Greg Vs Raid 9-30

Shink.

The blade sank in, all six inches embedding deep into the space under his ribs.

Sophia’s physical weight was a car crash more than a tackle, all the force of a cinderblock dropped from a third-floor window as her newfound manic strength was enough to take him entirely off his feet.

All the air left Greg in a single hard whoosh, his spine slamming against the once-sterile tile of the medical bay floor.

But the real shock wasn’t the impact. It was the face hovering inches above his, a pair of legs straddling his hips.

A pair of wide eyes stared down at him, whites still swallowed up by an ink-dark void as black fluid dripped slowly from her tear ducts and splashed onto him. The smell of blood left to cook and char on a hot stove stung his nose, thick enough to coat his tonsils as Greg took in a sharp breath.

Before Greg could even breathe again, the knife in her hand flashed free again, coming out with a spray of blood and sinking in as far as it could one more time. Wait, what the—

Emma’s scream was instantaneous, a high-pitched shriek of raw hyperventilation that bounced off the white tiles, sharp enough to rattle his teeth.

“Get off him!” Sparky’s skate shoes squeaked frantically as he tried to grab at Sophia. “GET OFF HIM!”

Sophia didn’t seem to hear them. She didn’t seem to hear anything. Not as the knife came up again, slick with Greg’s blood and the black fluid coating her hands, and she drove it down again.

And again.

And again.

Translucent little numbers flared off at the corner of his eyes, red digits peeling off into the air and fading off into nothing. 

[-6 HP] [-9 HP] [-7 HP]

The numbers ticked down, Greg grunting with each jab of a knife tearing through skin, flesh and muscle. Huh. The knife arced down again, Sophia’s arm a blur of panicked motion, aiming directly for his throat this time.

Okay, enough! Greg’s hand snapped up.

With no struggle or strain, five fingers simply closed themselves around Sophia’s wrist mid-swing.

It wasn’t a contest.

He was just that much stronger than her, so much so it was almost a physical law of the universe asserting itself and rejecting motion. Sophia’s arm stopped dead, all of her momentum dying against the brick wall that was Greg Veder as his grip locked her limb in place.

Blue eyes blinked up at her blankly, his hand a steel vise as muscles strained against his hold, teeth gritted and black fluid bubbling over her lips. The muscles in her arms were corded and tight, a familiar feeling… Sparky was just like that.

But Sparky wasn’t like this.

Not feral and adrenaline-soaked, jaw locked and spitting in his face like an animal.

“Okay.” He spat back, tongue careful to avoid the flecks of black around his mouth. “Alright.” His tone was raspy, pain not as much of a problem — not from something like a knife — but exhausting annoyance pushing him deeper into the voice he wore under the red mask as he stared at the psycho who wouldn’t just take the damn healing. “Let’s calm down… okay?”

One hand still holding her arm tight, he placed his other flat against Sophia’s chest, right over her collarbone and exerted a fraction of the five tons of force resting in his muscles.

She slid off his chest like a ragdoll, collapsing onto the cold tile as the knife spun uselessly beside her; the blade clattering to a stop at the base of the furthest bed.

“Gee…”

“What?” Sparky blinked back at him, no answer to his single-worded question, as Greg sat up.

Alright, stay quiet. A slight groan left him as his abdominals pulled tight against the fresh stab wounds. One hand rose to feel at his wounds and at least two pairs of eyes — a bright blue and a strong gold — slid down to his chest. Well, damn.

A shredded shirt that was more ruined rag than a solid piece of cloth stared back at him, literal bleeding holes from his chest and stomach visible beneath it. The bright red of his own blood did a great job at mixing with the dense black that Sophia had smeared all over him in their short manic struggle, leaving him looking like some kid had decided to fingerpaint all over himself with jam and toner. Double damn.

That same hand over the ruined fabric, breathing perfectly even as his chest started to itch itself back together, the sensation not at all new. 

“G-Greg?” 

Emma choked out his name from the far corner of the room, voice a broken note as she somehow managed to turn one syllable into two. Greg forced himself to bite back a sigh at the sound of it. Swear to God, if people don’t start asking me meaningful questions, I’m gonna lose my fucking shit.

“Gee?”

Greg rolled his eyes, sigh still held at bay as Sparky chose that moment to voice his own non-question as he pushed himself up to his feet.”I’m fine… I’m fine.”

“…are you, though?”

“Yeah.” A grunt escaped in place of the sigh as he pawed at the rags he had on. “This was a good shirt, though.”

It really was. 

Not his favorite, sure, but the fit was nice, and finding shirts that accommodated the sudden expansion of his shoulders that didn’t also make him look like he raided his dad’s stored-away clothes was already a hassle. 

A wet heave pulled his attention back down to the floor.

Sophia was on her knees, mouth opening and closing over and over. The yellow raincoat was fully off now and pooled around her legs; looking no different than a deflated life raft as the girl in it did her best to look and sound like she was drowning. Her eyes were on her hands, the mix of red and black staining them just as much as it had Greg. 

…damn it. The sigh finally came free from where he’d stored it, propelled out by the heavy weight of… responsibility. Motherf…

Biting back a curse before it could leave him like the sigh, a pair of sneaker soles squelched softly and slowly on wet tile as he made his way forward. Soon enough,  Greg knelt on the floor right in front of the panicked girl. Both hands reached out, still sticky with blood, and gripped both of Sophia’s shaking shoulders tight as he leaned in just a little. “Sophia…”

Her head snapped up, black tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face as he looked her dead in her wide eyes. “Hey. Sophia. Look at me…” 

His voice was soft — low and steady too; Greg doing his best to ignore the sound of Emma’s faint sobs echoing across the infirmary. “Breathe. In and out. You’re fine. You’re not dying. Just breathe.”

He forced her to match his rhythm, both his inhales and exhales as exaggerated and as loud as he could make them as he kept his grip firm on her shoulders — Greg doing all he could to ground her in the physical reality of the room.

Slowly — agonizingly slowly — the tension in the room finally seemed to bottom out as Greg acted like her metronome, pacing the erratic stutter of her panicked lungs with his own calm breath. The violent shuddering began to slow as the whites fluttered back into her eyes, blink by blink. The inky blackness receded the longer they stayed like that, a flicker of genuine awareness returning to Sophia’s gaze.

Greg let out another sigh, this one smaller; tension finally leaving his own shoulders as he felt her muscles relax under his hands.

A smile spread — small and faint enough to match his sigh — across his face as he patted her shoulder again and leaned back. “You good?” 

Sophia looked up at him, dark purple eyes locking onto his blue ones.

And for a second, she seemed to nod.

Then her cheeks bulged.

Without a single second of warning — no gag reflex or even a hitch in her breath — Sophia Hess opened up her mouth and Greg found himself splattered with a hot stream of pure black filth and bile all over his chest and face and everything else across the front of his body.

Hng! The smell…

The smell was hard to even put to words — battery acid, old pennies, and rotting meat all scooped into a pot and set to simmer on low heat for a good seventy-two hours before being pumped into a small girl’s stomach and blasted out at high pressure. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, the heat of it was enough to soak through the shredded remains of his shirt and jeans both, leaving his entire body covered in…

In…

In it.

He took in a breath and regretted it for a second time before one hand wiped across the top of his face. Greg finally blinked over at Sophia, mouth dribbling with the remains of her projectile vomit; fluid as dark as ever and speckled with red.

…what the fuck.

Sophia didn’t answer because she took that exact moment to let her eyes roll back in her head as she slumped backward.

Completely unconscious, Sophia Hess thudded softly against the ground.

“…what the fuck.” 

Behind him, Emma let out a single, tiny squeak.

Greg turned his head just in time to see the girl’s eyes roll back too as Emma dropped toward the floor like a redheaded Pinnochio.

Sparky dove forward, body moving in that twitchy way that told Greg he was moving on more reflex than thought. His friend slid across blood-flecked tile, skate shoes screeching again as he caught Emma by the waist right before her head could smack against the hard floor.

Sparky ended up on his knees, the second unconscious girl in the room held tight against his chest. Golden eyes drifted down to stare at the bloody combat knife lying on the floor. That same gaze slid over to the massive puddle of mostly-black fluid Greg knelt in, mouth closed and eyes twitching.

Finally, those eyes slowly dragged up to look at Greg, who was still kneeling on the floor with an unconscious vigilante slumped on the ground in front of him, completely drenched from the head down in bitter-black vomit and his own blood.

Sparky’s mouth opened with a shuddering breath of his own.

“WHAT THE FUCK?”