QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Oh come now
Your wordless histrionics are unseemly, abomination

"And you, god" retorted something that should've never had a voice, "could stand to learn some tact."

Robin had, with morbid curiosity and Zoo's inscrutable insistence, clambered atop the derelict tank and taken a look at Barbary's handiwork. The cougar priest snarled woozily at her first instinct upon taking in the sight, which had been to staunch his gaping stomach wound. Given the only other focal point was what was left of the Obscuran soldier, Robin didn't appreciate that.

She had appreciated Barbary's shudder - profile collapsing into a mass of white maggots - even less.

Don't give him that look
This phase of the cycle is unpleasant for most
He hardly needs you judging him

Zoo had reproached.

"I wasn't-"

The maggots had wriggled in what Robin saw as rebuke; they melded into an army of frogs, a siege of disgruntled herons.

As Barbary is kind enough to demonstrate
No harm eternal comes of it
Nothing aberrant to the Wheel's turns
Save for a push by my grace
Seeing it in its entirety

"He's lying," clarified one of the herons, stabbing the haloed conduit of his god in the side of its face. "It's horrendous and I'm miserable." Another of Barbary's feathered little bodies scratched its head, stopping with a look of disgust once another pecked at its bloodied foot.

Robin mulled the arrangement for a bit. "Have you just... tried going back to human?"

"It's war. A single body's too risky. Not to mention I lack the mass for any man-eater - no, cougars do not eat people - so my choices after stepping on a landmine are bacterium or maggots."

"But you just-"

"I like the maggots about as much as you did."

"Oh. Ew."

The heron hunched in its feathers. "Pretty much."

Now that that is all accounted for
We need a use for you
No fear amounting for the zealots with guns
For Barbary is joining us

It dawned on Robin she was sitting on three quarters of a tank, in some war-torn woods, with a madgod riding shotgun in its priest's flock-body. An oily mist slunk through the woods at feet of the mountains below. "I'm no use to anyone with these shoes," she decided, then made her slow way off the tank again and back to her suitcase. Every root and rock was a moment's inattention away from a twisted ankle, which struck Robin as inefficient. Suitcase acquired, she unbuckled the buckles, and took out a little black box. The box had upon it a bubbly sort of hexagon. The hexagon was blue, and split neatly down the middle when Robin pressed at it. The box split with it, and Robin flicked through its contents.

"Ah, this one."

She closed the box, closed the suitcase, took a deep breath, and walked around the lone gunman's shelter, a frosted eppendorf between her fingertips. She looked down at what was left of the sorry bastard (and a dozen or so herons looked with her), actually held her breath this time, crouched down, popped the lid, and poured a precious drop of her sorcery sauces on each of his eyelids. It sizzled; smelt like a carcass in permafrost. Robin caught a whiff of it and yanked her collar up to breathe through.

"Should've worn my labcoat for this." Robin said it like she'd chosen the wrong meat option for lunch. "Scalpel. Scalpel!"

Barbary didn't hand her the scalpel, but Robin could forgive him. (She was a bit embarrassed for just falling straight back on a hapless grad school assistant or two to be handing her equipment, and this replacement was still a sedge of herons). "Whatever you're doing, you're taking so long about it my god departed."

"Heh. Tell him sorry. Could you pass my suitcase, at least, please?"

Robin still wondered how he handled simultaneously performing the range of actions a dozen birds could undertake, four of which were sulkily dragging the suitcase while one glared at her huffily. "Will this take much longer?"

"Shouldn't do - thanks - I've just got to make the cut with the rafic and - there!"

The necrologist pushed her hair off her face with her forearm, beaming at the Obscuran soldier's corpse. It was as still as the grave, still bloody and ravaged and mangled by cougar as ever, and its eyes were wide open.

"Hey there. Look, I'll let you get back to what you were doing, but I've got a quick request of you..."

---

"I kill a man, and you steal his shoes."

Robin didn't break stride, even when a rock slipped out from under her. They were damn good boots, it's a shame public relations meant you couldn't mooch about in whatever army surplus kit you felt androgynously comfortable in, like she could on campus. She laughed at the herons.

"I asked him! It was only good manners."

The helmet wasn't such a great fit, but the strap kept it in place tidily enough. Robin was envisaging a pack would make for easier things-hauling than her suitcase. Would it be watertight, though?

"You stole a dead man's shoes."

"That's only morally reprehensible when dead men can't speak for themselves, Barbary. I just showed you they can."

The herons cruised overhead, unable to keep formation as individuals peeled off or laboured their way into the greying skies. The one at Robin's side ruffled its feathers uncomfortably.

"It still does not sit right," he said.