sing, goddess, of the wrath of achilles | p

[BASTILLEPAW]

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the ascendants — kuiper corporal — tags

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Starrynight had told them not to engage, and Bastille was hard pressed to listen. He had tried, he really had, but he just-- he couldn't do it. He couldn't look at Luna every day and just ignore that fury brewing in his gut, the vicious impulse to track Beck down and shred his stupid, ghostly body apart. Bast didn't care if he couldn't really kill him -- he just wanted the gratification of pretending to, over and over and over. Becky could still hurt, even if he could not die, and Bastille would see to it that he did. He didn't care what Starry did to him, or what anyone said. He was going to have his fucking vengeance, damnit.

The ground cracked in delicate lines beneath his paws as he stalked along the edges of Tanglewood territory, but he steps were silent. He was going to have to figure out how to get to Becky in the first place, though he was unfamiliar with their territory and thus had to resort to peering through the trees, tracking aura movements in the distance and trying to figure out the fastest way to get in and out of their camp. He was taking care to make sure his invisibility stayed on, sticking close to the border and watched for his opportunity, the anger thrumming gently in his veins.

He wouldn't have anticipated Becky actually leaving the territory, though -- it was honestly as if fate was fucking smiling down on him, urging him along as he stalked after the rotten little troll. His blood was boiling with the urge to lunge for him on sight, but Bastille wanted to see where he was going first (if he turned towards the Ascendants, Bastille might just fucking lose it, though).

[member=67]beck.[/member]

[beck.]

    He would have forgotten all about the incident with Luna, erasing her from his memory whether accidentally or not. But whatever higher being out there loved teasing him for his terrible fate, a mocking clink of a single chain link accompanying his limping gait as a reminder dedicated to the trespasser that ended up as the target of his perpetual anger. At first he didn't notice the new addition to the black-iron shackles bound to his very being, but soon enough, the metallic jingle was difficult not to ignore. While the cat had been successfully fitted with a bell, half-literally, his own woes weren't his focus. Instead, the boy drowned out the faint clinking by distracting his ears with a forest of white noise. He had a vague goal in mind, noiseless pawsteps carrying him alongside a murky stream, assuming if he followed the polluted bank long enough, he would be guided to a clean water source. After all, the water plaguing the swamp was irradiated, and a few sightings of mutated creatures was more than enough to confirm his suspicions.

    Yet through the throaty cawing, distant splashing, and cicada buzz, a subtle heartbeat could be distinguished when the swamp lulled into a brief silence and he held his rasping breath. Lantern-like eyes shyly glanced at his shallow chest, raising a muddied paw to press against freezing fur in foolish hopes of the stalking pulse coming from him. Nothing, just as he expected. Blurred glare scoured the foliage wilting in the summer heat, tilting his head to the right in childlike curiosity for a moment. He was tempted to approach, but he would probably just find some critter behind the brambles. Rolling his eyes and breaking his entranced stare with the heartbeat's direction, Beck returned his attention to the slowing river, cautious to keep a wide radius between him and the watery current.

    By the time the tightly-packed trees of his home thinned into multiple clearings, the sun was still climbing into the sky. Blinking away the sudden blinding light, the poltergeist slowed his limping to a halt, paws sinking into the bank's silt as he did his best to stomach his phobias and cast his gaze out over the placid water in search of any signs of radiation. Not entirely sure what he was checking for, Beck fixated his vision on a pair of shadows swimming through the brook, unidentifiable fish navigating through the cattails and river stones. Tired of forcing weight onto not one, but two injured legs, the scrawny feline was more than content to drop to the mud, amber eyes closing half-way as he studied the fish from afar for any oddities that would otherwise deem the water as unsafe.

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[BASTILLEPAW]

[div style="background-color: white; width: 100%; font-family: Georgia; color: #576a6e; text-align: center; margin: auto"]BASTILLEPAW AURELIUS  ✧
the ascendants — kuiper corporal — tags

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Luckily for Beck, the grimy little asshole didn't seem to be headed for Ascendants territory. Bastille had no idea where the fuck the gremlin was going, but he followed behind idly, frosty stare locked on the distant leader as he seemed to wonder aimlessly. Just the sight of him, going about life casually as if he hadn't brutalized Luna, was starting to piss the corporal off very, very quickly. The cracks shooting out from under his paws seemed to be spreading faster, but luckily, the rest of his powers did not seem to be activating in response to his fury. No, in fact, other than the slight slip... he felt very much in control, the intent focus of his anger silencing everything else. There was nothing but his gaze tracking Beck and the steady assurance that he was going to make his life fucking hell.

When the vermin seemed to settle at a pond, Bastille felt a relief that he wasn't anticipating -- gods, he was so sick of waiting, and it was almost annoying to see that holding off had yielded him with absolutely nothing useful. All there was out here were some fucking fish, and he could have had Beck ensnared ages ago. At the very least, there was unlikely to be anyone else out here, but fuck.

As he stalked towards the ghost, it became hard to miss the slow crawl of cracks across the ground. It didn't matter, though -- Bastille was already within range and focused, his invisibility flickering off as he slammed against Becky's mind, systematically tearing through the leader's mental defenses and targeting the system connected with fear and movement; ultimately his goal was to paralyze Beck psychologically, keeping the asshole still long enough for him to seek out what he was really after. It took time to sort through memories to find something useful, after all, and Bast wanted to make sure he was thorough.

"Hi, Beck," he said lowly, his ice blue eyes frigid as he smiled dangerously. There was a vicious tension about the corporal, and he took another step closer as he started to shuffle around idly through memories, well practiced in the habit of seeking out those that seemed to throb with negative energy. "Do me a favor and sit tight, yeah?"

[beck.]

          History never stopped repeated itself, and Beck never learned no matter how many times he ended up bruised and beaten at the end of it. Countless times he had been hunted, somehow managing to wriggle out of their vengeful grip before they could sentence him to death and crafting a game out of survival. His luck ran out by the time matters were taken into their own hands. Being burned at the stake or taken to the gallows or even tortured in the public's eye would have been better than his violent demise and abandoned grave. At least then whatever remained of him would have been remembered. Needless to say, he knew what it was like to be hated and considered a disposable pest, he was practically an expert on it by now. Bastille wasn't different from any of them; the only change was that Beck wasn't aware of his grudge.

    Fish scales flickered up to breach the creek's surface, revealing that one of the bass was missing its eyes and sockets entirely, while the other's fins split at odd angles. His unbeating heart dropped into blood-drained guts at the observation, shifting irritably as he awkwardly stumbled back to his paws, tripping over his gangly limbs in an attempt to stall his pointless search. Despite the hackles lining his prominent spine bristling and exposing a glimpse of the ragged wound they were arranged to hide, Beck spat at the deformed fish in childish manner, sticking his blue-stained tongue out with frustration evident in his scowl. How was his clan supposed to defend themselves if they didn't have any clean water to drink? The poltergeist turned to leave, kicking away a clod of pebbles to sate his rising tantrum, yet he only managed a single step before his mind was hijacked.

    It was the simplest way to subdue the entity, if not the quickest. His mind wasn't just contained within a replicated brain; his entire being was an extension of his conscience, and without control over his own mind, he was effectively useless. Scraped knees buckled like a wobbly fawn's, Beck toppling thanks to a lack of muscle control and slumping against the mud with much less than a soft thud. Whether or not he could process his environment was a puzzle to even him, his apparition steadily distorting into shadowed obscurity until he forced himself to get a grip and preserve his materialization. A much easier task in theory, and the poltergeist hardly registered Bastille's earth-breaking footsteps as he inched closer. When he spoke, the only sign Beck could faintly hear him came in the form of a growling whimper trembling past scarred lips, a ferocious and damaged whine similar to a cornered animal's. He was stupid, he should have been more careful, he shouldn't have let them attack him again -- through Bastille's influence or not, whatever consciousness left free from the other's grasp rapidly descended into the repressed memories of pain impaling through his shallow chest. Sneering faces all too bitterly eager to throw and kick him to the earth only to yank him up again with bruising hands wringing his neck. Freezing water burning his nose and lungs as a heavy boot drove an arrowhead further into his back and pinned him down until his vision rolled into black. Beck's freckled face contorted into an expression of hidden terror, honey-brown eyes peeled wide open and staring through nothing.

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[BASTILLEPAW]

[div style="background-color: white; width: 100%; font-family: Georgia; color: #576a6e; text-align: center; margin: auto"]BASTILLEPAW AURELIUS  ✧
the ascendants — kuiper corporal — tags

[div style="line-height: 110%; word-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify; color: black; padding-top: 10px; font-family: Georgia; text-size: 6pt"]
Bastille grinned slowly as Beck went limp, intrigued to see just how effective targeting his mind was -- it would seem that ghosts couldn't withstand or resist quite as well, without an actual body to try and control; interesting, that. He would file that away for the next time Beck pissed him the fuck off (which, honestly? would probably be sooner than excepted). It was a little disappointing that the jackass seemed incapable of responding to him, because he would have loved to hear whatever pathetic insults Beck had prepared before he shut him up. More interesting, at least. As it was, Bastille was practically talking to himself as he stalked closer, frosty gaze shifting over the ghost briefly as he shifted through the memories that were arising.

His eyes narrowed slightly as a more prominent one pulled to the surface, and after a brief preview Bast had the general idea -- back-stabbing, betrayal, strangling, drowning. He pulled harder on the memory, trying to draw from it what about it really hit home the most with Beck, and decided that the drowning was probably the most traumatic (the cause of his death?) but the betrayal was important, too. He sifted about through other memories, targeting similar instances, and drew up lingering thoughts of abandonment. Smirking slightly, the bengal briefly released Beck's memories, leaving him paralyzed instead.

"You're going to regret ever even looking at Luna, jackass," he said quietly, before making a brief plan of the scene he wanted: friends -- Tanglewood? -- betraying Becky, drowning him  and leaving him to die as they abandoned him. He figured that would target all three of the weakest points he found in the leader's memories, anyway.

And then he pushed -- [u]shoving hard with another thread of telepathy, this time bypassing Beck's memories and fabricating his own image, his own personal version of Hell. He worked from his brief interactions with Tanglewood, developing images of those members he had met before and pulling in fragments of Beck's memories of them to round out what Bast didn't know. It took a few minutes to set the scene, but attention to detail was important -- he might have a firm grasp on Beck's mind, but he needed things to still be realistic in order for the terror to really set in. He coaxed Beck's thoughts into believing it was real, into seeing his Clanmates surrounding him, jeering and insulting him just as that group in his memories did. "We don't need you anyway, kid," one member -- Belladonna? -- leered, and the others were quick to chime in as the circle drew tighter around Beck.