Droplets on a Razor's Edge

[Daglobster]

Torien's vision whipped about as he felt his back slam the steel and concrete barrier that surrounded the ten foot diameter circle that made up the center ring of Cancer's Stern Club, something of a hangout for pirates and gangers who'd made it big enough to enjoy some of the finest pleasures in life. He didn't know much else about the place other than it was run by goblins, didn't really have time to ask.

His opponent stepped back and slammed him against the wall again, and he could feel the studs digging through his flesh, but none of the hot pain or running warmth of his streaming blood, just faint echoes of it.

"Come on, kill him!" came the brute's manager, and someone from the crowd above threw down an empty beer bottle in protest, which shattered on the arena floor. Torien yelled and slammed his spiked elbow into his opponents back, and when the man reared up he balled up one of his cybernetic hands until he could feel the joints creaked and his knuckle studs stick out. The sound of metal on metal announced the blow and the assailant staggered back into the spotlights.

The man had metallic studs on his head and a massive, cybernetic jaw. He swayed a bit on his enhanced legs but came rocketing back in, swinging the circular saw that used to be his left hand. Torien just barely stepped back in time to feel it skim across his chest, slicing the skin but revealing gleaming metal beneath it.

Cut down to the bone, damn near, and he didn't feel a lick of it, just the cold air against his now exposed flesh. He sprung right in before his opponent could recover, rocketing another punch into his side while he cocked the other back. Mechanisms clicked and reverse-oriented spurs came out of the sides of his forearms and when his opponent came in for a backswing his adrenaline spiked and his accelerated reflexes kicked online.

The crowd watched as he flowed around his opponent's strike and swung an arm to catch him in the face with the spurs. Face bloodied and gouged, the man stumbled to the side, and Torien grabbed him by one of his metal studs and gave him an uppercut. He pulled him back down and when the man grabbed at his arms to try and free himself, Torien rooted himself to the spot and slammed his plated knee into his face.

The man fell back, catching himself on the wide mesh but otherwise barely able to stand.

Everyone cheered, and when Torien looked up to see what his handler's instructions were, he found him absent. Looking back down to the man he was fighting, he took a moment to study the look in his eye before he raised an arm and punched him square in the face, finally knocking him out.

The crowd peaked and a scratchy voice came fromthe speakers above.

"An' DAT'S IT folks! Chrome Warrior takes tha brackets! I 'aven't seen an upset like this since the days'a Skinner Pete!"

There was more, of course, but the promise of being able to leave that small pit took up his full attention. He tuned out the crowd and announcer as the floor lowered and he was delivered to the "backstage" spaces, so to speak.

Stern Club was a brand new venue for him, so he was thankful for the two armed goblins who took him to the arena's chop shop, half engineering bay and triage ward. The place smelled like gas fumes and blood but he couldn't complain about the treatment.

The doctor, a scraggy hobgoblin who definitely didn't have a medical degree, made it a point to confirm his augmentations with him, a process that took a while as there wasn't quite much of him left after he'd been augmented.

Most of his body was either enhanced or replaced (89%, by his last measurement), and while he was proud to show off his chrome beneath the knees and past the elbows (as that where most of his weaponry was anyways) the rest was covered in living tissue that gave the appearance of life, save for his head which sported two lines of exposed chrome that outlined his squat mohawk and framed his synthetic eyes. And then he had to point out the pain regulator in his brainstem, how that system was wired all the way down to the spine and integrated with his adrenal booster and delimiting device.

Upon spotting the delimiter, the "doctor" raised an eyebrow, but when you worked in illegal bloodsports it was more of a curiosity than anything else.

Anyways, he was just grateful for a synthskin regrowth treatment and the free morphine, and even though he looked pretty grievously wounded it was mostly his "outer layer", so he wasn't worried. And with the bandages and grafts done, he just kind of looked like a recently wounded warrior.

What did have him worried was his handler bursting into the room. Madrissa hadn't owned him for that long a time, she was nearing her fourth week with him, but he'd never seen her as skeeved out as she looked at that very moment. A blur of brown hair and candy red clothing approached them and she shooed the doctor away.

"He's done now, we're leaving," she said, and despite Torien's sour look she quickly pulled him out of the room.

"We got to get out of here. You just won me a fat payout but we've gotta survive to collect it," she said as they started down a hallway. Torien knew better than to question, and he could see the honest terror in her eyes.

"Fucking Anklehackers," she continued.

"They tried to buy you but I ditched them. I got the winnings check though and you won't have to fight for just about two weeks."

She led him down a hallway and started slicing into a door that led into one of the club's storage areas. Another door further down the way opened, and the sound of goblinish syllables being barked out spurred Madrissa to work faster. She got the door opened and motioned him through.

"I'll be back, don't go anywhere. I'll be rich, eh? So I'll treat you right, no reason to run off," she said, and patted the regulator control on her waist with a smirk. Torien wanted to say something but she closed the door and he could hear her making a break for it.

Yeah, he was gonna get out of here. And so he turned about and glanced around this room, which seemed to hold display items that weren't being displayed at the moment, either covered in tarps or locked away behind plasteel walls or cabinets.

So he started down his own way and moved down deeper into the room, hoping to find a vent or some other way out.

[DragonSong]

Darkness. That was alright, she was used to darkness. Honestly, she found she preferred it--her only real, sustained experiences with light tended to involve pain, confusion, or terror. Sometimes all three, on an off day.

That hadn't seemed to change much since she'd been dumped from one dark tank into another. Of course, her new "home" was at least a bit more interesting, at first; she saw new people, new places. The group of street performers who had purchased her off the black market had mostly kept her in a sort of side-show attraction, a dilapidated building with a broken neon sign, if she remembered correctly.

It was getting harder to remember.

The carnival had been her first new tank. From there...well, she honestly wasn't sure. No one ever seemed to really care to tell her where she was, or where she was going when she was inevitably sold off again--she only knew she was being sold because she'd learned to listen in when people would stand beside her tank and speak with those wide, expressive hand gestures. She'd tried doing that herself once or twice, but the only people who really paid attention were the little ones that sometimes came close to gawk at her.

So this darkness was pretty much par for the course, really. She hadn't even bothered to look around her new surroundings once her tank had been dumped into this storage room. At least she assumed it was a storage room--even if she'd wanted to take a look around her view was mostly blocked by stacks of crates or oddly lumpy protrusions covered in some kind of thick fabric.

But then light. Brief and flickering, lasting only a moment or two as it accompanied the sound a door opening and closing. The emergency lighting in the room had flickered on, sickly green, but it was dim enough that she didn't have to squint against it as her eyes adjusted.

Was that...were those footsteps?

Her eyes widened and she instinctively darted to the furthest corner of her tank from the noise, coiling her tail in close to her body and wrapping her arms around herself in an effort to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible in the greenish, murky water.

...Of course, this effort wasn't helped by the gentle sloshing of liquid against glass caused by her movement. Or by the fact that the emergency lighting wasn't quite enough to obscure the subtle blueish glow of the markings that covered her body.

[Daglobster]

This place was pretty packed with all kinds of empty containers and things covered in tarp. He reckoned this must be a storeroom for stolen things with no real black market value, it figured that the little green monsters would keep it all in one big mess. Torien even pocketed a few things, including a heavy wrench from an open toolkit lying next to a half dismantled machine. As he picked it up he heard what sounded like... sloshing?

He turned about and looked behind him, and his gaze fell upon a tall, cylindrical object covered in the same grey tarp as everything else about halfway down, and the bottom half was mostly darkened, but...

There were some lights on the bottom? He stooped down to get a closer look. Something about the tank must have detected proximity (it seemed like a pretty advanced unit.) and the interior of it lit up just enough to reveal the shape of something curled up on the bottom and away from him. Whatever it was, it was big, as big as him at least and... wait...

were those hands?

[DragonSong]

The creature in the tank pressed back further against the smooth glass behind her, chest starting to rise and fall rapidly as her breathing picked up. It--he?--was getting closer, closer...she was trapped.

She looked around desperately, wincing and gritting her teeth as the markings along her body flared brighter in her distress.

In a sudden burst of movement she uncurled herself from her tiny, protective ball and rocketed toward the top of her tank, slamming against the lid with a dull, metallic thunk. Her tail churned the water below her anxiously, most of her body except for the very end of her tail fins now hidden by the tarp.

She spun wildly, the panic of a trapped prey animal overriding conscious thought. She slammed her hands into the side of the tank, earning another, louder thunk and causing the tarp to shudder delicately as her desperation shook the cylindrical structure.

[Daglobster]

The creature surged and his adrenaline spiked, and what was a lightning fast slam upwards for her, Torien perceived as a slow-motion glide upwards. She was... a lot to take in, or at least Torien thought it looked like a "she", there were a few details that hinted him towards that. But he also knew what terror looked like on someone's face and it was the horrified look in her eyes that caught him off guard and sent him stumbling a step back, chromed limbs clinking against the metal floor panels.

But the moment passed and as the edge wore off he saw the container continue to slam. Suddenly remembering the guards from before, he advanced back up to the glass and laid a hand on it, cool metal resting against the glass.

"Hey, hey," he said, wincing through the pain of talking. Ever since he'd been put back together his voice was one thing that never really came back. He'd been rebuilt to fight, either to the death or until someone pitied him enough to free him.

"It's alright, please..." he said, pleading quietly, as raising his voice too high caused stabs of pain. He did his best to try not to look threatening, trying his best to find her face with his sharp green eyes. And now that he'd come closer, she'd be able to see that he was just a young man, barely an adult but with extensive cybernetic reconstruction on the right side of his face. The brow, temple, and lower jaw had the most obvious chrome, but his right eye was also framed with a studded outline that helped shield that eye.

His eyes held the same fear as hers.

Because he'd heard of how the Anklehackers operated, a nasty cartel run by the nastiest little creatures in this arm of the galaxy. If they caught him, he'd die fighting for sure. At least his newest owner made promises, whether she'd keep or not was yet to be seen.

He laid another hand on the bottom of the cylinder, trying to steady it so it didn't slam about as loudly.

"You don't... Need to be scared."

[DragonSong]

She stared at him, chest rising and falling rapidly while the gills along her ribs fluttered as she panted. The blue-green markings that covered her body flared once, then began to dim--she was grateful for it, as she had no conscious control over her bioluminescence.

Though the stranger spoke softly, his voice carried easily to her through the glass, amplified in a strange, echoing sort of way by the water. She winced and flicked her finned ears back against her skull: no one had spoken to her in a long time, and she was unused to the volume of one so close.

Her eyes flickered over him, equal parts suspicious, curious, and terrified. But she stopped banging on the glass, allowing herself to drift back down through the water so her tail curled against the bottom the tank and she rested on the finned coil of scales. She'd never seen anything like him before...

Carefully, as though afraid he could somehow hurt her through the four inches of glass, she raised her own hand to press against the side of the tank, lining her fingers up with his on the other side of the glass. The webbing between her fingers stretched thin, nearly translucent. She tilted her head at him, strange, floating hair twining around her face as though it had a life of its own.

Words. She understood them, could understand most, but she had never...

The creature's throat convulsed as she clearly tried to speak, lips parted to reveal a flash of sharp, serrated teeth. For several moments, nothing happened. No sound. She closed her eyes as though in pain, then clenched her jaw and tried again.

Her throat bobbed and, slowly, she forced out a soft, surprisingly raspy, "Don't...need to...be...scared..."

[Daglobster]

"That's right," he whispered, and he dared to let a rare smile up to the surface as he splayed his fingers just a little wider to match hers. He studied the webbing, followed the line of her arm back to her face, and his eyes widened as he met them through the glass. He hadn't got a very close look at her before but now that she'd slowed, she... she was enchanting.

He could see that the volume of his voice affected her, so he made an effort not to speak too closely to the glass, even pausing to settle more comfortably on one knee. Mechanized joints clicked into place and he leaned his shoulder against the glass to rest against it.

"Sorry, just tired. Cleared a bracket," he said, and managed to widen his smile as he lifted a closed hand to peer at the dents and fresh, rusty stains on his knuckles. Chrome Warrior was a name that actually meant something to him. It was the closest thing he'd ever had to a reputation before the accident, and even though it'd landed him in a reconstruction scheme, well...

"I'm Torien, what's... your name?"

[DragonSong]

The creature stared at him for a long moment, studying. Then she tried to emulate his smile—lips closed, as she had learned quickly that her teeth tended to scare people, and when they were scared they lashed out.

Large, liquid black eyes moved over his form as he sank onto one knee, and she even allowed herself to drift closer to the glass, one hand still pressed against it. She tilted her head when he said “cleared a bracket”, confusion plain on her face despite the inhumanity of it. Now that she’d calmed down a bit, the gills along her ribs began to flutter in a rippling, steady rhythm, revealing flashes of pinkish red flesh beneath the green-scaled skin.

“Tor...orr...ee...in .” Her voice was still low and rasping, and it was clear from her wince that it was painful to speak—either because she’d gone so long without doing so, or because her throat just wasn’t built for it in the same way. Still, she forged on.

Shaking her head at him, she offered another small smile and laid a webbed hand in the center of her chest. “No...name...”

[Daglobster]

"No name?" he echoed, and his eyes fell a bit to hear that. He shifted a bit to better face this mysterious creature, studying her as she floated a little closer. The movement of her gills caught his eye and his eyes glanced over shapes that were familiar at a base level, but...

His eyes kept going downward, following the movement of her tail. He wasn't afraid of her, per se, but... something about her struck him as unnatural.

He put two fingers against his throat and tried to comfort her with a smile.

"Me too. Hurts if I talk too loud," he offered, and he broke his eyes away from her to look around the base of her tank. No name or anything, just a number.

"82641," he added, and he traced one of the stenciled letters.

"It's not a name, but... Six-Four has a good sound to it," he said, looking back up to her.

[DragonSong]

She smiled again for that--not necessarily his shortening of her designated call number, but for the strange spark of kinship that bloomed in her chest when he touched his throat and murmured, "Me too."

She'd never heard that from someone before.

A faint glow pulsed through the markings along her body and she tilted her head the other way, hair swirling through the water around her. "Six...Four," she repeated slowly. Her voice held...some sort of accent, but it was impossible to place. Though still soft, her tone sort of trilled on the "r"s, hissed on "s"s, and lilted its way through the vowels in between, so that "Six-Four" came out sounded a bit more like "See-xa-Fohr".

Again, the markings down her tail glowed blue. She glanced down at herself in a panic and suddenly backpedaled, trying to curl in on herself to cover the light. The light brought attention, and thus far that had never meant anything good.

[Daglobster]

"Hey, hey... it's okay. It's just us here, so you don't have to worry," he continued, and he stood to his feet so he could grip the tarp covering most of the top half of her tank and pull it off. It was like a cross between some kind of medical pod and an aquarium, he'd never seen anything quite like it.

He beckoned up towards himself.

"Seexa doesn't sound too bad either," he offered. He laid both his hands on the glass.

"How long have you been in this tank?"

[DragonSong]

[Omg I'm crying this is so good and soft]


82641...Seexa...til ted her head back to stare up at him with wide eyes. It took her a few moments to seemingly gather her courage, but when she had she carefully unfolded herself from the bottom of the tank and gave a deft flick of her tail to rise through the water so they were once more at eye level with one another.

She laid her hands on the other side of the glass, a mirror to his.

She glanced down at herself, then around at the tank, then back to him. She shrugged, the gesture surprisingly blithe and human. "Always," she murmured, devoid of any real inflection. "Always a tank. Here...the tank...in this place..." She tilted her head back and forth. "Hard to...say? Weeks. Months." She shrugged again.

[Daglobster]

[ X~X it makes my chest hurt]
She came up to the glass and he unabashedly used the opportunity to better get a look at her. He was raised in Libra, hadn’t really seen any sea creatures, let alone a creature like her. He couldn’t help but smile properly now, utterly captivated by the sight of her. It’d give her a glimpse of his teeth, which had been replaced with sharper, polished metal replacements more suited to life in an arena where the combatants often struck with hydraulic force. His expression sobered a little when she’d told him that this tank had been her life, that she’d never seen anything outside of it. A life as a display object, kept in a tank and knowing nothing else.

“Me too,” he finally said again, whispered tone overflowing with sympathy.

“They lied to me. Said they’d fix me, but made me into... this,” he said, and he drew a hand away from the tank so he could show her his arm, and motion down to himself. Then, he clenched his fist, and showed her his reverse-spurs, as well as the two-foot blade that was mounted in that same arm’s wrist. He relaxed, and with a thought it all slid and whirred back into place.

Then, he returned to the glass, putting both hands back onto it. She seemed to really take to that gesture so why not?

“I—“

Some chattering in goblinish syllables was heard through the door, and it sounded like there was people coming up to the door. Torien looked back towards the entrance of the dark storage room, and then back to his new friend with a terrified look on his face.

“Hide,” was the only thing he said, and he made to pick up the tarp to cover her tank again, but the door was already opening. Haphazardly, he threw the tarp over her tank and slinked backwards to hide in the shadows amongst the piles of stuff.

Two Anklehacker gangsters entered the room, both were the shorter variety of goblin but they brandished firearms in the hands and swords on their belts.

“An’ why we’s gotta go lookin in dis heap? Door was locked when we gots here,” One of them growled. The other one cuffed him on the back of the head.

“Then you’s can be the one ta tell Trenk we din’t look in all the hidey spots. Ya want that?”

[DragonSong]

The creature skittered back from the blades he revealed instinctively, eyes going even wider as she just stared at the gleaming metal. She overcame the moment of panic quickly though and cautiously edged forward again, once more mirroring the placement of his hands against the glass.

"I'm...sorry," she whispered, black eyes surprisingly soft and sympathetic for so inhuman a feature. Though she had never left her tank, she had quite a few ideas of who and what the people who shared the galaxy were from all those screens back in the before-place, and she knew that Torien was...changed. Whatever had been done to him, she had a sickening sense of certainty that it must have been painful.

But before either of them could say anything else their attention was drawn sharply toward the door. Seexa--a name, was that a name? She liked it--backpedaled again quickly, already starting to pant as her markings lit up in her sudden panic.

Then Torien had thrown the tarp back over the tank, told her to hide. Hide where? With no better ideas, she propelled herself toward the top of the tank and tried to curl herself against the lid as best she could, long tail coiled and drawn up as tight as she could manage.

But...where was Torien? She couldn't see anything, and she knew the light she emitted could be seen from the revealed base of the tank--she desperately hoped he was hidden from it.

[Daglobster]

The best Torien could do was find somewhere nearby but out of the light. He ducked behind some rubbish and drew the ends of a tarp over himself, hoping he’d just sort of blend in.

“Trenk ain’t shit,” spat the other goblin, leaning his slugthrower on one shoulder while he rubbed the back of his head. “Poor-gob’s Skitzo, s’who he is,” he growled. They walked into the room, beady little eyes peering about. Goblins weren’t the brightest, or bravest, or even the quickest, but their senses missed very little.

Their long, elf-like ears perked up just a smidge, noses taking in the smells of the room. The first goblin nodded at the other’s statement.

“That he is. Loadsa tragic, that was. Never seen da boss look—oy, waitaminute!” Suddenly, the first goblin stopped the other one, and pointed deeper into the room, towards the gently lit tank.

“Someone left somefin on.”

Both goblins glanced at each other, and the second one smiled and cocked his gun, pulling the grip back to rack a fresh shell. They parted from each other, and while the second one went out amongst the various things in the room, the other approached the tank. He didn’t bother looking up immediately, instead searching the base of the tank for a way to turn the lights off, for goblins were more comfortable in the dark.

Unsatisfied that he couldn’t find any buttons, he growled, and gave the bottom of the tank’s glass a hearty kick in his frustration. “Stupid glittertech gubbin!” He snarled.

[DragonSong]

Seexa held her breath--or, sort of. Her upper respiratory system paused while her gills moved in a slower ripple against her sides, only feeding trace amounts of oxygen to her body directly through her bloodstream.

Of course, she had no conscious knowledge of what she was doing. She only knew it was one of the few ways she could exercise any control of her bioluminescence; gradually, the bluish glow slowly began to fade.

Not fast enough.

The goblin kicked the bottom of the tank and she jerked closer to the lid in instinctive, blind panic. Her back thunked against the metal and she winced, stilling quickly. Her markings glowed all the brighter at the sudden motion and she slammed her hands against the lid, drawing her tail up even closer, though she knew it was useless.

Trapped. She was always trapped.

[Daglobster]

The bump from inside and the sudden flare of light sent the goblin skittering backwards a few steps, and he drew his sidearm and aimed it vaguely at the tank, letting out a few snarled curses as his little heart raced in his chest, dagger-like teeth bared and eyes wide.

Torien, who’d been about to move, only ducked lower as the other goblin suddenly turned, ears perked up, and he simply frowned at his fellow criminal.

“What’d ya muck about with now?” He said, and then hopped and clambered over some things to join his compatriot.

“Dere’s something big in dis tank!” The other whispered, and the second shook his head, and walked up and pulled the tarp off with a rather dry look on his face. Both goblins jumped at the sight of her, but the one who’d been initially scared finally found his nerve.

“What is that?” He said, prodding the tank’s glass with the barrel of his slugthrower, and the other shrugged. both goblins just kind of stared up at her like children in a zoo. It only took them a few moments to realize she was stuck in there, and the fear quickly faded. And when goblins weren’t afraid of something, there were only a few other emotions that could replace it.

The one with the sidearm smiled rather lecherously, and the other gave him an odd look.

“What’s with the grin?” He said, and raised a hand to jostle his compatriot, only to get the hand swatted away.

“S’kinda pretty, innit?” he murmured, pointing up at her, and the other groaned.

“It’s a fish, you horny little git. ‘Sides, the only way you’re gettin’ in that tank is by breakin’ that thick skull a’ yours.”

“Ah yeah? This’ll do it,” the other said, brandishing his sidearm and pulling the hammer back. The other was quiet for a few moments, looked back up at Seexa and studied her head to tail, and then looked back down to his friend, who quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Well, it beats lookin’ for a deadly cyborg,” he finally conceded, and then shoved his larger-calibre slugthrower into his friend’s hands. “Use dis instead.”

The goblin chattered excitedly, and he aimed the slugthrower at the tank. His grubby little finger almost squeezed down on the trigger but a shadow rose from the darkness behind him. Torien lunged in from the darkness and used that heavy wrench he’d found before to club the little green menace upside the head. He fell to the side, aim going wide as the slugthrower fired right up into the cieling.

[DragonSong]

Seexa panicked.

The moment the tarp was pulled away she threw herself back against the far wall of the tank, wide eyed and panting as she stared back at the diminutive creatures peering at her through the glass. She could understand them, mostly, but she was still confused as to what exactly they were talking about, why one said something about getting into the tank—

At least until the gun was exchanged. Then she realized all too quickly what they were trying to do.

A sharp, rasping sort of cry echoed through the water as she threw herself against the lid of the tank again, tail churning frantically in the water beneath her. She was convinced the glass was about to shatter and would send her sprawling, helpless, across the floor. A literal fish out of water.

The whole tank shook with the force with which she threw herself against the sides.

But then—it didn’t happen. Torien was there, standing over an unconscious goblin, and the gunshot echoed painfully loud around the room as the slug hit the ceiling. Seexa winced and cried out again, though this time it was fear for the cyborg as much as herself. She pressed both hands to the side of the tank, looking out at Torien with wide eyes, shaking her head desperately.

But there was nothing she could do, except watch through the glass.

[Daglobster]

The gunshot was already much too loud, and Torien needed to make this quick. The remaining goblin drew a large knife and barreled towards him, even as the other sort of squirmed and turned about on the ground, not quite unconscious but not all there either.

The little greenskin lept up and Torien raised an arm between the two of them, managing to grab the goblin by the shirt but not before the creature gouged him in the shoulder, knife piercing through his flesh until it hit the metal underneath and bent, getting stuck inside him.

Torien whipped his head forwards to headbutt the goblin and the loud metallic thud rang out through the room. The goblin spat some of his teeth back at Torien and he finally managed to tear the thing away from himself. It made to scramble to the side and reach for its gun, but he managed to catch it by the nape of its armor and he clubbed it on the head as well. It went down, and he stood over it, breathing, and dropped the wrench.

Shit. Shit shit shit. Somebody heard that gunshot, there was no way it went unnoticed.

“They’re gonna come for me,” he said, leaning the shoulder with no knife in it against the tank to look at her.

“I gotta... we...”

He started to look around. The room wasn’t so massive, and he could see that it connected to other areas. Including... a door to a loading hangar!

He put both his hands on the glass, once more speaking to her.

“I gotta get out of here, but... hold on, I’ll be back,” he said, and he started off towards the door.

“I’ll be right back, I promise!”

[DragonSong]

The creature in the tank shrieked again, though this time she managed to clap her hands over her mouth to partially stifle the noise as she skittered back, then began frantically dashing from one side of the relatively small space to the other, pounding uselessly on the glass.

She just wanted to help!

And then it was over. Both goblins on the ground, Torien leaning heavily against the tank--he was hurt, badly. She could smell blood.

Her lips parted in another cry, though this one was nearly soundless as she pressed close to the glass and almost seemed to be trying to reach for him, useless as the gesture was. "N-no..."

He was already moving. Clenching her eyes shut, Seexa raised her voice as loud as she could and shouted through the pain in her throat, "Don't...come back! Run!"

It didn't matter how badly she wished he could stay; more than that, she wished that the one person who had shown her even a shred of kindness since...since as long as she could remember would just be safe.