SEEING RED, [Quick]

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] Smoke filled the night like a thick fog, and the silhouette of the buildings near the bay were glowing an eerie shade of red that filled her heart with panic. Had it been any other night, the streets would have been empty and dead, give or take the random scout prowling for trespassers. Mostly everyone would have been underground, mending the sick, eating quick, rushed meals, or wandering off to bed. But tonight was different, and worry darkened her expressions as the scent of smoke settled in her lungs. It was too much to take in already, yet she didn’t know exactly what was happening. She was worn down and tired, a fugitive on the run, and sullen eyes were deprived of any relief that could have come from finally getting to her ‘home’. There was no joy here at the moment, and even if she couldn’t see it, she could feel it. There were screams in the distance – screams in agony, hate, and several commands. Rather than rushing to help, the tired Carna refused to walk right into the commotion. She kept her distance, finding her way onto one of the warehouse rooftops. Dusty hands gripped the ladder tight as she hoisted herself up the rusty, iron bars and over the railing. A deep sigh left her lungs as her feet touched the ground, and for a moment, she was just glad to be out of harm’s way. There were no more guards following her – any that had been chasing her down after the escape from the Fallen prison had lost her long ago as they were cutting through the desert. Any of the small nicks and wounds that she’d gotten from the struggle had stopped bleeding now, having had more than enough time to clot and start to heal. The Carna were off just a few streets away, and she could hear them – god, she could hear everything. The words were indistinguishable, ringing out from under several layers of concrete, but the tone was unmistakable. The smoke, the glow, the screams.. The bastard had done it. He’d done exactly what he’d cruelly shown her just a few hours ago – set the damned place on fire. Only, he didn’t attack in a ‘few days’ as he’d told her. He’d attacked the same night, probably knowing that, if given more than a sliver of a chance, she would find her way out of there. And she had done just that, but an hour too late. Adriana couldn’t move. The wounds were the least of her worries, the ache from running so long had retreated to the back of her mind, but she couldn’t move. There was nothing that she could do. It wasn’t like when they were free – no bucket of water or call to the fire department could help this, and she’d never fully remembered all of SewerTown’s exits. She could do nothing about it, and the desperation of not being able to save them was starting to suffocate her in the one thing she knew best: hate.

["Quick" Taylor]

The roaring thunder of flames filled his ears. He could feel waves of heat washing over his body. The acrid smell of smoke filled his nose and burned his eyes as screams from further down the sewer tunnel reached his ears. Quick just stood there, staring into the flames, taking it all in.Finally, he turned to his team of Hunters and Scouts and gave the hand signal that said it was time to leave. Taking the lead, he started up the ladder to the streets above.

The Waterfront, a place that had always been a safehaven for the Carnaring, was now on fire. There were small teams of Fallen all along the waterfront setting fire to different buildings as the sun came over the horizon and smoke rose into the sky like enormous pillars of grey. The Fallen Beta looked around, and signaled to two nearby teams to spread the word: they were done, leaving for home. Everyone else should do the same. The two teams left to spread yhe word and Quick led his team bsck in the direction of the Fallen border.

It was the morning after he'd given Adriana the terrible vision of this very thing. When he'd shown her the vision, it was going to be much smaller. There were going to be a few fires set in the sewers to run the Carna out if their residence in Sewertown only temporarily. But, once he'd returned to the Switchstone and seen what was happening, things had changed.

This was also the morning after Skye, the leader every Fallen had followed so faithfully, died.

The Carna had come in numbers and full-out attacked them. Their men broke into peoples' homes and slaughtered them in their beds. Even the children weren't left untouched. Quick himself had seen dozens laying in the "streets" between the railcars, some just killed unceremoniously, and others completely maimed beyond recognition.

He quickly joined into the fray with the single tomahawk he'd had with him at the time and, as he fought his way through the Carnaring barbarians, he'd gatheeered many of the Fallens' fighting men around him as he called for them to get to Skye. At the moment, it had seemed the only thing to do.

By the time they reached the scene with her and Manic, she already had his knife in her hands. They all watched in shock and horror as she drove it into her own chest and opened her own body. The group all let out a cry as they all charged forth, fighting through one last group of Carna before finally reaching her body. Quick himself stepped between her and Manic, his tomahawk at the ready and a rage filled snarl on his face as he stared at the large beast of a man.

Then the Carna left, just turning and walking away like they owned the Fallens' desert.

He managed to control his anger long enough to direct the immediate relief efforts and a somewhat hasty but reverent funeral for Skye. By the time it had begun to settle down, it was well past midnight. However, he didn't allow himself to sleep. He couldn't there was work to do. The Carna had to answer for their crimes. He intended to collect that debt immediately.

He assembled a group of three man teams, all Scouts and Hunters who were angry at this latest brazen attack by the Carnaring. He gave them the tools and the plan, and then they waited. When it was almost time for them to leave, he received a report that Adriana had escaped the Cesspool. He dismissed the messenger. Her escape no longer mattered. The Waterfront would burn. It was too late to change that.

That broilught them where they were now. Smoke and flames and screams everywhere. As he and his team made their departure, they came across one carna who was completely engulfed in flames as he came stumbling from a nearby burning building. Quick pulled drew his spear and ended the man's misery. He wanted to teach this ring a lesson, not make them suffer.

"We need to get back to the Switchstone," he said to the others as he replaced his spear,"let's hurry."

With that, they continued on at a fast trot towards the Fallenring desert, leaving the burning Carna territory behind......

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] The smoke filled the sky in the distance, shrouding out what stars could be seen beyond the glass. Some of it remained on the ground, too heavy to rise, and covering the distant streets in what looked like fog – but it was deadlier than that. It was sickening. She hadn’t been briefed on the most recent events, and thus the burning seemed like an extreme reaction. The small missions some of them had been sent on could not warrant so much hate. Why was the waterfront on fire? The Carna were no angels, and sometimes they deserved fates worse than hell, but not all of them – and certainly not like that. Her hands gripped the concrete barrier on the side of the building, tightening their grasp as if she wanted to break it into pieces, strangle the life out of it like one of the Fallen that had given chase after her escape. But she saved her energy, staring down the empty, smoky streets as if waiting for something, anything that she could do. To stand there and wait idly by, did that make her any better than the ones who’d lit the fire? Probably not. She could kill him right then, she honestly could. The screams echoed in the distance, and after a while they’d begun to blend into the crackling of the fire. She’d started to tune it out. It became easier to tolerate by the second, and her mood lifted just slightly as a result. But then something burst out of one of the burning buildings in the distance, beckoning her attention, and green eyes snapped out of their previous daze just long enough to see a figure plunge a spear through another, one that was engulfed in flames. At first she’d thought it to be one of the other Carna, trying to end the poor man’s ordeal rather than letting them burn – but the sight was more sinister than that. As the small group of shadows moved away from the burning buildings, she crept towards the side that they were coming from, footsteps light as they drew near. With the city on fire, there was just enough light to see who the strangers were – and they were not welcome. The scouts and other Carna were busy tending to the fire, and the raiders were taking advantage of their desperation.. but Adriana was more spiteful than most, and getting revenge was better for her conscience than saving a life. A small snarl ripped across her lips as she pushed away from the concrete barrier, hands balling up into fists as she searched the rooftop for something to use against them – anything. Her regular weapons were no good if she wanted to cause any damage to all of them, she needed something bigger, something heavier. And when her eyes set on some rubble along the wall that was directly above the alley they were heading through, there was hardly a moment of hesitation before she crept towards it. There were several bags of bricks lining the wall. With the lack of cement and proper tools, the Carna had never found much use for them other than to hold down an occasional tent. She’d just found an entirely different use for them. She tightened her grip around the neck of the aged cloth bag, small pebbles and dust pouring out of the smaller holes as it was lifted over the short mural. One by one, she lifted up several of the surrounding bags to rest on the wall, her breaths growing quicker as adrenaline started to rush through her veins. Time seemed to stop right then, seconds rolling by painfully slow, until the group of Fallen was right underneath her – and suddenly it all rushed. She shoved the bags off of the edge, aiming them right towards the group in hope of knocking or maiming a few. Whether she got them now or hunted them down in the night, they were going to pay.

["Quick" Taylor]

They hadn't made it very far before something went wrong. As they passed between two taller buildings, one of the members of his team yelled out his name. He slowed briefly and looked up where the man was pointing. What he saw made him pause in shock. There were large bags falling over the edge of the building. They looked like they were filled with something extremely heavy. One of them came falling down right towards him. He just stood there, with no time to think.

Next thing he knew, one of his team members was shoving him out of the way as the bag meant for Quick landed right on top of him. The Beta landed on his side hard as he saw the bag of bricks break open on top of the man, crushing the life out of him. It was a man by the name of Michael, a good friend he'd made back in his days as a Scout. Quick shifted over to check on his friend, but it was no use. He was already dead.

Quick shot to his feet and looked around the narrow alleyway. There was a fire escape nearby. With a loud cry of rage, he sprinted to it full speed and leaped onto the ladder at the bottom and began shooting up at an astonishing speed he could only achieve through the experiments that had been performed on him. As he climbed, he reached out with his mind to read the assailant's mind. He immediately recognized her.

Adriana.

As he neared the top, he screamed out again, his temper now completely out of his control, his vision turned red with anger. When he reached the roof, he leapt from the escape ladder towards where she was across the building, driving himself forward as fast as his legs could carry him....

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] Adrenaline engulfed her, breathing new life into the worn-down Carna. The sound that the Fallen made as they saw the bags pummeling down, it was like ecstasy to her ears after listening to fire crackling in the distance. She devoured the sight like a starved animal, and there was hardly any sanity left in her as the bag of bricks burst on one of the men as he’d tried to save another. Time was rushing, but she couldn’t escape that moment – she shoved a few more bags off of the railing in quick succession, hoping to catch some of them by surprise as they watched their deceased comrade. Her attention was severed from the scene playing out below her as a yell cut across the silence, the stranger's rage filling the air. The voice caught her by surprise, but she knew it all too well, having heard the same anger boiling from the man just earlier that day. The scent that rose from the alley, even if it was clogged with traces of smoke, was undeniably his. She'd run into him far too many times to confuse him for anyone else. The iron fire escape groaned under his weight, protesting as he made his way quickly up the ladders, and panic shot into her heart at that moment. She ran. The second that his head popped up on the other side of the desolate rooftop, she abandoned her plans of throwing down more bags. Revenge could wait just a bit longer. No amount of adrenaline was enough to carry her out of there as fast as she wanted. And thus, the shifter made the best of what she had – there was no chance in hell that he was going to get a chance at her, not after what she’d seen him do that night. The roles were reversed. Where Adriana was usually the monster, now she was just fighting back; Quick usually had some kind of humanity to him.. but now it was hard to trust that façade at all. A gasp of air filled her lungs before she tore across the concrete, flanking him in order to go back down the same ladders that he’d just rushed up from. It was the only way off of the rooftop unless she wanted to jump off the side. But rather than going bar by bar down the fire escape, she just leaped down through the platforms, determined to get out of there. And when her legs touched the ground at last, darkened eyes looked up to the structure, a dare plainly written on her expressions. Come get me. The whisper in her mind was more of a threat than a challenge. She didn’t want him to follow, didn’t want to see his face again if she could help it – but her reaction to fear was to lash out, so the two sides collided as she made haste down the alley.

["Quick" Taylor]

As Quick charged Adriana across the rooftop, she cut to his side and ran right past him, toward the fire escape he'd just come up. He yelled out a curse as he slip himself to a stop and bolted after her, following her tactic of dropping down rather than climbing. Each platform he landed on shuddered under his weight as he landed on it. The final platform at the bottom gave way completely as he landed and came detached from the wall, spilling him to the ground ten feet below.

He ignored the pain in his anger and shot back to his feet as he looked up at Adriana, running away and issuing that mental challenge. With a snarl on his face, he drew a knife and hurled it towards her with every bit of strength he had, and then chased after it. He didn't know what he'd do after he caught her. All he knew was he didn't intend to let her escape this time.....

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] She was intent on getting away from there as fast as possible. The thoughts that rushed in her head were all of escaping. It was almost like she was back in his territory again. With the Carna all busy tending to the fire, too busy to give chase to the Fallen that had caused it, they had no men to spare – no one around that would hear a call for help, definitely not above the screams in the distance. As the iron frame behind her protested as Quick leaped down through it, she shuddered when it let loose, crashing down with a rumble. She glanced over her shoulder once again towards the fixture, gaping as he rose up from the ruins of the last platform. That collapse had to have injured him somehow – how was he still kicking? She was shaken back into reality as he drew a knife, and she took off once more, making it to the edge of the alley before it came slicing through the air, digging into her thigh just as she spun around the bend. A slew of curse words left her then, lungs filling with air as she stared down at her leg. There was no time to spare. She couldn’t spend the next few minutes summoning the courage to pull it out, couldn’t spend more than a second dealing with it. She bit the bullet, cursing the sky and clenching her teeth as she ripped it out of her thigh and projected it across the street, the metal clanging as it crashed against the sidewalk. The blood rushed out, and had she been anywhere else, she would have been worried. But she was home, she was supposed to be safe. If she ran far enough, she’d run into somebody – anybody, maybe a medic. Her injuries were the least of their problems at the moment, but it wasn’t the death sentence that it would have been if they’d been out in a different territory. Pain shot through her leg, but the shifter summoned up the stubbornness to keep going, doing whatever it took to keep out of sight.

["Quick" Taylor]

Quick saw the knife sink into her leg as he ran with a limp. His right leg had been twisted in the fall and each step on it shot pain from his foot to halfway up his back. The only thing that kept him going was the anger. Anger at the Carna for slaughtering so many innocents back at the Switchstone. Anger at himself for not diving away from those bricks. Anger at Adriana for playing his emotions for an opportunity to kill him.

The anger and adrenaline carried him past the corner of the building, and there he saw her, trying to hobble her way to safety still. He continued on towards her and caught her just before the next corner. He grabbed her by her shoulder and slammed her back against the wall and pinned her there, snarling at her in rage.

"What? Poisoning me not enough?!" He yelled at her at the top of his lungs,"You had to finish the f#&$+$(÷ job, didn't you?! It's not enough for you Carna-Freaks is it?! F%@( WITH ALL OUR LIVES AND YOU'RE STILL NOT SATISFIED!"

He grabbed her and shoved her to the ground and planted a booted foot on her cheat, pressing just hard enough for it to make it hard to breath. Meanwhile, he had images of her kissing him and poisoning him with her venom back at the Switchstone. He saw the children who'd been murdered by their attack. He saw Skye's body and Manic standing over his Alpha, whom he'd followed so loyally. He shoved all these images into her head with his telepathy as rough and startlingly as he could.

"YOU WERE THE ONE PERSON I TRULY CARED ABOUT! THE ONE I OPENED UP TO!" he screamed at her,"AND WHAT DO YOU DO?! YOU TRIED TO KILL ME, DAMN YOU!"

He turned towards the building and punched out the window behind him, the glass shattering with an ear splitting crash. Shards flew all over, cutting his arm and hand. Some of the smaller pieces embedded themselves in his hand, but he didn't care anymore. He reached down and grabbed her by her shirt and threw her against the wall by the window, tears streaming down his face now. His hands shook violently as he held her against the wall.

"I COULD HAVE DEALT WITH THAT! BUT THEN THE CHILDREN! THEY KILLED THEM!" He continued screaming, the words now also being involuntarily broadcast through his telepathy,"WHY?! THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING! ANYONE WHO DOES THAT DOESN'T DESERVE TO LIVE!"

He started punching the cement wall with his hand as he screamed why at the top of his lungs. This continued for several minutes until the skin on his knuckles was split, he'd broken bones in his hand, and blood dripped from his fingers. He sank to his knees and rested his head on the wall, shaking it back and forth.

"Why? why did you do it?" He finally asked her quietly, his body shaking and his head swimming from the emotional exhaustion.....

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] The blood was seeping out of the stab wound, staining her jeans red as she ran. She had to get out of there. She had to make it to them, or at least get close enough that they’d notice the fight was coming right to them. There had to be a way out – but all of that came crashing down as his hand gripped her shoulder, and she drew in a sharp breath when he slammed her against the wall. She lifted her hands to push back, digging her nails into whatever flesh she could find as he started yelling at her, curse words filling the night at the top of his lungs. “LET ME GO!”

[/color] she yelled back at him, raising her volume over his just briefly before clenching her teeth. Brows furrowed as she stared him down, almost as if trying to burn a hole in his skull. But then he pulled her away from the wall, only to shove her back down. She kicked out at him as she hit the ground, blood boiling as the images started pouring in. He was using telepathy against her again, like he’d first shown her the plan to set the bay on fire. It’d turned out so much worse than what he’d shown her, though, and she hated him for it, for not giving her a chance to try to save them, for showing it to her in the first place, putting that weight on her shoulders and knowing that she’d would feel obliged to stop it.

“GET OVER IT! What else did you expect? You f-----g cornered me!”[/color] she screamed right back at him, struggling to get a decent breath in, yet still wasting them on fighting back, on pushing against him.

But somewhere in the middle of seeing the images, something changed. It wasn’t just blind hate over her poisoning him. It was something with Skye and Manic, dead Fallen kids, and something more. It was a recent bloodshed – had it happened just that night?
Her protests grew silent as the seconds rolled by. She had no idea what the proper reaction would be. Both sides had suffered losses.. was she supposed to show sympathy? She felt it, but she didn’t know how to show it, and at the moment, nothing could make her want to show him any kindness.

He threw his hand through the window, sending pieces of glass crashing down around the window just before he reached down to pull her up by the shirt. She didn’t fight, or stare him down with the same ardent look that he’d seen from her so many times. The only thing in her eyes was fear and confusion – the same things that had caused her to poison him the last time. But she didn’t strike.

“Help!” The word was sickening for her to say. It wasn’t like her to ask for that, wasn’t like her to scream. She was supposed to be attacking him, getting him back for what he’d done, but he’d flipped it on her. He was blaming everything the Carna had done on her.
Her voice cracked just slightly, a direct result of the cold night air, the smoke, and the fear pumping through her veins. This was her fault. All of it. She should have never trespassed, never met the man.. never said his name. Maybe then, if she’d tried to kill him, it wouldn’t have been seen as a personal attack. But it was too late to change that now, it was too late to turn back time and rewind. She was Carna, and that put a certain weight on her shoulders that she had to live with.
She backed away from him as he slid down the wall beside her, the scent of his blood filling the air with each step. After so much yelling, so much anger, for once, there was silence – and rupturing that would mean raising more questions from him.

“I didn’t..”[/color] She choked out, crossing her arms defensively. She was seconds away from running again.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
Her eyes quickly shifted in the direction of the old alley, where the bags of bricks had gone flying over the side. She was perfectly capable of murder, yet he couldn’t see that she’d purposely held back when it came to him. A short breath left her lungs then, almost scoffing at the idea.[/div][/td][/tr][/table][/center]

["Quick" Taylor]

"I didn't," he heard Adriana choke the words out as his mind began to clear,"If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead."

He slowly turned his head to look at her, his body wracked by shakes from the physical exertion and exhaustion brought about by the sheer force of his anger. He felt lightheaded, and the world almost seemed to spin with each beat of his heart as his head throbbed in pain. His hand, broken with shards of glass embedded deep in the skin, hurt almost unbearably. His leg was the only thing that didn't hurt, and he was sure that was because he wasn't standing at the moment.

"But the kiss," he said, his voice hoarse from screaming,"I was unconscious for days. Bedridden for a week. It wasn't supposed to kill me?"

Those words of hers had cut him down and made him feel like the smallest man in the world. He shook his head and started struggling to his feet. He felt pain lance up and down his leg as he put weight on it. He growled in pain and leaned against the building for support.

"I'm a f$&*£π€ idiot," he said quietly before slowly starting to shamble off to meet up with the others of his team. He couldn't stay here any longer. It was both too dangerous and too painful. As he passed Adriana, he whispered two quiet words,"I'm sorry."

He knew they would do nothing to help, but he had to say them for his own sake. He'd attacked her, even injured her with his throwing knife, and all because he had been unable to cope and control his temper. Worse, his anger and that of his Ring had lead to a lot of deaths on this morning. It was something that many of them would probably regret for the rest of their lives. This morning, they had become what they all hated most.

He came up to the edge of the building and looked down the alleyway. The rest of the team had collected Michael's body and were slowly moving in his direction. He met up with them as they neared the exit to the alley. As he walked off, he looked back at Adriana one more time, then looked back towards the direction of the border and willed himself to keep moving.....

[Adriana Reyes]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 475px; height: 566px; background-image:url(http://i45.tinypic.com/ct6xd.png)] She closed her eyes momentarily as she realized her words caught his attention. She was expecting him to yell again, to lash out like he’d been doing for the past few minutes. But there was nothing. No violence, no hate – just questions about when she’d bitten him, as if that was the biggest problem they had to deal with. She laughed, partially in disbelief, and partially because she didn’t know how else to react to any of it. She brought up a hand to her forehead, letting it rest there for a few seconds before running it through her messy bangs. “No, it wasn’t, I didn’t want to kill you. I wasn’t going to.” As he tried to regain his strength and stand back up again, she stepped back, visibly skittish, even if she knew he was wounded. However, her hands balled into fists again as he started heading off down the alley again, making his way back to the others. All that – just to end up taking it back? All to end up saying sorry? The nerve he had – to show up, to set the bay ablaze, to throw her around like a rag doll, just to end up walking away with an apology. Just to leave her with the guilt of knowing that she could have righted the entire night with one venomous bite. “That’s it then? A f------g sorry?” she yelled, chest heaving as she grew bold again. She followed him down the alley towards where the Fallen member’s body had been, boots making soft thuds as she closed some of the distance. There was no real reason as to why she followed. She wasn’t expecting him to say anything else after all his previous outbursts, but something was pressing her to act out. The city was burning, the Carna were dying, she was fuming.. and there he was, walking away from them, from her, with a simple apology on his lips. Why couldn’t she just end it?