Who: Lara and Bo What: Fighting demons during the solar eclipse, and Bo goes a little Dark Side. When: Last day of the Diablo Plot Where: Around Orange County Warnings: High for blood and gore and a near-death experience
If Bo had thought the past two days were bad, today was definitely worse. She’d needed the fight, the physical ability to release pent up emotions and venting them at demons. But fighting was exhausting, and Bo was getting tired of fighting. However, she wasn’t about to give up, not while she still had breath in her body.
She’d noticed Lara having become hardened, becoming the survivor and hunter that she was in those games when push came to shove. Bo herself and also become hardened, keeping a laser focus on the demons and probably relishing in their death more than she really should. Death felt like second nature to her, and she really should be scared at just how much it had become second nature to her, but right now she didn’t care. She was too busy fighting several succubi. She was wielding her sword, but also had her crossbow strapped to her back, as well as bolts, and her trusty dagger was in her thigh holster.
Bo dodged one attack and beheaded one of the demons. “There’s only room for one succubus in this county, and that’s me, bitches!” Bo exclaimed as she ducked the swing of one’s arm, then grabbed her by the throat and proceeded to chi-suck her. The chi tasted horrible. If evil had a taste, it was definitely this. But Bo needed the chi boost in the middle of battle. She sucked that one dry, then turned around, ready for another round.
It was always so easy to fall into the role of the hunter. Within minutes of the first battle she'd found her groove, placing arrows neatly in the head of zombie or skeleton, one after another. She'd made sure she was armed in other ways. A shotgun, pistols, and an AK-47 she'd liberated from a gun store.
After two days of fighting, she was starting to feel weary. Her muscles ached her bones ached. And she was running low on ammunition. The AK had been spent on a horde of demons earlier that day, and she had maybe six arrows left. She sunk one into the head of a succubus attacking Bo from behind.
But there were a variety of demons coming still. "Can you steal their chi en mass?"
It was a cold calculation, and there was a cold, resigned look in her eyes.
Thank god for Lara and her arrows, otherwise Bo wouldn’t have turned around in time to defend herself from the attack. She took a moment to take a couple breaths. The chi she’d just sucked did give her a boost, more than she’d care to ever say, but she still wanted a moment to catch her breath.
“Not at will,” Bo responded, looking over at Lara. It was cold and calculating, but now was the time for cold and calculating. “Do you want to use my crossbow? I’ve still got several bolts.” Bo hadn’t exactly used her crossbow, instead preferring to run head-first into the fray with her sword. She was better with her sword, even if she loved her crossbow.
Bo didn’t quite wait for a response, taking the crossbow and bolts off and tossing them to Lara before she raised her sword. “But we’ll see if that side of me comes out. We could definitely use it.” The fact that Bo was seemingly willing to tap into that part of herself said a lot, though it probably wouldn’t actually register until they were far removed from this crisis and Lara was back into a healthy state of mind.
She then charged ahead to meet the coming horde, which held many demons of several different varieties. There were a couple hulking ones, some medium sized, then little goblin-like things. Bo met them and cut a couple of the goblin-things down, which sent the other goblin-things scattering for the moment. Okay, that was nice, though she still had other demons to contend with.
Catching the crossbow, Lara quickly loaded it and shot bolts past Bo’s head one handed. The crossbow had kick but that didn’t really bother her, not with adrenaline coursing through her veins. Once she was out of bolts, she set it aside and pulled out her pistol and one of her climbing axes, leaping in after her wife.
She didn’t even flinch as Lara shot the bolts past her head. Bo simply focused herself on the battle, lashing out with her sword and fist and foot as needed. There really seemed to be no end to these things. Bo was going to need a break eventually, but for now she could keep going so long as she chi-sucked now and then. Sometimes it was amazing to have that power. She was like the Energizer bunny in that respect.
However, Bo’s sword got stuck in the skull of one of the demons, and she was trying to tug it out when she heard an inhuman roar. She looked up to see an ugly-ass behemoth-thing coming towards her. “Oh shit,” she muttered, letting go of the hilt of her sword to duck one swing of its arm. However, she didn’t anticipate it being as agile as it was and was caught off-guard when it swung its arm back the way it had come. One of the spikes on its arm impaled Bo through her midsection. She made a noise and had a look of shock on her face. She coughed out some blood, her eyes finding Lara as she tried to gasp for breath. Then a moment later, she was flung away and she hit the ground hard and rolled a bit, landing on her back as her body went into shock, and she felt the cold hand of death coming over her.
Later on, Lara would tell Bo her in combat was both frightening and a little arousing. Right now she was entirely too into the battle itself, her mind focused on survival and nothing else. She rolled to the side and emptied a pistol clip into the behemoth, doing little more than pissing it off. In fact, it ignored her as it swatted at the more annoying gnat with the sword.
Later on, Lara would be able to recall the horrifying sound the spike made, a sickening squelch that flashed her back to Yamatai and the rebar she’d fallen on. She met Bo’s eyes, and blinked and Bo was rolling on the ground. Lara screamed, drawing a second pistol and firing both at the monster as she advanced on it. A bullet went through its eye and it reeled back. Lara adjusted her aim until she’d emptied the last of her clips into the behemoth’s brain, and it keeled over. It hadn’t even hit the ground before she was at Bo’s side. Lara was keenly aware the battle had drawn the attention of more demons and more undead, including something that made the ground shake as it approached. But she focused on Bo, pointlessly trying to staunch the blood flow from her stomach.
There was quite a bit of blood. Luckily Bo was wearing black so the blood wouldn’t stand out as much as if she’d been wearing lighter colors. But that was besides the point currently. Her thoughts were jumbled and she was losing sense of her body. It was starting to get cold, and she felt Lara’s hands pressing against the wound. Bo looked at her, and she had one thought in her mind:
I don’t want to die.
She couldn’t vocalize it, she couldn’t really do much but lay there, feeling her body growing more distant from herself. Even the world around them faded away. The handprint on her chest was glowing, partly visible beneath the tank top she was wearing.
Then it came. Her succubus instincts kicked in, but in the process, the dark side of herself took control. Eyes turning blue, a startling color in the darkness of the eclipse, Bo opened her mouth and began to suck chi of anything and everything near them, including Lara. Luckily for them both, all the demons immediately around them stopped in their tracks as she sucked their chi in. The wound began to heal, and after several moments, Bo stopped sucking Lara’s chi, but kept sucking demon chi. Even with her darker self in control, Bo had no wish to kill Lara, so she’d stopped before she’d taken too much.
After a minute, all the demons around them dropped dead, drained of chi, and Bo got up to her feet, eyes still glowing as more demons were coming. A cold and menacing smile briefly crossed her face.
“You dare to come for my life?” She spoke with that inhuman voice that accompanied this. “It is you who shall pay tribute to me with your lives. I will choose who lives and dies.” And Bo started to group chi suck the next wave of demons. The wound she’d suffered was now nearly healed, but she showed no signs of stopping the chi suck.
It was still a lot of chi, and the world spun around Lara. She’d not been prepared for it, and it had made her entire body ache with the weariness of the past two days and then some. She fell to the side, unable to keep herself upright as her stomach twisted. She moved her eyes, taking in Bo in all her darkness. There were no bullets left in her guns, but her hand wrapped around the handle of her axe. She wouldn’t let Bo turn into something she’d hate, and she prayed for Bo to stop at the demons and not start sucking in the chi from any people nearby.
The demons dropped dead, but the gigantic demon that seemed to shake the earth as it walked was still up. It stomped towards Bo, but she didn’t even flinch. Grabbing her sword, she leapt up and drove the sword into its head. Using her strength, she cut its head in half, then practically bisected it as she leapt off of it and back to the ground.
Her eyes were still glowing, and she was definitely still not herself. Her shirt was torn where the spike had impaled her, but there was no wound left on her stomach. Bo looked around, seeing some people, but the demons in the close vicinity were dead. She smirked.
“Death is my birthright,” she started to turn towards the people, intending to take their chi and make them her servants.
"Shit." Lara finally crawled to her feet, and stumbled towards Bo, and then let her momentum turn into a run.
"Stop this!" She didn't swing the axe, or attempt to do anything lethal. She simply rammed her elbow into Bo's side and then twisted her body in an attempt to flip Bo up and over. If nothing else, it dislocated her shoulder and she went down hard.
Lara’s charge took her by surprise. Bo had been laser focused on others to have noticed that Lara was on her feet. As it was, she was flipped up and over, and she landed hard. It was jarring enough that she was stunned, stars floating across her vision. But it also had the desired effect Lara intended. Bo’s eyes faded back to her normal brown as she came back to her senses. She blinked a bit, wondering what happened.
“Lara?” She asked. Then she quickly sat up, hands moving to her stomach, but she only found the wet, warmth of blood staining her shirt. The wound was gone. The handprint on her chest also stopped glowing.
Groaning, Lara tried to sit up. Her head spun and her shoulder was screaming in pain. But she pushed that aside and looked towards the sound of Bo’s voice. “I’m all right. Are you yourself?”
There were other things she was worried about, and questions about what had just happened. Bo had clearly lost control of herself, and Lara’s first instinct had been blood. It scared the hell out of her.
“Yeah, I’m me. I went Dark Side, didn’t I?” She asked. Bo didn’t want to think about what had made her go Dark Side. It was...just a little too raw and not what she needed right then. So instead she shifted closer to Lara. She glanced around, but didn’t see any other demons charging at them for the moment.
“I didn’t take too much from you, did I?” It was obvious that Bo hadn’t killed Lara from draining her dry, but even then she could still have taken too much and they would need to get somewhere defensible. Lara wasn’t in any shape to fight out in the open. “We should find somewhere where we can hole up. Staying out here isn’t going to do us any good.”
“Took just enough,” Lara assured her. She sagged against Bo suddenly, more wiped out than she’d previously realized. She was pretty sure she was out of the fight, even without her shoulder injury. “.. perhaps a little too much.”
She nodded at the previous question, too tired to vocalize her worry.
Bo held onto Lara when she sagged against her. “I can’t heal you, but do you need me to help pop your shoulder back into place?” She knew a dislocated shoulder when she saw one. She was careful to not jostle Lara, not wanting to jar her injured shoulder. While waiting for Lara’s response, Bo looked around, looking for a nearby building they could take shelter in. She’d then move them towards it once Lara gave her the answer about her shoulder.
“Yes.” Normally, Lara would be able to handle her own shoulder, but under the circumstances she wasn’t above asking for help. Which was a difficult thing for her to do in general. She was so often the loner that asking someone for help was anathema to her.
She grit her teeth, preparing herself for the inevitable pain. “I’m ready!”
Bo nodded, taking Lara’s arm gently in hand. “Okay, on three.” She counted to three, then popped Lara’s shoulder back into the socket. She wanted to make a makeshift sling for Lara’s arm, but she didn’t have anything to do that with. “Are you able to stand?” Bo would only carry Lara if she wasn’t able to walk. Otherwise, she’d put Lara’s good arm around her shoulders and walk her to safety.
“I can stand. But I don’t think I’ll be moving quickly,” Lara did have to lean on Bo for them to move, and she brandished her axe in her free hand, though it wouldn’t be super effective at the moment. “We’ll need… a barricade.”
And she needed to find what she was looking for so that Bo taking this kind of hit didn’t wipe her out as much in the future.
Before moving, Bo ensured that they had all of their weapons. Then getting up, she slid Lara’s good arm around her shoulders and wrapped an arm around her back, supporting her. She looked around again, spotting something.
“I see a place we can hole up in off to the left.” Bo started heading for it, careful to not move faster than Lara could handle. Lara needed to rest, and Bo had just completely juiced herself up, she could spend the rest of the day fighting if need be. “Do you need a sling or something for your arm?”
“I’ll take care of my arm,” Lara said. “Get a barricade up.”
She frowned, then squeezed Bo’s hand. “I appreciate the concern it’s just the least of our problems right now.”
She could hear things shambling around, but she didn’t trust Bo to not lose control juiced up like this.
“Please, let me be concerned about you.” Keeping half a mind on Lara and half a mind on keeping them protected would help distract from the darker side of herself. She could still feel it, but she was going to stuff it back down by focusing on Lara, the barricade and protecting them both.
Helping Lara sit down, Bo quickly fashioned a barricade for them, her head turning this way and that, keeping an eye out for more demons and undead. She heard a groaning kind of sound and she gripped her sword tightly. She saw a zombie-like thing shamble around the corner. Setting her jaw, she ran out to greet it, running it through where its heart was. It collapsed to the ground, but as Bo took a couple steps back, the torso tore itself away from its legs and started crawling towards Bo.
“Oh jesus christ, that’s just disgusting.” This time, she stabbed it through the head and it stopped moving. But just to make sure, she decapitated it and then kicked the head as far away from them as she could.
“Do you wonder if they’re actual people?” Lara asked, a morbid fascination in her voice. “From the real world, I mean, and not from that woman’s dreams.”
Obviously, it was still a person. Which was terrible. But she was mostly just curious.
“The zombies and skeletons? They might be. But the demons are probably just straight out of her dreams. Which, I kind of feel bad for her having to dream about this shit.” Bo didn’t know if she could handle dreaming about demon armies and undead like that. It was bad enough dreaming about the fae shit she did.
Bo stood guard by the barricade, ready to defend the area as needed. “If this doesn’t have an end soon, we’ll have to think about making a run to get out of here. We can’t stay here if the demons keep coming.” The unspoken words there were that Bo couldn’t hold off the hordes forever. And she really didn’t want to suck anymore demon chi. It left a seriously bad taste in her mouth. She may have to gargle bleach whenever they got home.
“We’d have more weapons back home.” Lara’s eyes started to drift shut.
“And more defenses between us and the demons. And also a bed for you lay in.” Bo looked over at Lara and saw her eyes drift shut. That alone told her that they needed to get out of there right now. “Alright, we’re getting out of here. You need a place to rest that’s more protected than this.” Especially if they got overrun. “I can carry you on my back if you’d rather do that.” Bo may not have muscles to the extent Lara did, but she did have superhuman strength.
“Not going to hotwire a car?” Lara joked. She tried to open her eyes again, groaning a little. She felt like she was dying. Which she wasn’t, but her body needed to rest and she wasn't’ sure how much longer she’d stay conscious. She mumbled. “Really...need to discover antidote…”
“If I knew how to hotwire, I most likely would.” Bo had never learned how to do that. Though in the current situation, she was kind of wishing that she had. It would make getting out of here that much easier. And even as Lara joked, Bo was more in serious mode and getting them both out of there safely. Seeing that they had a break, she decided to make a break for it.
“Okay, lean forward onto my back,” Bo said, moving so that Lara could lean onto her back and Bo could pick her up. It was easier to move quicker with Lara on her back than it was if she carried her in her arms. “Antidote? What are you talking about?” She didn’t know if that was something that was serious, or if Lara was just that tired and incoherent.
“To you wiping me out like this. Might be a way…” Lara trailed off, mumbling something about ‘human battery’ before exhaustion claimed her. She’d just have to trust Bo not to get them killed, or to lose control.
Bo couldn’t quite make sense of what Lara was saying. So she just chalked it up to Lara being exhausted. Hoisting Lara onto her back and hooking her arms under Lara’s knees, Bo ensured they had everything and she began to move. She only paused to put Lara down and fight if needed, but she didn’t lose control again nor did she get either of them killed. Eventually, they made it back home and Bo put Lara to bed before she took to getting rid of her blood-soaked clothes, clean herself up and then she joined Lara in bed.