InsaneJournal

“Think monster parts sell high in a black market? Like organ trafficking?”

In retrospect, asking Adora a question like that was probably moot. The fuck did Barbie know about those kind of dealings anyway, but it was bullshit small talk and Revy was just kind of curious in general. She knew contracts for side gigs existed here and there for pest control jobs when it came to invasive creatures, but should she be digging inside a corpse or two and harvesting their guts?

These nasty basilisk fucks were kind of common this month, too. The biggest Revy had seen was maybe the size of a dog but she knew bigger existed, prowling about through the trees. They’d been careful. She might be cocky, but she wasn’t a dumbass.

Most of the time.

“Their bite’s poisonous, right, so,” she blew smoke from between her lips, a cigarette pinched between her fingers as they made the trek down a dirt path, “what if I cut out their saliva glands and sold them? Maybe a swamp witch might want them. Or what if their tail makes a really fucking good hot dog?”

“You’re gross,” Adora declared, lip curled in disgust. Usually, that would just be a reaction to the smoke puffing out of Revy’s mouth, but today, she seemed to have chosen to go even further with her theoretical basilisk dissections. Saliva glands and hot dog tails weren’t really topics of conversation Adora had envisioned.

She was honestly trying to keep her stress levels when it came to the beasts as low as possible, too. Basilisks had always existed around Vallo, but maybe it was their mating season or something because they were extra stirred up this month. She didn’t understand it – and wouldn’t pretend to – but she knew they were lashing out. They’d petrified Atreus, and he was reluctant to harm even the nastiest, most dangerous of creatures. That didn’t give Adora much hope for the rest of them.

“Let’s just focus on not getting bitten ourselves,” she went on, eyes sweeping around their path as they trudged forward. Once she was sure they were clear, her gaze shifted back to Revy for a moment. “But I gotta admit, I’m surprised you’re not already aware of black market prices.”

“Never had a reason to be aware of black market prices here,” was Revy’s retort, casual with a shrug. She knew well how she ran back home – and it wasn’t for the faint of heart, either. Those underworld dealings were cutthroat and brutal. Everything was tainted with blood. “It probably runs differently. Maybe they sell more forbidden magic shit than people’s organs, or actual people.”

Vallo wasn’t perfect but it seemed more humane than her world. Both her worlds, anyway. Maybe she was wrong and there was serious seedy shit happening behind the scenes. That might actually surprise her.

She snuffed the cigarette out against a tree trunk, and before Barbie could fucking give her shit, she pulled out a small bag to toss the butt in. She didn’t want to get written up for littering.

“And I think we’re being followed,” she said, also casually, and stuffed the bag back into her pocket.

Adora shrugged back. Looking into the black market in any world had never even crossed her mind. She hadn’t even known there was contraband in the Fright Zone until well after the war, when Catra told her stories. Going against the rules just wasn’t in her nature. Nowadays, she would be more apt to bend them sometimes but never to black market levels.

Revy’s announcement straightened Adora’s back and her right hand opened at her side, summoning the sword from its usual bracer on her wrist. She kept it low to the ground, trying to assess where the threat might be coming from. She didn’t know where Revy’s suspicions had come from; she wasn’t like Catra, whose ears perked up when she heard something Adora didn’t.

“Do you see something?” she asked.

“Gut feeling,” Revy explained lamely. She didn’t dispute those. Gut feelings kept her alive through most of her miserable fucking years, and she had this inkling of being prey that didn’t sit well with her. Chang always said she had a nose for that kind of thing; a war hound that could just tell when an enemy was creeping by, like her bloodlust levels would spike to match theirs.

One hand went to each gun, standing still.

“I don’t hear any birds,” she tacked on. “Learned the hard way that when all the normal forest shit goes quiet, something’s up. Might want to go into magical girl mode, Barbara.”

Then, on cue, there was a startling burst of birds flying out of the trees around them, as if they were startled or scared of something nearby. The flapping wings and squawks weren’t quiet, but the fact that they were fleeing was telling in itself.

Revy could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but in the times they teamed up, she had never steered Adora wrong. She may have dumped her off after a late-night drinking session (something Catra would never forget), but she was going to have her back in dangerous situations, Adora was confident in that. And her gut was typically worth trusting. So when she suggested ‘magical girl mode’ (sigh), Adora obeyed.

Or she tried.

The birds fleeing should have been a sign that whatever was lurking was nearer than she might have thought. She was interrupted mid-glow-up by a set of sharp teeth digging deep into her calf. She let out a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a shout and brought the flat of her sword down like a bat onto the creature responsible.

Revy might have, stupidly, gotten distracted by fucking birds. But her reflexes were quick, and her guns were drawn with her fingers on each trigger, taking on. And holy fuck was the thing she was aiming at big - several thick legs, protruding spikes, leathery skin that looked like it might be hard to pierce.

Not like that’d stop her.

As Adora came down at it with a violent whack of her sword, Revy shot two bullets. It did go through its hide (and thankfully not ricocheting off it, last thing she needed was to put a bullet in Adora by accident and have Leon give her a lecture), but none of it was enough to kill it or slow it down. The beast might have let her go, and in retaliation?

It drove itself into Revy like an angry bull, knocking her down and clamping down on her arm. “You fucking–fuck!” she cursed, one of her guns flying out of her grip. “DID WE NOT SAY WE’RE NOT GONNA GET BIT?!”

“I guess saying it doesn’t mean anything!” Adora could feel her leg beginning to numb already, and there was no summoning She-Ra right now, not when she could hardly focus past the pain, but she forced herself to push through. The basilisk that had come after them was probably about Spirit’s size with twice the amount of legs and a much scarier mug of a face than her puppy.

With a determined huff, she pushed forward on her good leg, wielding the sword the way it was meant and stabbing down. The creature let out a hissing-shriek, unleashing Revy’s arm but turning back to Adora to continue the fight. She pulled her sword, now blood-stained, from its hide and swung as it rose onto its hind legs and let out that ungodly noise again.

That shit stung. Revy wasn’t a stranger to pain – she’d taken a sword into the kneecap once, that was a cunt and a half to endure – but the poison burned through the shredded skin until it didn’t. That was the numbing part of it, wasn’t it?

“Fucking fuck,” was her creative retort to all of that a second time, her arm useless in regards to retrieving her fallen gun but it was a good thing she had a damn spare. Forcing herself to sit up from the ground, Revy took aim again and pulled the trigger several times. “Will you just fucking–DIE, fuck your mother!!”

How was it not dying immediately?

“Next time I’m bringing my GRENADE LAUNCHER TO WORK!”

These things were clearly survivors and determined to bring them down. Did it intend to eat them or something? Adora didn’t remember that being part of the information packet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility. Or had they stumbled upon a cluster of nests? She was doing all this hypothesizing in her head, but there was really no way of knowing what had these violent little monsters all stirred up this month.

What she did know was she had to get them away from it, before this petrification thing spread. She knew from her attempt at working on Atreus that her magic wouldn’t heal her from that. She and Revy had to get out of this mess and get into the right hands – all she could do was hope the clinic had stocked up on basilisk oil to reverse this quickly.

She kept swatting at the beast, but despite her whacks and stabs, combined with Revy unloading what had to be an entire magazine of bullets, the basilisk reared up like it was going to bite again. Adora stumbled back, and it was in that position that she realized what she had to do, despite her stomach roiling at the thought.

“Okay okay okay,” she muttered, hyping herself up. She forced out a breath, pulled the sword closer to her chest, then swung outward with all the force she could muster.

The blade connected with the soft side of its neck and sliced in deep. It stopped in its tracks, its angry hissing roars turning into a gurgly shriek. Adora closed her eyes and kept pushing forward, not daring to look until the noises stopped and she heard the thunk of the basilisk’s body hitting the ground. Even then, her eyes stayed squeezed shut and she fell back onto the grass with a thunk of her own.

“I need enchanted bullets,” Revy exhaled, skin glistening in a sheen of sweat from physical exertion and presumably the poisoned wound. She spared a glance over to her useless arm, fucking useless, taking in the sight of nasty puncture wounds and blood.

Adora’s leg was probably the same.

She was able to summon the strength to rise to her feet, storm over, and ram her foot into that exposed underbelly. The body twitched and made some kind of noise – was it from the body, or the last shuddering breath before death? – but it didn't seem like it would be getting up. It was ugly, and wounded, and also bleeding out. “We gotta move,” she scowled, offering a hand to Adoa. “Otherwise we’re sitting pretty for another one to get us, and I’d hate to have to feed you to it so I can make an escape.”

Revy was joking.

Really.

Adora was tired and out of breath, and she really didn’t want to have to concern herself with moving right now. But Revy was right – they had to get moving, especially if the chance that a horde of more of these vicious creatures might come after them for killing their brethren. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and eventually back to her feet, but her jaw hurt from clenching and tears misted in her eyes from the effort.

“There’s no way I’m walking,” she stated, though the words came out a little more whiny than she’d have intended. She could try to lean on Revy, but she didn’t want to her hear bitch about having to drag her weight when her leg felt like stone. She hadn’t thought to bring a skiff (though she filed that away for consideration for future patrols, being off the ground just a bit might save her from these situations), and they weren’t particularly close to any Waypoints.

That’s when the best option occurred to her. She looked over at Revy, already envisioning exactly what her reaction was going to be, but screw it. They weren’t going back on patrol with paralyzed limbs anyway, and this would take some of the pressure off.

With a sigh, she looked skyward and shouted, “SWIFT WIND!”

It took about fifteen seconds before she spotted what, from afar, looked no bigger than a bird overhead. Until that bird swooped down and landed beside them in the form of a dazzlingly white alicorn with a flowing, rainbow mane and tail.

“Did somebody say SWIFT WIND!!” he crowed, flashing her a pearly-white smile. A second look at her and his face turned concerned. “Are you okay, Adora?!”

“Not really,” Adora sighed. “We need a lift to the clinic.” She turned to Revy and nodded in her companion’s direction. “You first.”

“What the fuck is this,” Revy hardly even asked, staring dumbly at Swift Wind and wondering if this poison had hallucinogenic side effects. That winged horse that looked like it got dipped into an actual rainbow couldn’t be real. He looked stupid. He sounded stupid. He smiled at them and she swore there was a sparkle that came with all those perfect teeth, and he just had to be some abomination from the depths of magical girl hell.

She looked back at Adora, and her limp arm tried to swing around as if she was trying to point accusingly at him. It didn’t work well, and she looked just as stupid as Swift Wind. “You get on it first with your crippled leg – I’m calling Leon.”

“Him,” Adora corrected, but she didn’t make an attempt to push Revy again. Arguing was just giving the poison more time to spread and having a petrified leg was enough. Calling Leon was the right move, anyway, and she knew he’d call Catra, too.

Carefully, she mounted Swift Wind – not an easy feat with what felt like stone for a leg – and clutched his mane. He looked back at her with sympathetic eyes, and that only made her feel worse; she must look more awful than she thought.

Calling was really just texting. Revy managed it with one hand, a mess of letters she hoped were strung into correctly typed words, scowling at the screen, occasionally sparing a glance at Swift Wind to gauge whether or not it was still there and not some mirage.

“Where does this thing even live?” she asked, stuffing her phone back into her pants. And then she went on a scavenger hunt for her other gun, kicking around in the grass until she found it. Like hell was she leaving that behind - those were custom made, hers. “Do you keep it locked up on your space ship?? Do you summon him from a magical girl dimension? Barbie Land?”

Did she have to mount it? Revy looked disgusted.

Before Adora could do more than open her mouth to answer, Swift Wind let out a sound that could only be described as a harrumph and looked absolutely scandalized. He was not going to stand here and be called a thing by this woman with a permanent scowl on her face.

“Excuse you! My name is Swift Wind, and I’m She-Ra’s loyal steed!” He practically glowed with pride as the proclamation. “Adora does not keep me locked up on Darla! I’m a free horse, thank you very much!”

“Okay, Swifty, chill,” Adora sighed. “I wouldn’t have put it in those words,” she continued, turning to Revy. “But yeah, he’s mine. He’s not from Barbieland, he’s from Etheria. He mostly does his own thing around here, but he helps me out when I need him. And he’s not going to give you rabies or anything, so come on. Unless you wanna get completely petrified.”

No, Revy did not want to get completely petrified.

So she had no fucking choice but to get on this – creature, that just talked at her, like a person, with those big fucking horse teeth, and it was legitimately the weirdest and possibly most terrifying sight she’s seen. She was friends with Henry, she had seen the shit that came out of his Gloryhole of Horror, and it was some shit. Swift Wind was worse.

“Your life seems fake,” she groused under her breath, making sure to climb on this thing by herself. Revy was muscled enough to carry her own weight and more. “Cat baby mama, cat child, Sailor Moon transformation, rainbow demon horse. What the fuck.”