tight, feeling the same whirl of emotions that usually ripped through him when the beast relented control. He was still mad, pissed that Vocado had abandoned him. But he was so glad to have him here right now, so glad to not be tackling this alone. He hopped up onto the box, sitting with his legs kicking slightly and chewed on the ration pack without even opening it.

He noticed Vocado hadn't picked at his food, but said nothing. He didn't mention that the hunger was so bad now that he wanted to eat that ration, and all the other supplies, and he wouldn't be anywhere close to sated. He was used to pushing this out but he needed to stave it off. He focused on Vocado's words instead.

"I... hope she would be. I don't really know if she would, to be honest. I didn't get much time to know her. Not like you did." he replied, a longing sorrow on his face that he usually kept locked away. He reached for his neck, for a necklace he no longer wore, one he'd given to his son, and fiddled with a white bead instead. "She fought so hard to give me a chance to live. She died for that chance. If she could see everything I am, though. Everything I've done. Do you think she'd hate what I've done with it? I didn't exactly turn out to be a good person."

BEFORE THE BLOOD RUNS DRY

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He didn't feel like he'd done better than anybody else he knew, and definitely not better than Vocado had.

Kabe took the ration without comment or point as Vocado slid it over, looking away. He looked at his uncle, as he spoke. Watched the way his hair fell around his face, saw the little marks across his skin that showed the life he'd clawed his way through, and could feel how hard this sort of thing was for him. He understood that. Talking about feeling never did anything but freak him out or make him cry. But he focused on his words.

He listened as Vocado talked about his own parents, and his own struggles with the same kind of feelings. Kabe barely remembered them, little blots of hair and faces he couldn't make out in childhood memories before everything went wrong, but he got the sense Vocado was right. They'd have pride that their son was the warmaster, that he was a man with ambition and the muscle to back it. But... was that real pride? Kabe didn't know, and he couldn't tell if Vocado knew, either.

Then, Vocado made him laugh. "Ewww, he's like... the scrungliest man, ever." he started, though he knew that wasn't the point of the comment. He understood his uncle a lot, knew what he meant. He wished he'd died, instead. He wished he had suffered the burdens Perilla had, and Kabe knew exactly how that felt. And it hurt his heart somewhere deep to see his uncle struggle with that.

He slid off the box, to the other side next to Vocado, and stared out into the distance too. He patted a hand somewhat awkardly against his, not sure if it would help or not. "For what it's worth, like... yeah. I'm not thrilled my mom died, but I..." He squeezed Vocado's hand for a second. "I'm really glad you're alive, and here with me. I couldn't deal with this shit without you."