Bleeding Out (AU Fragment, What If)
Mar. 11th, 2026 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phormthevixdjinn"P... P-pull it out."
"What the fuck do you mean, 'Pull it out'?"
"I mean PULL IT OUT."
"Uh, you DO know you're not supposed to pull out anything th-"
"I-I... I KNOW... what I'm fucking TALKING ABOUT... Haaaaa... PULL IT OUT."
"Alright... This is literally your funeral, girl. On three. Ready?"
"One."
"Two."
"Three!"
"GYYAAAAAHHHHHH!" The arctic fox let out a sharp, pointed yelp as a massive jolt of pain wracked her torso. The sound of shattering crystal followed, punctuating her cries as the massive shard of plate glass was extracted from her shoulder and flung to the side. "Jesus FUCKING SHIT!"
She desperately gasped for breath as the unyielding stab of abject agony slowly, very slowly, subsided. She writhed on the ground as much as her body would allow.
The mink hovered over the fox, kneeling just at her side, practically holding her breath. Vect's mind raced.
"Holy fuck. Okay. Okay okay OKAY. There's a fuckton of blood here now. I'm gonna... I'm... I'm gonna..." The mink's tone was low. Her thoughts were rapidly overloading. She wasn't even focused on the words she was saying. She was exclusively focused on the work before her.
She was focused on the blood spilling out of the fox's shoulder at an alarming rate. "I'm going to keep going. You keep talking. Stay with me."
"Aaa...!! Aaaahhh...! Ffffffuuuuuuuck," Polymayhem let out a ragged, uneven exhale of a breath. The pain was duller now, but still present, and still overwhelming. With her good arm, she put her hand to her face and squeezed her temples as the mink attended to her left shoulder. Her vision was slipping, narrowing inward. "What... What the fuck... was that... thing?"
Vect already had gauze and bandage wraps in hand from the first-aid kit. She didn't slow down for a moment as she used them to apply pressure to the bleeding wound on Poly's shoulder. The fox let out another yelp at the contact, but stayed as still as she could.
"That'd be Andy. He's a real certified bastard, but don't you worry about him for a moment."
"F... Friend of yours?"
Vect cut a sideways glance at the fox for a moment before uttering a staccato reply, "Hardly."
"Seriously, I've never seen anyone do... that... before. And I've se-EEEEAH!!!... I've seen a lot."
"Like I said, don't worry about that right now. He wasn't after you. I can promise you got nothing he wants. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." The mink let out a forceful sigh as she furrowed her brow. "This isn't working. I need something else. Fucking hell, if it were a few inches down your arm I could at least use a tourniquet."
"F-FUCK!" Poly's torso shuddered as she seized with agony. "Nononononono, I don't have TIME for this shit." The fox heaved a few labored breaths, then signaled with her right hand toward her labcoat - Specifically the right side, near her breast. The side that was still white, rather than soaked with crimson. "In-inside my... Inside my labcoat. T-the pocket. Should be an ampoule."
Vect sighed despite herself, "Look, whatever you've got, I'm not qualif-"
"JUST FUCKING GET IT!!!"
"Alright, ALRIGHT! Shit, girl, save the ener-"
"I am BLEEDING OUT, bitch!"
Vect reached toward Poly's neck carefully, unclasping the fox's lab coat from the top down as quickly as she could while still minding her fingers. She never knew what these mad types had hidden away, and frankly it made her nervous. With due care the mink pulled open the chemist's coat, revealing a pink emblem within amid the bloody splatter. There, where one might expect a breast pockect, there was instead a row of sealed glass containers hanging from an internal, metal-reinforced holster. Within each vial sloshed a different, striking hue of some viscous liquid.
Vect boggled slightly at the array of chemicals. "Which one d-"
"V-Voidslick MX+. Pur- . . . Purple one. HURRY, GODDAMN IT!"
"Yeah, okay, just..." Vect ran her fingers over each of the ampoules until she located the correct one amid the collection, and extracted it. It was dense - much heavier than she expected. Made of clear glass, it was nearly as large lengthwise as her palm. It possessed an extruded, curved tip that was much more narrow than the rest of the container. Within, all she could see was a near-magenta, tar-like substance. "So what do I d-"
"C-c-c... crack it... Pour it... it on the wound."
"Crack like an egg? Like, tap on t-"
"NO!" Poly let out a violent cough, followed by another anguished yelp. "The tip. Just... Just grab the tip and snap it off. It's not... It's not hard."
Vect held the ampoule in one hand, fingers circled around the cylindrical body as gently as she could manage, then grasped the tip of the vessel with the other and pulled. The top gave way with remarkable ease. A surprisingly hollow POP! filled the tense air. Then, without any additional delay, Vect poured the molasses-like substance directly onto the bullet wound that had been blown through Poly's left shoulder.
The thick, shiny goo slithered from the glass container. It seemed to stretch down to the fox's body in a single, unbroken strand, until the totality of it had {SCHLLLOOOMPH}ed out of the vial in a slimy mass, dropping directly onto Poly. In a matter of moments, Vect watched as the slick goop seemed to rapidly encircle Poly's arm, spreading upward over her shoulder and downward all the way to her elbow. The fabric of the lab coat dissolved in the wake of the substance, chewing through fabric as if it were cotton candy. Seconds later, the left sleeve of the custom pink-and-white labcoat had been entirely severed from the body, and a significant portion of the garment up to Poly's neck had been completely devoured up. Before Vect could properly process what was happening, the purple sheen had throbbed over the fox's entire shoulder, smothered around her back, and -
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAFUCKGODFUCKINGSHITMOTHERFUUUUUUUUUUU-"
The shimmering material suddenly squeezed down around Poly's flesh, tightening in an instant and wracking the fox's body with a fleeting, but pointed, moment of unmitigated torment. Vect merely boggled as she looked down toward the chemist who thrashed on the concrete, squirming in a pool of her own blood. The entire wound had been sealed under a glistening purple, skin-tight coating. The vixen's entire left shoulder and upper arm were enveloped by the shimmering slick material. Poly tensed from ear to tail, going rigid, teeth gritted as the material sealed taught around her flesh.
Then, in an instant, Poly went slack. Her eyes seemed to roll back in her head as she let out a kind of detached, distant noise of relief.
"Ooooh fuuuuuuck meeeeeeeeee...." She practically slurred.
"What the fuck."
"Hoooooooo. O... Okay. That's better." Poly's breathing became less urgent, less irregular, as she settled into something resembling stability. "That should... should hold me until a medevac gets here. Stop the bleeding and... the morphine is definitely within the stability window, thankfully." She struggled to produce a laugh.
"You types have something for every occasion, doncha?" Vect slid onto her ass from the kneeling position she had been tensely holding. Inwardly, she felt herself releasing just slightly, a feeling aided by the cold concrete beneath her body wicking away her overheated panic. She planted her back against the wall, sitting with legs outstretch beside the ground where Poly lay. She idly regarded the damp, crimson-wet knees of her jeans.
"I like to stay prepared," the scientist offered.
Vect rummaged in her own coat to find a cigarette, and wordlessly went through her ritual of habit. In the moment, Poly seemed to rapidly fade into an unsettling silence. Vect paused as she took a drag, unnerved as her eyes darted toward the fox stretched out on the ground.
The mink prodded Poly with her foot, "Hey. No sleeping, even if you did just dose yourself."
"Whatever the fuck. It's barely a dose at all. Enough to last a few minutes, nothing more. I'll be fine." Poly paused for a beat. "You can go now."
"I'm not going anywhere until you're on a stretcher, girl. On top of the bullet and the shrapnel, you took a nasty blow to the head. So I'm gonna be real fuckin' annoying, and you're gonna keep those eyes open."
"Oh, you're going to start being annoying."
"Sure. Let's go with that, why not," Vect let the insult roll off her back as the urgency melted from the air. She heaved out a sigh of her own before taking another long drag from her cigarette.
"Sorry," Poly muttered. "Just... shit I wasn't expecting this today."
"No one ever does."
Vect deliberately let the silence stretch out for a moment before exhaling. At the same time, she reached into her jacket to grab something else. Something she had collected in the scuffle just minutes prior. She tossed the object to the ground beside Poly. It landed with a distinctive clatter.
Poly tilted her head as best she could to see what had fallen. A pair of magenta-lensed glasses - custom-fit, chemically resistant - lay beside her, shattered and inoperative.
Poly's heart sank to see the damage. That meant she was disconnected. That meant she was -
"Managed to save you alright," Vect mumbled as she let the cigarette dangle from her mouth. The mink proceeded to give a gesture toward the fractured eye wear on the ground, "`fraid I couldn't do much for those."
Poly continued staring at the glasses, her reflection showing back in the splinter-cracked lenses. Somehow, it cut her deeper than the glass shrapnel had.
"It's... fine," she lied. "Biomon should've kicked in with geolocation before they got destroyed. They should still have all the data they need to find us."
"Mmm," Vect's voice was soft, but something bristled beneath. "Must be real nice, that"
". . . What?"
"Just that: Must be nice. Must be nice to have all that."
"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" Poly winced slightly. Even through the drug haze, she could feel the barbs hidden in the mink's gently spoken words. "Is that some kind of limp attempt at criticism?"
"Never said that. Never meant to imply that. Just," Vect shrugged slowly. "Must be nice."
Poly narrowed her eyes slightly as her mind grappled with the phrase.
"I don't really know what to tell you," the vixen spoke, attempting to hide her irritation. She was already crestfallen by being so dramatically injured. Then to lose her eye wear. And now this. "You think we shouldn't have what we have? That we shouldn't have any of it because, what, we're monsters? Because we're the big evil villains they say we are?"
"Ha!" Vect blurted a singular, punctuated laugh. "That's last thing I'd hold against you, promise you that."
"Well, it certainly feels like you're holding something," Poly muttered. "Look, I'm doped up enough right now I'm not gonna remember anything. So here's your big chance. What is it you're holding against me, hrm?"
"Like I said, I don't hold anything against you. Simple as," Vect took another quick puff from her cigarette as she contemplated the best way to continue. "Just reflecting on the fact that you nearly died, and before I could even figure out what the fuck had happened, apparently there was a shiny medical transport in the air, screaming all the way here, just for you."
"What, now is it your opinion that I don't deserve medical attention? That we don't deserve to be recogniz-"
"Shit no, I didn't s-"
"You implied it so hard you almost gave me a second concussion."
A chilled and heavy smothering of quiet descended on the pair, squeezing the both of them together uncomfortably. Vect choked silently for a moment. She opened her mouth, only for nothing to emerge, before looking down at the concrete contemplatively. She watched the still creeping blood as it stretched across the gray cement.
"Look," Poly heaved another breath, trying her best to stay stable and level. "We're fighting a war out there, you understand? Every fucking fascist prick that wants to forcibly impose some regressive bullshit. Every billionaire that wants to squeeze every last drop of blood from every customer and employee. Every fucked up senator on the take, selling the well-being and health of their constituents for some piddling sum. Every motherfucking lawmaker trotting out oppression and genocide under some paper-thin guise of safety. They're plying real violence, dressed up as propriety. They hate that we're opposed to that, and so they make us out to be monsters. Serves their purpose. But no matter what they say and no matter what propaganda anyone believes, we're out there and we're fucking fighting. We're fighting because someone needs to, goddamnit. And yeah, to do that, we need a lot. We need people. We need equipment. We need money."
A sharp, sudden cough seized the fox, though only for a brief moment.
Poly let out an exasperated wheeze as she recovered. "'Must be nice'? Try 'must be necessary'."
The words landed in the center of the room, demanding space and time. It took several minutes before the mink could bring herself to breath again. Vect plucked the cigarette from her lips and held it between her forefingers, staring at the ash and ember for far too long.
"I guess," the mink's words were somehow dense, yet heavy. "It's nice that at least some people get that experience."
"Now what the fu-"
"Because," Vect interrupted, "not everyone does."
"Unbelievable..."
"Not every lost, confused outcast got the privilege, you know? Some of us, when we hit the bottom, when we lost everything, when we were so fucked up we didn't even know who we were... Well, no one swooped in to pick us up."
The mink stretched her voice low and thin, as if the words came from the very bottom of her center, a challenge to extract. "No organization was there to rescue and soothe us. No one there to assure us that it'll be okay, tell us how to flourish into the selves we were always meant to be. Instead we had to pull ourselves out of that hole. We had to do it alone. Try our damnedest to make it work out there without the faintest clue it was possible - maybe without the faintest clue that there were others like us. No armor to protect us, no network to connect us, no community to guide us, assure us, and ..."
Vect gazed at her cigarette intensely. The amber glow of the lit end practically burned into her vision.
"... And no seat at the table later, when we finally discover the table even exists, and realize it was there all along."
Poly remained very still as she took in Vect's words, her rhythmic and deepened breathing the only sound filling the room in the aftermath of the mink's remarks.
"What a load of horseshit," the fox offered in reply.
Vect's eyes darted sidelong toward the remark, the barest hint of a scowl carved into her otherwise unmoving lips.
"If I didn't know any better," Poly let out another shuddering cough before continuing. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were about to give me a 'bootstrap' lecture. You didn't have the resources? The connections? The community? Yeah, that sucks. That's fucking rotten. Because without those things in your life, the fucking oppression gets at you quicker. You think it's a coincidence that it left you destitute, scared, and isolated? That's shit working as intended."
Poly heaved another breath. She was getting overexcited, and her current state, that wasn't a great idea.
"What the fuck do you think we're fighting for, you self-centered dipshit?"
Vect clenched her jaw as she let the vixen fill the space with her voice. She was liable to chip a tooth.
"Forgive me," the mink uttered through her teeth, "I completely forgot that your organization was so altruistic."
"Oh fuck off. I don't need to explain anything to you. The fact remains that, no matter how much of a raging asshole you are, we're still fighting for you - and everyone like you. We're on the same side in this, you blithering idiot."
Poly tilted her head to the side, turning her neck just enough to see Vect staring at her cigarette. "What the hell is your problem, anyway? You usually wait until people are suffering massive lacerations before you insult them to their face?"
The mink flicked the lit cigarette into the depths of the concrete room, amid the shattered glass and spent brass casings.
"Honestly, it's just jealousy. Rarely get a chance to vent it. So, really, thanks for that."
Gradually, a distant, mounting rhythm began to echo off the dull gray walls. The sound swelled with every passing moment, aggressively ejecting the silence amid the cement out of the windows, vacating it from the conversation. Soon, it was unmistakably present. A sweeping shaft of light cut through an open window from the air before slipping back out of view and moving on. Vect regarded the light and noise as stark announcement, signaling the arrival of Poly's compatriots.
Vect stood to her feet with a grunt, stretching her arms as she did so. She straightened her jacket and adjusted her cuffs casually.
"That'll be your ride," the mink stated flatly. "And my cue to leave. You need me to make some noise for them, or do they have a tracker on you or something?"
Poly took a moment to frown up at the belligerent punk before softening her expression. Her own scowl melted into something much more gentle, as did her voice.
"They'll find me just fine. And you don't have to leave, if you don't want to."
"Got places to be. And people looking for me that you don't want finding you."
"That a fact? Well... Look. Uh... Despite everything else I've said tonight. Uh..."
Poly swallowed hard. Something felt caught in her throat.
"Thanks for the save, miss mink."
Vect headed swiftly for the open doorway, stepping carefully over the shattered wood and metal debris.
"Don't mention it. I may be an asshole, but when it comes down to it, I know we're on the same side. You make sure you survive, yeah?"
"Yeah..."
Suddenly, Poly jolted her neck upright, craning it enough to see Vect as she hung in the doorway, stealing one last glance back.
"Hey," Poly nearly yelled, "never got your name."
The mink paused briefly in thought, the searchlight of the VTOL above washing over her as turbulent blasts of wind blew through the hair between her short, rounded ears.
"Yeah, you sure didn't."
Vect cut a smile through the night air back toward Poly.
"Good luck out there, science girl."
"What the fuck do you mean, 'Pull it out'?"
"I mean PULL IT OUT."
"Uh, you DO know you're not supposed to pull out anything th-"
"I-I... I KNOW... what I'm fucking TALKING ABOUT... Haaaaa... PULL IT OUT."
"Alright... This is literally your funeral, girl. On three. Ready?"
"One."
"Two."
"Three!"
"GYYAAAAAHHHHHH!" The arctic fox let out a sharp, pointed yelp as a massive jolt of pain wracked her torso. The sound of shattering crystal followed, punctuating her cries as the massive shard of plate glass was extracted from her shoulder and flung to the side. "Jesus FUCKING SHIT!"
She desperately gasped for breath as the unyielding stab of abject agony slowly, very slowly, subsided. She writhed on the ground as much as her body would allow.
The mink hovered over the fox, kneeling just at her side, practically holding her breath. Vect's mind raced.
"Holy fuck. Okay. Okay okay OKAY. There's a fuckton of blood here now. I'm gonna... I'm... I'm gonna..." The mink's tone was low. Her thoughts were rapidly overloading. She wasn't even focused on the words she was saying. She was exclusively focused on the work before her.
She was focused on the blood spilling out of the fox's shoulder at an alarming rate. "I'm going to keep going. You keep talking. Stay with me."
"Aaa...!! Aaaahhh...! Ffffffuuuuuuuck," Polymayhem let out a ragged, uneven exhale of a breath. The pain was duller now, but still present, and still overwhelming. With her good arm, she put her hand to her face and squeezed her temples as the mink attended to her left shoulder. Her vision was slipping, narrowing inward. "What... What the fuck... was that... thing?"
Vect already had gauze and bandage wraps in hand from the first-aid kit. She didn't slow down for a moment as she used them to apply pressure to the bleeding wound on Poly's shoulder. The fox let out another yelp at the contact, but stayed as still as she could.
"That'd be Andy. He's a real certified bastard, but don't you worry about him for a moment."
"F... Friend of yours?"
Vect cut a sideways glance at the fox for a moment before uttering a staccato reply, "Hardly."
"Seriously, I've never seen anyone do... that... before. And I've se-EEEEAH!!!... I've seen a lot."
"Like I said, don't worry about that right now. He wasn't after you. I can promise you got nothing he wants. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." The mink let out a forceful sigh as she furrowed her brow. "This isn't working. I need something else. Fucking hell, if it were a few inches down your arm I could at least use a tourniquet."
"F-FUCK!" Poly's torso shuddered as she seized with agony. "Nononononono, I don't have TIME for this shit." The fox heaved a few labored breaths, then signaled with her right hand toward her labcoat - Specifically the right side, near her breast. The side that was still white, rather than soaked with crimson. "In-inside my... Inside my labcoat. T-the pocket. Should be an ampoule."
Vect sighed despite herself, "Look, whatever you've got, I'm not qualif-"
"JUST FUCKING GET IT!!!"
"Alright, ALRIGHT! Shit, girl, save the ener-"
"I am BLEEDING OUT, bitch!"
Vect reached toward Poly's neck carefully, unclasping the fox's lab coat from the top down as quickly as she could while still minding her fingers. She never knew what these mad types had hidden away, and frankly it made her nervous. With due care the mink pulled open the chemist's coat, revealing a pink emblem within amid the bloody splatter. There, where one might expect a breast pockect, there was instead a row of sealed glass containers hanging from an internal, metal-reinforced holster. Within each vial sloshed a different, striking hue of some viscous liquid.
Vect boggled slightly at the array of chemicals. "Which one d-"
"V-Voidslick MX+. Pur- . . . Purple one. HURRY, GODDAMN IT!"
"Yeah, okay, just..." Vect ran her fingers over each of the ampoules until she located the correct one amid the collection, and extracted it. It was dense - much heavier than she expected. Made of clear glass, it was nearly as large lengthwise as her palm. It possessed an extruded, curved tip that was much more narrow than the rest of the container. Within, all she could see was a near-magenta, tar-like substance. "So what do I d-"
"C-c-c... crack it... Pour it... it on the wound."
"Crack like an egg? Like, tap on t-"
"NO!" Poly let out a violent cough, followed by another anguished yelp. "The tip. Just... Just grab the tip and snap it off. It's not... It's not hard."
Vect held the ampoule in one hand, fingers circled around the cylindrical body as gently as she could manage, then grasped the tip of the vessel with the other and pulled. The top gave way with remarkable ease. A surprisingly hollow POP! filled the tense air. Then, without any additional delay, Vect poured the molasses-like substance directly onto the bullet wound that had been blown through Poly's left shoulder.
The thick, shiny goo slithered from the glass container. It seemed to stretch down to the fox's body in a single, unbroken strand, until the totality of it had {SCHLLLOOOMPH}ed out of the vial in a slimy mass, dropping directly onto Poly. In a matter of moments, Vect watched as the slick goop seemed to rapidly encircle Poly's arm, spreading upward over her shoulder and downward all the way to her elbow. The fabric of the lab coat dissolved in the wake of the substance, chewing through fabric as if it were cotton candy. Seconds later, the left sleeve of the custom pink-and-white labcoat had been entirely severed from the body, and a significant portion of the garment up to Poly's neck had been completely devoured up. Before Vect could properly process what was happening, the purple sheen had throbbed over the fox's entire shoulder, smothered around her back, and -
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAFUCKGODFUCKINGSHITMOTHERFUUUUUUUUUUU-"
The shimmering material suddenly squeezed down around Poly's flesh, tightening in an instant and wracking the fox's body with a fleeting, but pointed, moment of unmitigated torment. Vect merely boggled as she looked down toward the chemist who thrashed on the concrete, squirming in a pool of her own blood. The entire wound had been sealed under a glistening purple, skin-tight coating. The vixen's entire left shoulder and upper arm were enveloped by the shimmering slick material. Poly tensed from ear to tail, going rigid, teeth gritted as the material sealed taught around her flesh.
Then, in an instant, Poly went slack. Her eyes seemed to roll back in her head as she let out a kind of detached, distant noise of relief.
"Ooooh fuuuuuuck meeeeeeeeee...." She practically slurred.
"What the fuck."
"Hoooooooo. O... Okay. That's better." Poly's breathing became less urgent, less irregular, as she settled into something resembling stability. "That should... should hold me until a medevac gets here. Stop the bleeding and... the morphine is definitely within the stability window, thankfully." She struggled to produce a laugh.
"You types have something for every occasion, doncha?" Vect slid onto her ass from the kneeling position she had been tensely holding. Inwardly, she felt herself releasing just slightly, a feeling aided by the cold concrete beneath her body wicking away her overheated panic. She planted her back against the wall, sitting with legs outstretch beside the ground where Poly lay. She idly regarded the damp, crimson-wet knees of her jeans.
"I like to stay prepared," the scientist offered.
Vect rummaged in her own coat to find a cigarette, and wordlessly went through her ritual of habit. In the moment, Poly seemed to rapidly fade into an unsettling silence. Vect paused as she took a drag, unnerved as her eyes darted toward the fox stretched out on the ground.
The mink prodded Poly with her foot, "Hey. No sleeping, even if you did just dose yourself."
"Whatever the fuck. It's barely a dose at all. Enough to last a few minutes, nothing more. I'll be fine." Poly paused for a beat. "You can go now."
"I'm not going anywhere until you're on a stretcher, girl. On top of the bullet and the shrapnel, you took a nasty blow to the head. So I'm gonna be real fuckin' annoying, and you're gonna keep those eyes open."
"Oh, you're going to start being annoying."
"Sure. Let's go with that, why not," Vect let the insult roll off her back as the urgency melted from the air. She heaved out a sigh of her own before taking another long drag from her cigarette.
"Sorry," Poly muttered. "Just... shit I wasn't expecting this today."
"No one ever does."
Vect deliberately let the silence stretch out for a moment before exhaling. At the same time, she reached into her jacket to grab something else. Something she had collected in the scuffle just minutes prior. She tossed the object to the ground beside Poly. It landed with a distinctive clatter.
Poly tilted her head as best she could to see what had fallen. A pair of magenta-lensed glasses - custom-fit, chemically resistant - lay beside her, shattered and inoperative.
Poly's heart sank to see the damage. That meant she was disconnected. That meant she was -
"Managed to save you alright," Vect mumbled as she let the cigarette dangle from her mouth. The mink proceeded to give a gesture toward the fractured eye wear on the ground, "`fraid I couldn't do much for those."
Poly continued staring at the glasses, her reflection showing back in the splinter-cracked lenses. Somehow, it cut her deeper than the glass shrapnel had.
"It's... fine," she lied. "Biomon should've kicked in with geolocation before they got destroyed. They should still have all the data they need to find us."
"Mmm," Vect's voice was soft, but something bristled beneath. "Must be real nice, that"
". . . What?"
"Just that: Must be nice. Must be nice to have all that."
"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" Poly winced slightly. Even through the drug haze, she could feel the barbs hidden in the mink's gently spoken words. "Is that some kind of limp attempt at criticism?"
"Never said that. Never meant to imply that. Just," Vect shrugged slowly. "Must be nice."
Poly narrowed her eyes slightly as her mind grappled with the phrase.
"I don't really know what to tell you," the vixen spoke, attempting to hide her irritation. She was already crestfallen by being so dramatically injured. Then to lose her eye wear. And now this. "You think we shouldn't have what we have? That we shouldn't have any of it because, what, we're monsters? Because we're the big evil villains they say we are?"
"Ha!" Vect blurted a singular, punctuated laugh. "That's last thing I'd hold against you, promise you that."
"Well, it certainly feels like you're holding something," Poly muttered. "Look, I'm doped up enough right now I'm not gonna remember anything. So here's your big chance. What is it you're holding against me, hrm?"
"Like I said, I don't hold anything against you. Simple as," Vect took another quick puff from her cigarette as she contemplated the best way to continue. "Just reflecting on the fact that you nearly died, and before I could even figure out what the fuck had happened, apparently there was a shiny medical transport in the air, screaming all the way here, just for you."
"What, now is it your opinion that I don't deserve medical attention? That we don't deserve to be recogniz-"
"Shit no, I didn't s-"
"You implied it so hard you almost gave me a second concussion."
A chilled and heavy smothering of quiet descended on the pair, squeezing the both of them together uncomfortably. Vect choked silently for a moment. She opened her mouth, only for nothing to emerge, before looking down at the concrete contemplatively. She watched the still creeping blood as it stretched across the gray cement.
"Look," Poly heaved another breath, trying her best to stay stable and level. "We're fighting a war out there, you understand? Every fucking fascist prick that wants to forcibly impose some regressive bullshit. Every billionaire that wants to squeeze every last drop of blood from every customer and employee. Every fucked up senator on the take, selling the well-being and health of their constituents for some piddling sum. Every motherfucking lawmaker trotting out oppression and genocide under some paper-thin guise of safety. They're plying real violence, dressed up as propriety. They hate that we're opposed to that, and so they make us out to be monsters. Serves their purpose. But no matter what they say and no matter what propaganda anyone believes, we're out there and we're fucking fighting. We're fighting because someone needs to, goddamnit. And yeah, to do that, we need a lot. We need people. We need equipment. We need money."
A sharp, sudden cough seized the fox, though only for a brief moment.
Poly let out an exasperated wheeze as she recovered. "'Must be nice'? Try 'must be necessary'."
The words landed in the center of the room, demanding space and time. It took several minutes before the mink could bring herself to breath again. Vect plucked the cigarette from her lips and held it between her forefingers, staring at the ash and ember for far too long.
"I guess," the mink's words were somehow dense, yet heavy. "It's nice that at least some people get that experience."
"Now what the fu-"
"Because," Vect interrupted, "not everyone does."
"Unbelievable..."
"Not every lost, confused outcast got the privilege, you know? Some of us, when we hit the bottom, when we lost everything, when we were so fucked up we didn't even know who we were... Well, no one swooped in to pick us up."
The mink stretched her voice low and thin, as if the words came from the very bottom of her center, a challenge to extract. "No organization was there to rescue and soothe us. No one there to assure us that it'll be okay, tell us how to flourish into the selves we were always meant to be. Instead we had to pull ourselves out of that hole. We had to do it alone. Try our damnedest to make it work out there without the faintest clue it was possible - maybe without the faintest clue that there were others like us. No armor to protect us, no network to connect us, no community to guide us, assure us, and ..."
Vect gazed at her cigarette intensely. The amber glow of the lit end practically burned into her vision.
"... And no seat at the table later, when we finally discover the table even exists, and realize it was there all along."
Poly remained very still as she took in Vect's words, her rhythmic and deepened breathing the only sound filling the room in the aftermath of the mink's remarks.
"What a load of horseshit," the fox offered in reply.
Vect's eyes darted sidelong toward the remark, the barest hint of a scowl carved into her otherwise unmoving lips.
"If I didn't know any better," Poly let out another shuddering cough before continuing. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were about to give me a 'bootstrap' lecture. You didn't have the resources? The connections? The community? Yeah, that sucks. That's fucking rotten. Because without those things in your life, the fucking oppression gets at you quicker. You think it's a coincidence that it left you destitute, scared, and isolated? That's shit working as intended."
Poly heaved another breath. She was getting overexcited, and her current state, that wasn't a great idea.
"What the fuck do you think we're fighting for, you self-centered dipshit?"
Vect clenched her jaw as she let the vixen fill the space with her voice. She was liable to chip a tooth.
"Forgive me," the mink uttered through her teeth, "I completely forgot that your organization was so altruistic."
"Oh fuck off. I don't need to explain anything to you. The fact remains that, no matter how much of a raging asshole you are, we're still fighting for you - and everyone like you. We're on the same side in this, you blithering idiot."
Poly tilted her head to the side, turning her neck just enough to see Vect staring at her cigarette. "What the hell is your problem, anyway? You usually wait until people are suffering massive lacerations before you insult them to their face?"
The mink flicked the lit cigarette into the depths of the concrete room, amid the shattered glass and spent brass casings.
"Honestly, it's just jealousy. Rarely get a chance to vent it. So, really, thanks for that."
Gradually, a distant, mounting rhythm began to echo off the dull gray walls. The sound swelled with every passing moment, aggressively ejecting the silence amid the cement out of the windows, vacating it from the conversation. Soon, it was unmistakably present. A sweeping shaft of light cut through an open window from the air before slipping back out of view and moving on. Vect regarded the light and noise as stark announcement, signaling the arrival of Poly's compatriots.
Vect stood to her feet with a grunt, stretching her arms as she did so. She straightened her jacket and adjusted her cuffs casually.
"That'll be your ride," the mink stated flatly. "And my cue to leave. You need me to make some noise for them, or do they have a tracker on you or something?"
Poly took a moment to frown up at the belligerent punk before softening her expression. Her own scowl melted into something much more gentle, as did her voice.
"They'll find me just fine. And you don't have to leave, if you don't want to."
"Got places to be. And people looking for me that you don't want finding you."
"That a fact? Well... Look. Uh... Despite everything else I've said tonight. Uh..."
Poly swallowed hard. Something felt caught in her throat.
"Thanks for the save, miss mink."
Vect headed swiftly for the open doorway, stepping carefully over the shattered wood and metal debris.
"Don't mention it. I may be an asshole, but when it comes down to it, I know we're on the same side. You make sure you survive, yeah?"
"Yeah..."
Suddenly, Poly jolted her neck upright, craning it enough to see Vect as she hung in the doorway, stealing one last glance back.
"Hey," Poly nearly yelled, "never got your name."
The mink paused briefly in thought, the searchlight of the VTOL above washing over her as turbulent blasts of wind blew through the hair between her short, rounded ears.
"Yeah, you sure didn't."
Vect cut a smile through the night air back toward Poly.
"Good luck out there, science girl."
no subject
Date: 2026-03-12 02:07 am (UTC)This isn't technically a part of the Lightning In A Bottle arc.
I've found myself stalling out on writing for both the primary Transgressions storyline and the Lightning In A Bottle series. I still intend to write both, but I've been having serious trouble doing so.
The best advice I ever received was "Just write something". Back when CoHost was active, it was something I would do just by writing whatever the heck popped into my head, no matter if it was in chronological sequence or relevant or canonical. I decided to try that again.
My apologies for the disconnected episode. LIAB should resume shortly. There's not much of it left, and those are the characters I really want to collide.