The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 6: Tidal Cove]

Holly didn't feel comfortable holding a conversation while Countess was up to her ankles in somehow-still-not-dead guy, but what with Miss Metalmouth being up and chirpy he did seem the most important thing to discuss. His hands struggled for purchase amongst the gravel, wheezing half-breaths annealing into a gurgle as he tried to haul himself up.

Holly tried not to flinch as a metalloid leg ssshligcked its way out of a ribcage and was driven through his skull. Countess stared down, struggling out the rest of her feet once the light left his eyes.

"What," Holly said the word carefully, to see if she threw up or something. "The fuck." The sack of meat was still twitching intermittently, jolting back to life every couple seconds before the spike through his brain shut it down again. Countess' speakers hissed shore-noises, before she seemed to notice what they were doing.

"He attagkkkkked me first." Holly wondered for about half a second whether Countess was lying, before realising she had other things to give shits about. The mist was scattering, or, under the cover of trees and corners of eyes, slithering back whence it came.

"What happened to you?" Holly demanded. "When the fog rolled in?"

Countess just growled to herself, avoiding eye contact. "I-" sprang, went something in her neck, and her head snapped around as if it had gotten stuck. The caved-in interior of her skull was losing its shape, gears just giving up and congealing into a plasticine mash. "I fell."

Holly, despite a rising sense of dread, had to snort at that. "Fall where, exactly?"

"I." The amalgam went through a bunch of isolated twitches, a piece-by-piece recalibration into a slightly more relaxed posture. It was the same kind of unsettling ripple of hundreds of insects moving under a freshly-flipped rock, more fluid and obscene than the Countess' usual posturing. Her pre-recorded laugh had the hiss of seawater in it. "I fell."

"You can't just fall," protested Holly. "You must have ended up in the water, or you found another boat, or- or-"

Countess placed a hand on her shoulder, her one tethered foot making her stretch a little further than natural. "Sssshzzut up. You're here to hgghgelp me." She motioned with a shake of her foot, dislodging the body and giving Holly the opportunity to back off, plucking the hand off her shoulder. They both watched as his head wound closed up, breathing resuming with a panicked gasp.

"vvWe could dr-rg-rg-rown him," Countess offered, staring at Holly again through her unshattered eye.

"That's Arnold," Holly said, aghast. Countess took another look at him.

"Hhhhhh tried-d-d-d to kill me."

Holly ignored her, kneeling close as she could stomach to the man. His injuries were already knitting themselves closed, reddish afterimages against grayed, begrimed skin. Gravel and silver studded the abrasions on his hands; it dawned on Holly that he must've punched and clawed at Countess barefisted.

She raised a hand slowly, seeking a better read of his emotions. Arnold saw it, flinched, crept to his knees, then lunged. He tackled the elf, hands clamped about her throat, every rasp of his breath a wave shattering against a cliff. Holly could've taken him, probably, his arms trembled and his ribs stuck out in harsh relief through the gashes and slashes in his rags. Arguably more offended then inconvenienced (give her a minute or two and she might've changed her oxygen-starved mind about that), she grabbed at Arnold's forefront emotion, looking for pain or sadness or something sharp enough to snap him out of it.

Desperation, transmuted, sent him flying with a shock wave crack and an appreciable pressure blast. Holly found her feet first, ears ringing, throat stinging with angry snatches of still-electric air. "Hold it," she snarled at the Countess, who'd already scuttled half the distance between her and the knight.

Arnold, stripped of the one reasonable emotion to his tortured own that wasn't soul-crushing despair, managed a sob. Holly almost didn't catch it with him face down at the gravelled feet of the lighthouse, until a second and a third and a subsequent trail of sad, wet noise melded into the sad, wet ambiance the cove was already doing so fucking well. The sky was still drearily menacing, but the fog had receded enough to texture it with the sagging underbellies of clouds.

Holly struggled a bit between disgust, affront, and some mental arithmetic to the tune of who in this salt-drenched purgatory would be worth wasting her time on. Zero satisfying solutions and a solid minute's being stared at by a probably-malfunctioning Countess later, she made a beeline for Arnold and offered him a hand. He didn't respond, even when impatience trumped revulsion and she tried lifting up by the arm.

"Come on," cajoled Holly, seriously not feeling it. "Walk down to the beach with me. We'll... get you on a boat, away from her-" Countess spat out a cog and grinned- "and we'll find a way out of this dump.”

“Yrrrou think-k-k-kk you can drag allllong just an-gk-yone you please?”

“Could you either shut up or fix your voicebox?” groaned Holly, hauling Arnold on his feet and dragging him a couple paces. “We need to search this stupid round before I actually contemplate living forever in that shitty houseboat. If the fog doesn’t bother you because you can’t breathe or whatever, keep searching. And for gods sakes, if you actually do find something useful, send me that Message guy instead of trying to kill it. Got it?”

“... Kzzzzzktrystal.”