kills me every time [joiners]

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Fire curled around her neck, thin wispy trails thinner than fine gold chains. The Tanglewood creatures provided insult after insult – perhaps they thought they only hit Stryker with each jab, but forgetting her… that cut deeper than any words ever could. They forgot that she came here herself, to warn them about the Roseblood sacrifices? They forgot that she engineered the way to burn down the Typhoon’s precious Capricorn Tavern? Everyone in the world moved on, forgot her, while she rotted in endless torment.

If only Jervis forgot about her power as easily as these fools. Ninazu’s mouth etched up, one corner in a toothy half-smirk with the other side paralyzed by pain. With the scratches down to the cheekbones, the lioness resigned herself to a frozen half-leer at these animals. “You cannot be this blind. Stryker and I know more about the Pitt than all of you will ever know, combined. We have more reason to personally hate Jervis than most,” she said, slowly and deliberately until the scabs burst open and blood ran down her muzzle. Then she spoke with the venom of someone whose every breath pained them – as it obviously did, she could taste the metallic edge of blood with every word.

Her piercing green eyes narrowed, one blinking almost fully shut with the oozing blood. The former ardent did not want to speak further, to berate them with logic when clearly their heads belonged to emotional fluff; yet this shit smelled rosier than the imprisonment. What was a moment of pain in the present, for a potential future? “Who else can you find to take your forces down through the cave system? There are ways to get from anywhere to everywhere with them. Stryker and I are the best strategists the Pitt has ever known. And I am, indisputably, the best healer in the group’s entire history,” Ninazu said, wiping blood from her chin with the back of a paw.

To Stryker, she gave a scathing glare. How dare he think she would simply rest in Tanglewoods without him – leaving him to suffer and die alone wherever he shambled off? “You know better than to bargain for my life,” she grumbled, and would’ve given him a playful smack if the both of them weren’t in such terrible conditions. Tilting her head back to the Tanglers, she said, “You will want the both of us. Two heads are better than one, and all that piss.”

Yet one of them wanted to settle matters like a barbarian fool (and the Tanglers thought the two of them were the monsters?) – the constant flying was hard to ignore. It even bothered her with all that movement in her peripheral vision. Yet when the toothed bird flung himself down at Stryker, she snapped her teeth together and beckoned her weak fire to *burn* properly; the red draped down her neck and shoulders like a true fire mane, sprouting between her toes out of practice.

Thanks to her close proximity to Stryker and no thanks to her weakened state, she shifted to present a fire-covered shoulder to Beck’s attack. “Fuck off. I’m hungry, and you’d make a good roast chicken,” she snarled, her tone more venomous than she could hope to back up with if a proper fight started.

© MADI