MQ: When Blood Runs Cold

[Elijah_Morendale]

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It surprised me enough that the creepy chick could tell that I existed--did she have some sort of whacked-out mind hacking powers? That had to be the only explanation. But it still irritated the hell out of me to hear her suggest that I was merely a part of Elijah's fractured mind. I had a sudden urge to take over and slap her around a little bit, something that the chief wouldn't have the balls to do after being insulted as such.

Then she had to go and say that she murdered Christopher.

I screamed. It was an unearthly, ear-splitting noise that made Elijah and woman flinch. My rage boiled over--I had grown to like the chef after we dismantled all those zombies a few weeks ago. And now he was dead. My vision turned blood red as I looked over at Elijah. He seemed to be in as much shock as I was, although the look on his face implied that all he would do to avenge our friend is shed a few tears and sob a bit. I looked back at the thin, pale woman. Oh, I was going to kill her. I'd ram my katana up her crotch, twist it a full three-sixty degrees, gouge her eyes out with two icicles, tear her throat out with my bare hands, piss on her corpse, then leave her broken and violated body out here in the cold, snowy landscape of Salvar for the ravens to feast on while keeping her skull for a soup bowl.

Oh, this fucking slutbag was going to die, and it was going to be beautiful. I've always considered senseless bloodshed to be an art form.

I forced myself into Elijah's body, taking control like I usually did whenever I felt the need to cause some permanent physical damage to something. However, the dragon continued to sit on my chest, which caused a small hiccup in my plan. All I could do was continue to glare at the woman and try to explode her head with my own mind. The unprocessed handbag kept on snarling at me, showing me its sharp teeth as if they were going to frighten me. The black-clad bitch snapped her fingers, which made the creature finally get off my chest.

Now that I could move and breathe freely again, I wasted no time jumping to my feet. I locked the woman in my sights as my right hand swiftly moved for my sword. The sound of the steel blade scraping against the smooth wooden sheathe was accompanied by my rushed footsteps through the snow as I rushed the bitch. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins as I drew ever so closer to dealing cold slashy death once again.

The woman merely stood there, calm and cold as always. I let out another scream as I raised my sword up in the air, ready to cleave her face in two. In a flash, she stepped to my side and smacked my arms with her right hand, throwing me off balance. Before I could right my attack, she reached up with her left hand and constricted her thin fingers around my throat. I stopped in my tracks--she didn't look it, but holy hell was she strong. It was as if she wasn't expending any effort at all to cut off my air supply.

But this wasn't going to stop me. Straining under the pain of a windpipe that was in the process of being crushed, I raised the katana once more. Unfortunately, she anticipated this, and was quick to bend my wrist in a fashion that made me drop my precious toy. The sword kicked up a small cloud of powdery snow as it crashed into the ground.

The pain was becoming unbearable. I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything... I was helpless in the hands of this woman. Sure, I probably could've kneed her in the babymaker, but for all I knew she might have another hand down there that would've caught my leg.

I felt a wave of emotion overcome me. For a second, I couldn't sort out what it was--but then it hit me like a sack of bricks. I was enjoying this. This level of pain was a new sensation. Sure, Elijah's killed me enough times during our Thursday night training sessions, but this was on a whole new--no--real level. A smile formed on my face; small at first, but I could feel it grow into one of my regular old psycho grins. Whenever I could get a gasp of air, I laughed. My eyes lit up in joy at this sensation.

The woman merely laughed along with me as she tightened her grip around my throat (come to think of it, the crazed look in her eyes to match my own made her look kind of cute). My own giggles were suddenly cut off with an choked gurgle. Her fingernails pierced my flesh. I could feel the warm sensation of blood trickling down my neck as it began to add a few more stains to the chief's denim jacket. Before she could finish me off, however, a familiar voice cut through the air. The woman released her death grip on my breathing tube, and I immediately fell to the ground, coughing hysterically as I tried to take a few deep breaths. I touched my neck. The small gashes where her nails pierced my neck were tender and oozing blood. I felt dizzy.

Twenty gold says that you wouldn't have had the guts to kill me anyways, you stupid sack of shit, I thought to myself.

I looked up in the direction of the voices. Though my eyesight was rather blurry, I could make out two figures. One of them had a colorful yet really ugly mohawk an the dirtiest dress code I've ever seen, while the other had a dirty white coat on. It was the chef.

I weakly smiled. "Oh, hey. Wassup? I thought you were dead." I fell face down into the snow in an unconscious heap.

[Molotov]

Molotov scowled. He wondered when he would get to finish his sandwich. He had been eating it as he left the fat chef, but keeping up with Chris had been problematic enough without trying to stuff his face. Now that they had arrived at a camp, Molotov had wanted to eat, but instead, he found himself overwhelmed by stupidity.

He looked over at the people he assumed were Chris’ friends, especially after the casual introduction that occurred in the midst of their fighting, and realized he wouldn’t be able to get a bite just yet. “No wonder this bloody chef is getting in to trouble when these are the kind of wankers he wants to be with. Bloody fighting in the middle of Salvar- don’t they know it’s too sodding cold for this kind of violence unless you really hate the bastard?”

The mutant wondered how much longer he was going to have to follow Chris in order to keep his promise to the fat chef back in the Golden Grass Inn. Molotov had only uttered the promise to mollify the man and to leave without incident, but now he was beginning to wonder if it was worth the trouble. Chris didn’t want him, Molotov had already had to pull a few tricks out of his bag just to follow the chef this far. Now that Chris had seemed to return to a pair of friends who sought that their time was best spent roughhousing, then Molotov wanted no part of it.

However, once the man with black hair who had said hello to Chris passed out, Molotov realized that the situation was more complicated that. This wasn’t two friends having a struggle, it was a fight. The casual way that the man had spoken had at first hid this fact from the mutant, but now that he realized it, his face formed into a tight frown.

“Bloody hell, when it isn’t my trouble, then its someone elses,” Molotov thought. The air around his finger tips began to heat up as slow burning balls of fire began to hover around his fingers, and they formed two large fireballs that hovered right in front of his palms. Only now, he noticed that the sandwich he was carrying had been burnt to a crisp as a result. “I should make this quick and just get it over…”

He eyed the woman, gauging her for weaknesses and strengths, though his first reaction was just utter shock when he saw the way that her lips had been sewn together. “Poor bloody bird…” Molotov thought with limited regrets. “No wonder she wants to kill people, if that happened to me, I’d bloody be fit to be tied myself.” He wondered if Chris and his black haired friends now weren’t responsible for the way that the woman’s lips had been sewn.

With a sigh that was halfway between ennui and disgust, the mutant took a few steps so that he was in between both Chris and the woman, and also no closer to either of the two. “Look,” Molotov barked. “I bloody have no idea what kind of a sodding game you’re playing at here, and if you’d really want to know, I just don’t bloody care. Thing is though, I was carrying a sandwich with me in my hand, only half eaten, and now the thing’s all burned, just because I had to make fireballs to stop you wankers from doing whatever bloody dance you were playing at, and I hate to see a good sandwich get burned in vain. So here’s what’s going to bloody happen. You two are going to do whatever you want, except hurt each other. Insult each other’s mothers, snog, tell each other how much you love old Showstopper concerts, I don’t bloody care. A sandwich was burned in keeping you two apart, and so you’re not going to fight each other.”

And there Molotov stood, one hand extended out towards both Chris and the woman with sewn lips, with a fireball ready to hit both of them. “I can’t let a good sandwich like that die in vain,” he added, knowing he probably amused only himself. “It’s the bloody principle…”

[Christoph]

For a single tense instant, the entire situation seemed balanced on the razor tips of the pale berserker’s claws. Chris stood, poised, his sword out and pointed directly at the snarling woman who’d attacked Elijah. He was prepared to use the rune-covered blade, just as he had before. A tingling, burning sensation crept up his arm from the sword’s hilt.

It wouldn’t take more than a single stroke to, he knew. The pyromancer scowled at her, daring her to make a move. If she made the wrong one, he’d part her head from her shoulders. After all he’d been through that day, he was not in the mood to put up with this kind of crap. His muscles tightened and his jaw clenched. It felt as thought the sword itself was tugging his arms into action.

Then, John’s words struck him like a head butt to the face. Sandwiches? Chris chuckled at first, but his laugh expanded exponentially in moments. He lowered his sword; what had he been thinking? The laughter separated him from the situation for a moment and drowned out his rage.

Looking back at the aggressing woman, whatever she was, the chef’s smile vanished. She’d curved around John’s imposing form, her unnaturally blackening eyes and murderous attention still locked on Chris. Apparently, she didn’t have the same respect for sandwiches that he and John did. He cringed, backing away.

“Listen, calm down,” he pleaded, not wanting a fight. He’d barely made it out with his throat un-shredded during their last exchange. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Unfortunately, his plea did nothing to stop her; Chris continued to backpedal in the face of the bestial woman. The stranger retracted his arm slightly, angling the fireball he held at the back of the pale woman's head. The chef cursed under his breath, shooting a look at John that tried to convey ‘don’t piss her off more, for the love of god’ as effectively as he could with his eyes.

“Please,” he said, turning back to the girl. “This isn’t a good idea. Don’t… claw out my eyes and juggle them, or jump rope with my intestines?” He scolded himself silently. A fine time to be joking around.

[Witchblade]

All she wanted to do was feel his blood flow between her fingers as she ripped his throat out. All she wanted was to watch the life slowly fade from his eyes as she took that away from him, leaving them grey and dead and staring at her face and making it the last thing he would ever see before he slipped into a world of nothingness. She wanted that power over him because he’d helped those cultists balance that power over her.

But in the end he saved your life.

That didn’t matter, it didn’t matter! She wanted to believe that it made no difference to her, but she knew it did. She just didn’t want to believe it. And even though he could have attacked her right there on spot for what she’d just done to his friend, he didn’t. He lowered his sword and stood before her pleading with her to stop, as if his words could make a difference. As if she was really listening to him… as if she really cared. But she found herself pausing anyway. Her foot was poised to take another step towards him only it never did. And the tensed muscles in her arms seemed to relax ever so slightly as she stared at him. That’s all she did for a few seconds was stare at him with eyes slowly being consumed in blackness.

What are you doing”

I don’t know…

You’re letting him go after he nearly handed you over to those other disgusting humans? You’re just going to walk away?

Was she just going to walk away? Her indecision was plainly clear on her face, fight or flight. Then she felt the confusion slowly fade away as the bloodlust began to set in once more, taking over all other thought and leaving nothing but it. Leaving only the lust for fighting, for death and for killing. It was consuming and nearly impossible to resist.

“Come on… nobody has to get hurt.”

Her eyes narrowed as they focused on him. His words pushing through the red veil that The Malice was placing over her mind, but the more she began to fight back against it the sudden and splitting feeling her head was turning into. Grinding her teeth, she reached up with one of her hands and felt the cool skin rest against her forehead as the pain only grew stronger.

Witch, don’t do it! Don’t listen to The Malice!

Who’s voice was that? She’d never heard it before and it definitely did belong to The Malice and it certainly was not her own. Shaking her head, the halfling tried to clear it of all the different voices that were spewing forth meaningless words from within, drowning out her own thoughts in the process.

Don’t give in to The Malice; it’s only trying to play you. You’re stronger than it, fight back!

The onslaught of screaming words that came from The Malice only forced her to bring her other hand up and clutch at the side of her skull, as if holding it could somehow ease the pain and the confusion and allow her control over her own mind once more. Slowly, the claws that her nails turned into receded, turning back into the regular fingernails that any person possessed. She locked the voice away with a corner of her mind where it would stay for a time until it found a way to free itself. It was a familiar strategy that she used on it, one that it was becoming increasingly more resistant to, this little episode proving that to her just now.

The pain faded as her eyes cleared and returned to the normal crimson colour they possessed. As the halfling straightened herself and became aware of what had just happened and what had nearly happened she found herself without the words to say or explain anything to Christoph. She normally never felt the need to explain herself to anyone, especially a group of humans but right now she just felt… embarrassed by her own actions. She’d let that darkness within her get the better of her and the three of them had seen a side of her she never liked anyone to see. Fighting was one thing, killing was another, but when The Malice started to take over, she turned into something completely different than who she wanted to be. It was nothing but a blood crazy being that existed only for death and the fun that slaughtering a few thousand would bring. She took great pleasure in killing, but not in the same way that it did. It was something she barely could explain to herself, but there was a fine line of difference between them and she’d never stepped over that seconds ago.

Turning her back on Christoph, the halfling looked at the downed form of his friend. There was a small splattering of blood in the pristine snow by his neck, blood from the wounds that she had caused. They still bled but did not appear to be life threatening. Wordlessly she walked over to him and knelt down beside him. Daegun came up beside her and whimpered, placing his white scaled paws upon her thigh and pushing on her lightly, as if worried she may do something. She merely petted his head before rolling the human onto his back.

I can’t believe I’m about to do this…

Taking a deep breath, she extended her hand over his neck and began pulling on energy within her body she hadn’t used in years. It resisted at first and she found herself having to concentrate harder, but within a few seconds a gentle glow began to illuminate from her hand. Soon, it turned into a pure, white light, almost whiter than the snow around them and once it reached a fair size, she passed the energy from her hand into the human’s body. Immediately the five puncture marks in his neck began to close, leaving no scar and only the smudges of blood as their evidence. As he began to stir and slowly come around, she stood and moved towards the tent to gather her belongings.

[Elijah_Morendale]

Sandwiches. I distinctly remember hearing something about sandwiches as I came to.

I recovered from my little blackout lying on the cold, snow covered ground. My throat hurt something fierce, as if someone drew a couple iron stakes through it and didn't take them out straight. Groaning, I touched my throat, happy to find that there were no gaping holes there, but there was blood... And lots of it. On my neck, and staining the snow near where I lay.

I sighed inwardly. Nadia, what the hell did you do this time?

My head was spinning as I tried to get a grasp of the people around me. There was the real mean-looking woman, and some guy in a dark coat who looked like he was in dire need of a hot bath and a new hairstyle. Next to him stood Chris.

Wait, Chris?

"Hey, man! This girl over here told me you were dead!" I shot a thumb at the dark-clad woman standing over me. My voice was still weak. Whoever it was that attacked me while Nadia was in control must've done quite a number on me. But, I didn't want to think about that right now--I was gonna' have a nice, long chat with my little friend when I could get some time to myself. I tried to stand up, a task made difficult by my head spinning every which way.

I held my arms out to steady myself against the tilt-a-world. "Now, somebody said something about a sandwich. I hope to hell you brought one for me. I haven't had anything to eat since lunch yesterday." My eyes eagerly darted between Chris and the homely man in the coat.

[Molotov]

Now Molotov only chuckled slightly when he saw the unconscious man come to. The mention of sandwiches was amusing, but the mutant was beginning to realize how grave his situation was. He had pressing issues on his mind, the tingling sensation that he felt on the back of his palm every time his adrenaline started pumping being chief among them. However, he had followed Chris, all at the behest of a portly cook. The mutant had done it, partially out of human kindness, but mostly because even he felt a little guilty about leaving right after eating.

The mutant’s first impression had just been to follow after Chris for a little while, but then the chef had started to irritate him, so Molotov followed a bit longer just to needle the upset chef. Now, he wondered whether or not he could, in all good conscience, leave Chris with these new “friends” that he had made.

“Bloody hell,” Molotov thought exasperatedly. “How did the poor bloke go from palling with fat chefs to these stupid wankers. That one that passed out looks fit to be tied, and the other’s a sodding murderer. I’d think she might have done those mouth stitches herself, just because she bloody likes it. Dumb bird.”

Chris was definitely the arrogant sort, but even in their limited interaction with each other, Molotov could tell that he wasn’t a real killer. The misguided chef might kill, and he might do something that he would greatly regret, but even then, Chris wouldn’t be a killer. He’d just be another in a long line of people that were bound to make mistakes they would later regret.

“People like me,” Molotov realized. He knew there was nothing he could do to completely snap Chris out of his arrogance, but his sandwich joke had already begun to work wonders. He could see a change in the demeanor of the man. Molotov knew if he left, then Chris might go down the same path he had gone when he was seventeen, a path that he was only recently recovering from. Even with everything going on in his own life, he couldn’t sit by and idly watch as Chris’ destroyed himself. With people like the sewn lips woman with him, Molotov knew it was all but certainty.

“Well Chris, now that you’ve got all your blokes in order want to get moving on whatever the bloody hell you were doing?” he asked, figuring that they might as well put whatever the cause for the earlier unpleasantness was behind them. “Either that, or we sit around and wait while I get something to eat. Your choice really…”

[Christoph]

Chris paused halfway to where the disoriented Elijah was sprawled out on the frozen ground. Between being followed back to his camp by John and almost being clawed to shreds by raven-haired psychopath, he hadn’t had a chance to think about what he was going to do next. The weary, physically and emotionally tattered chef sighed and slumped into the shallow snow next to Elijah, letting his ornate sword rest on his lap.

“I… I don’t know where I’m going from here,” he replied softly, glancing over at his newest acquaintance. He closed his eyes for a moment and ran his fingers through his hair, brushing the thin layer of snow off of his head. “I’ve spent the last three months traveling through this forsaken frozen wasteland so that I could get home. Only now it turns out that I don’t have a home to go back to anymore.”

“What do you mean?” asked Elijah, sitting up and tilting a confused head.

“My mother is dead, the Inn is closed, and most of the town is hiding in their homes,” he explained, hanging his head. “It’s not my home anymore.” His friend’s scruffy head jerked toward him.

“What?” he asked in disbelief. “Damn, I’m really sorry.” Chris chuckled darkly.

“That’s not even half of it. You remember Malachi, right?”

“Dark priestly guy with the big staff?”

“Yeah, good, noble Malachi. He’s the one who had my mother executed.” His blunt statement and cold voice seemed to catch Elijah off guard. The pale man’s eyes went wide and he stammered in an attempt to respond. “Her only crime was standing up to him and trying to protect the town, and now she’d dead and I have nowhere to go. I don’t know what to do now. What I really want to do is track that bastard down and pay him back for destroying my life. It’s bad enough that he used us as pawns against that vampire, but then he killed my only family. I want to find him and make sure that he never destroys another life again, but… but…”

“But you won’t, will you?” The woman's chilling voice echoed in his skull, sounding like something between a scoff and a disgusted snarl. “You won’t because you’re a weak, pathetic little human.” Chris turned his head slowly toward her, his eyes narrowed and his fists tight.

“What did you say?” he demanded. The woman stood up, taking a step toward him.

“You talk about justice, but you lack the resolve to see it done.” Her eyes burned into him like embers. He recoiled slightly. “Look at you! Wallowing in your own shit and hoping someone feels sorry for you! You’d speak of revenge, but you don’t have the spine to go through with it. You disgust me!”

John growled from the side. Apparently, Chris wasn't the only one who could hear her. "Oh bloody shut up, or I'll start going 'bout what a minger you are..."

Chris sighed. “No… she’s right.” He stood up purposefully. “I can sit around here and mope, or I can take action. I’m going to track that monster down and I’m going to slit his throat for what he’s done. I’m going to end his reign of terror, alone if I must.”

[Witchblade]

The halfling smirked as she watched her words affect the human so greatly. He was so easy to manipulate, most of them were. All one had to do was threaten their pride, call them a coward, a weakling, tell them the truth and they grew a sudden bravado that they hadn’t had moments before. It really was pathetic. He shouldn’t need someone to goad him into doing what he wanted, especially if his mother was someone he cared about so much. He should have the guts to do it on his own, and the fortitude to follow through with it. But the way he was looking right now, Witch wouldn’t be surprised if he gave up after the first bump in the road.

Smirking, Witch began to clap as Christoph stood up and finished giving his speech. “Oh, yeah… why not just throw some more melodramatic bullshit out here. Congratulations, you’ve grown some fucking balls.”

Rolling her eyes, she turned her back on him and disappeared into the tent, only to emerge a few moments later with her rucksack and her cloak in her hands. There was only one last thing that she was missing, The Rot Slayer. She hadn’t seen it with her other things, but then again she doubted that the human could properly lift the weapon, so it was probably somewhere in the area lying in the snow. He probably left it where she had collapsed, which meant it was just a few minutes walk from here.

Absently, she threw her black cloak over her body, covering it against the cold she barely felt and hiding herself from the view of the humans around her. The hood she normally hid her disfigured face behind did not move though, there was no point. They knew what she looked like and one amongst them seemed none too worried to point out her little accident with her. It was hard not to want to rip him into pieces, but Witch had just pulled herself from the embers of The Malice, she was not about to happily go skipping right back into it and start something she had no intentions of finishing. Opening her rucksack she began to pull out some of her weapons. Though Chris had left most of them on her person, her Titanium plated and spiked leather gloves were not and neither was her belt of throwing daggers.

Wrapping the belt around her hips, she quickly tightened it and then let it hang. Following that she slipped her hands into her armguards and using her telekinesis she quickly tighten the strings that held it in place. Before she turned back to the humans.

“Now that you’re feeling so much better after spouting all of that crap from your mouth, why not turn the drama down just a little and ask for some help before you go guns blazing to your own death?”

He chuckled, coldly and cynically; so much different than the man she had originally met. She actually liked this one much better. “Why? Are you in the mood to kill some zealots?”

Her smirk matched the cold look in his eyes. “I’m always in the mood for killing.”

[Molotov]

Molotov wasn’t happy as he heard the conversation that Witchblade and Chris were having. He had wanted to interject, but instead his mouth formed a tight little line of frustration, as he realized that he had reached Chris in perhaps the most tragic part of the arc. Just the words coming out of Chris’ mouth solidified it. “He’s talking about the whole thing like it’s a bloody game, and like he’s the worst person at it,” Molotov thought. “It starts here, for revenge, righteous indignation, whatever bloody thing he’s on about, but that’s not how it ends. Soon, he’s doing things so bloody cruel he forgets that he ever had the ability to be good. And then he does more evil, he keeps trying to one up himself just for his own sake.”

Though he dearly wanted to say these things out loud, Molotov knew that there was no point. Chris wouldn’t listen. Part of him wanted to wait for the woman with the sewn lips to turn her back, just so he could immolate her, but then again, he couldn’t do that either. He knew that she was just a catalyst for a downfall that was already going to happen. As much as he wanted to then, Molotov decided he wouldn’t do anything to the woman.

Instead, he looked at the last member of the group, the man who had wanted sandwiches. “He’s bloody daft, I know that, but maybe he hates this bloody minger as much as I do,” he thought. He made a point that he would do what he could to probe the fourth member of their group as much as possible.

With that, Molotov made his last introduction. “Hey there,” he said with a sardonic wave. “If you know why you’re bloody friend is acting so soddawfully stupid, then I’d really like to know. Tell you what, I’d love to kick those churchies up and down the streets of Sulgoran’s Axe just as much as the rest of you, but know what, I still have a bloody brain? Now please, sandwich boy, just be a bloody brick and talk to your friend and let him know he’s throwing his life away… just please, do it before he ends up doing something he regrets… And yeah, I’m John Lydon by the way.”

For a moment, Molotov considered the revolver by his waits. Two shots, the first one for the woman the second for Chris, and then all his problems would be solved. He didn’t know who they’d kill if left to live, and so it seemed, in a way, like the humane thing to do. Yet, Molotov couldn’t, but only because he knew, if he did, he would feel like a hypocrite.

Molotov wrapped his dragonscale cloak around himself a bit tighter as he looked out on the cold. It was not going to be a good day at all.

[Elijah_Morendale]

I brushed some of the remaining bits of snow off my denim jacket as the freak with the mohawk addressed me. "Don't be so quick to assume that I want to join his little hunt, John." I paused for a second in deep thought. "And come to think of it, I'm not quite sure what's going on inside his head myself. I've never seen him this..." I sighed. "I can't seem to find the word I'm looking for." My dark bangs swayed as I shook my head. Chris was taking a turn for the worse right now.

Almost as an afterthought, I returned the introduction. "Elijah Morendale, by the way." I flashed a smile that quickly disappeared.

I tossed around John's suggestion of trying to reason with my friend. But, how would I go about it? He seemed kind of out of sorts--if I said one wrong thing, he'd probably light my head on fire. I bit my lip hard as I tried desperately to think of something to say.

Nadia crossed her arms and leered at me. "Chief, the poor sap just lost his mommy dearest. The least you can do is tag along."

"Yeah," I quietly whispered in response. "But taking on an Agent of the church? That's about as close to suicide as these guys will ever get. I mean, you saw how much carnage Malachai wrecked during the zombie raid."

The imaginary redhead tossed her hair nonchalantly. "That's why I would be the one hacking his guts out."

I shook my head slightly. No, not even Nadia was going to force me to come along to almost certain death. I cleared my throat, catching the chef's attention. "Chris?"

"Yes?" He had a different look about him than the one I was used to seeing. He was cold; the look in his eyes screamed with the fury of revenge.

I swallowed hard, fearing a fiery response. "Count me out of this one. You guys go ahead without me."

I clenched my eyes shut as a small, uneasy wave of silence passed between us. When I was sure that he hadn't burned me to death, I cracked open an eye. He stood defiant, his arms crossed across his chest. His mouth was twisted into a slight scowl. "Why?"

As I shook my head, my voice cracked a little. "I can only imagine what it feels like to lose your mother, but I don't want to be a part of this. What you're doing is only going to get you killed. And in the off chance that, you know, you guys survive... It won't bring your mother back anyway." I stood there for a few more seconds. Nobody spoke.

I turned around and started to walk away. "Good luck to you anyways," I offered in parting. As I drew away, I couldn't help but to envy Chris. At least he had someone that close to him to lose. For the first time in ten years, a couple tears streaked down my face as I recalled how my own mom and dad abandoned me.