towerofanimus | Is This Home?

Terezi cries out as the thorns dig into her flesh. Unfortunately, her first instinct is to struggle, which only makes the vines rip into her further. Despite all the horrible visions she's seen, the voices are worse, and she lets out a cry of pain and frustration as she continues to hack at the vines.

Vriska snarls, trying to cut the vines away from her feet with her sword. Her grip loosens a little when the visions and voices start, but she tries to grit her teeth and bear it and start fighting the vines again with a new vigor. The sooner she gets them off and the sooner Feferi is dealt with, the sooner she can get the hell out of this place.

The noise doesn't escape Kanaya's notice, but she chalks it up to being one of Feferi's tricks until she realizes exactly whose voice it is. Maybe it's a learned habit from dealing with him so long, but after a few moments, her mind registers the familiar sound, enough to bring her verbal skills back up to a high enough level that she can actually talk through her rage.

"Karkat," she calls, making sure he can hear her over the sound of her chainsaw. "Please hold on, I'll be there as fast as I can!" She just needs to take care of Feferi first. Karkat needs tending to, but Kanaya can't do that safely with the grimdark troll still on the loose.

She cringes as the pain in her leg begins to seep into her awareness. Well, that certainly isn't good. Kanaya casts a hurried glance around the dark room, saw at the ready, in an attempt to pinpoint Feferi's location -- and, more importantly, to make sure she's not anywhere near where Karkat's voice had come from.

The vines didn't put up much of a fight once they were cut, though they twitched and writhed angrily, attempting to regrow themselves before Vriska and Terezi would have a chance to get away. It was a process, but one that wouldn't take long to complete if they didn't catch up with their third party member.

Kanaya wouldn't have to wait long. In the direction where Karkat's voice had come from, out came his body, tossed like a ragdoll by the very same vines that currently held down Vriska and Terezi. The difference being that it appeared that Karkat had been bound by them for much longer, the scores cutting deep and ugly rivets in his skin, dousing all of the ugly aberrations in cerulean blood. He flinched, but it appeared that he was so devoid of energy that he could barely even struggle against them.

Feferi dropped down over him, pointing the culling fork straight in Kanaya's face with the same manic grin.

""

Terezi manages to escape from the vines, just barely, but they've left deep lacerations in her skin, tearing easily though the fabric of her jeans. She struggles to her feet and finds that while the thorns have done a number on her flesh, she can still walk. Each step is agony, though, and she's not going to be much help to Kanaya.

So she turns to Vriska. She is so, so tempted to just leave the cerulean troll there, but Terezi knows she needs back up to stop Feferi. And anyway, helping Vriska will piss her off, and that is always a plus. So she drops to her knees beside the other troll, wincing as her legs scream at her, and begins to hack away at the vines.

"Back off!"

Rage surges in Vriska's veins at the help, and she swats at Terezi's face with her free hand, while the other cuts away the final vines holding her down. The moment she's free, she tries to take to the air, momentarily forgetting that her wing no longer works to help her fly. It did at least help her leap out of range. Her legs throb, fabric torn away to reveal trails of cerulean trickling down. But that can wait until later.

She glances at Terezi for a moment before turning and running after Kanaya. She knows Terezi will follow, she doesn't need to say anything. Not that she thinks she needs help, but maybe somewhere in the back of her mind she thought it'd be good to have back up.

Actually seeing Karkat on the edge of death is enough to put down any rational thought remaining in Kanaya's mind. She ducks beneath the level of the trident and lunges for Feferi, letting her anger lead her forwards, regardless of the very real danger of being turned into a Kanaya-kebab with that fork. The chainsaw is swung out and up towards the tealblood with no mercy, the attack punctuated by a wordless and guttural growl.

Karkat watched with horrified eyes as Feferi swung the fork with all her might to parry Kanaya's chainsaw, attempting to knock it straight out of her hands. Regardless of whether or not she managed it, everyone in the room would be rewarded with a yowl of pain as the veins sought to drag their pray away from Kanaya and the other two girls, back into the maw of darkness that he had been swallowed up in prior.

Feferi darted forward in an attempt to follow through with her disarm, trying to claim the chainsaw as a weapon for herself.

Terezi scowls at Vriska, but follows, doing her best to keep up on her trashed legs. Karkat's cry rips into her, made all the worse by the fact that she knows she won't be fast enough to help him.

"If you can't keep up, Pyrope, then quit trying!"

Vriska's trying to ignore the sounds of pain and focus on sound of battle. Her legs are killing her but adrenaline drives her to move on towards Kanaya and Feferi. As soon as they're in view, she throws herself forward to attack the teal blood.

Such a cumbersome weapon is hard enough for a troll of Kanaya's stature to wield gracefully, to say the least of when someone is trying their hardest to knock it away from you. So she's forced to let go of it, but as soon as her hands are empty, she's making a vicious grab for the culling fork instead -- Feferi can only hold so many things at once, especially with someone else jumping at her.

With both Kanaya and Vriska flying at her, Feferi hardly has time to scoop up the chainsaw once she's disarmed the former. Now its a battle to hold onto her own weapon as well as keep her balance, jovial grin suddenly turning to a vicious snarl.

Despite her strength, she can't fight off a god tier and a raging mutant. That doesn't stop her from trying, though. She swings her arms with as much might as she can manage to try and stab one of the other aggressors in the thigh.

Terezi knows she isn't going to be much use in this fight: She's far too slow. Luckily, Karkat's scent is in the opposite direction, and it doesn't take long for her to limp her way over to him.

She drops to her knees beside the mass of vines holding him captive and does her best to ignore the thick scent of cerulean in the air. He's lost a lot of blood, clearly, and she has no idea how hurt he is. "Hold still," she orders, though she's not sure how still he can realistically be. She begins to hack away at the vines anyway.

There's a sharp cry of pain from her as Vriska tries to dodge out of the way, but isn't quite quick enough to avoid the cut along her thigh. She's slides backwards, stabbing her sword into the ground to stop herself. It's hard to stand, so she kneels for a second, gasping for breath and trying to blink away the white spots of pain blinding her vision. She tries not to stay down for long, and jumps back into the fray to help again.

Kanaya doesn't escape the flailing unscathed either, ending up with gashes along her arms and a sizable one over her stomach for her troubles. She's so angry at this point, though, that she just hisses when she stumbles back from the assault.

When she launches forwards again, it's with her fingers hooked to most effectively brandish the sharp nails her species is gifted with, and she's going for any part of Feferi that she can get to, including her face.

For good measure, she kicks a foot out too, to try and grapple the tealblood to the floor.

It turns out that Karkat can be very still thanks to all the blood he's lost. There's a small groan of pain that comes from him when she tugs at the vines to cut them, blood steadily trickling out as the thorns fall away from his skin. The cerulean laid mostly limp on the ground, the only sign that he was still breathing being the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Feferi shrieked in rage as Kanaya's nails cut into her, both Vriska's and her weight unbalancing her. She kicks and fails some more, trying to push both females off with the trident. The vines that had been cut from Karkat begin to regreat, prepared to swing around to try and pull them off if given the time.

This is when Terezi begins to panic. There's blood everywhere and she has nothing to staunch the flow. She takes a deep breath, touching his arm gently. "Karkat," she murmurs, desperation edging into her voice. "Karkat, can you hear me?"

Vriska doesn't let up, despite how her limbs scream in pain at her with every movement, trying to keep Feferi unbalanced. She slashes with her sword whenever she thinks she has an opening, sure that eventually she'll get strikes in on her. If she can just get a good enough hit she could finish this easily enough. She just needs to keep going for the kill until she can get it.

When Feferi falls, Kanaya makes a frantic grab for her chainsaw again -- she has no hope of a killing blow with just her hands unless she tries to strangle Feferi, and while that's a very appealing thought, it's just not doable with the tangle of limbs in her way.

If she does manage to get to her chainsaw, well. Let there be blood. She'll vaguely be doing her best to not graze Vriska.

Feferi doesn't even have time to scream. She flails one last time, pushing outward with her culling fork because her life is ended in an explosion of teal. All the vines that had been clinging to limbs suddenly fall limp, and the eerie silence returns to the room.

Karkat groans in response to Terezi's plea, struggling to lift his head and respond. Eventually, he gives up and simply nods in her direction, letting his eyes drift shut tiredly.

"Hey, stupid, don't close your eyes!" She tries to get her arm under his shoulders to lift him up. "We'll get you out of here, okay?"

Once Feferi is done with, Vriska hardly has the energy to stand with the adrenaline ebbing out of her limbs. She trudges over to Terezi and Karkat and collapses to her knees by them. She's hardly in a position to really help, but she'll try anyway. Maybe trying to show Terezi up, or something.

Kanaya takes a moment to vent her frustration about her world's fate on Feferi's corpse; the word "maiming" comes to mind, and she does that until her rage tapers off and she's not seeing red.

Well, figuratively speaking. She can actually see quite a bit of red, since she's bleeding and all. Well. That's troubling.

She shuts off her chainsaw, taking heavy breaths. It takes a few seconds to remember oh shit, Karkat, at which point she stumbles over to the assembled party. It seems like Terezi has Karkat, but...

"Vriska," rasps Kanaya. "Do you need help?" She's not in much of a position to help either, but at least she's still standing.

He opens them on command, though very slowly. Unfortunately, it appears Karkat's body is completely dead-weight and useless to him. He can only muster the energy to lift a hand to rest on her wrist, and turn his head to look at Vriska, offering the smallest half-smirk of gratitude before it collapsed into a violent wince of pain.

Karkat's lungs slowed, struggling to to quell the pain shooting through his body every time he was moved.

Terezi lets out a shaky sigh, because at least he's responding. She ignores Vriska, preferring not to deal with her right now, and turns her attention to Kanaya. "We need to get him out of here, but I don't think I can lift him."

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