Amnesia

[Dawnika Snow]

Dawn’s hand covered her face, muffling her voice slightly from her palm blocking her mouth.

“Just a cut, nothing terrible.” She said cringed in pain. “You’re fucking face looks it decided a second head was necessary.”

“I… can han...dle it…” His jaw refused to budge, forcing him to move it up and down with his hand during particular moments of drawn out speech. The green sac on his head pulsed a heartbeat, pounding viciously against his cheek and eyes. The gunsmith did not flinch, nor really react, to the vibrations and pulsations of the cyst.

Dawn gave him a weird glare, “Uh, should we like...pop that thing?” She summoned her katana in her hand.

He took several steps back, lifting his hand up in the air to guard his face. “Ho... ld on! Care… ful with that!” He let out a low groan, his jaw locking in place and his throat clogging up. He was breathing faster and faster with every second that passed; the sac seemed to grow larger, gorging on the skin and muscles of his face.

“Don’t worry, I probably won’t stab your brain or anything stupid.” She said coming closer. “It’s going to suffocate you.”

“You…’re the… one blee... ding out! Don’t… worry ab… out me…” He hyperventilated, gasping for breath. He fell to his knees. The sac filled up.

Dawn approached her green skinned ally and reached out with her sword to his cyst to avoid the splash zone. “Hold still.”

He did not move. It seemed there was no arguing with her. With quick jab, the blade pierced his skin, spewing puss all over the snow. Dawnika had to look away in order to refrain from puking.

He made no sound as the sac slowly deflated. He could the air return to his lungs; the black spots that had shown up in his vision went away. After a minute or so, all the was left of the cyst was a huge flap of saggy flesh. A part of the left side of his face had been eaten up entirely, though. The lines of his skull were clearly visible, and his skin was far too stretchy to be normal; just a single tap formed a permanent dent in his cheek.

Dawn lets her sword disappear back into thin Omnilium and bends down next to Ballad. “Damn that was disgusting. Are you okay?” She asked trying to avoid the sight of the pus that puddled the ground.

He brought a gloved hand up to his face, pressing against it. It left a fine imprint as he removed it. He tugged at the flabby skin, the dead bits ripping off without much of a hassle nor any amount of pain. While he certainly didn’t appear dead, it was impossible to distinguish his formerly cyst-covered face from that of a mummified corpses.

“I’m… I’m fine… thank you…” he said. He looked up towards Dawn’s still bleeding face. “Your face… it’s still bleeding…”

“I’ve bled before, not that big of a deal.” The vigilante says standing back up slowly and looking around at the dead trolls that littered the snow. “What a waste of life. They challenged two primes with such a small group. Fools.”

Ballad didn’t even bother trying to look at the bodies. His attention was squarely on her wounds. He glanced down towards his hand that clutched his red scarf.

“Hey…” he said, moving the scarf towards Dawn, “take this. Wrap it around your wounds. It… It will hide the blood.”

The raven-haired assailant looked down at her unlikely ally - if had not been for the absence of amnesia, she may have torn his face off at first glance - and looked at the scarf he offered her. She sighed and took the scarf wrapping it around her arm where one of the worst cuts was on her body. If the cut on her face did not scale past the bridge of her nose, she would have wrapped that one. “Thanks.” There wasn’t much sincerity in that thank you, but Ballad could find something in it.

The vigilante looked down at her rifle that lay peacefully in the snow just a few meters away. The white blanket disturbed by her footsteps painted her black boots. She reached down and grabbed the rifle from the snow, dusting it off. “What do you think of it?” She asks Ballad as she slides the rifle back into it’s holster.

“The rifle?” he said, drawing himself away from one of the bullet-ridden corpses. He still could not believe that her weaponry had done all of that. “It’s very good. Damn good. If only I could’ve shot straight with it… then, well…”

He sighed. “Neither of us would be in a worse state.”

“I don’t blame you, I remember when I shot my first full-auto.” Dawn looks down at her waist at the grenades she kept ready. It wouldn’t hurt to show off, right? “Hey, “ She said pulling off one of the explosives and pulling the pin. A soft click made Ballad shutter, what was that tiny thing going to do? “Watch this.”

With a powerful chuck, she tossed the grenade at a tree not far from the two. The gnarled branches blew into bits as the explosion tore through the bark thoroughly. Wood splintered everywhere around the explosion. The tree stood, but a large, charred mark marred the trunk of the tree. It looked like a fire-breathing lizard had taken a healthy bit out of the bark.

He watched as the grenade flew through the air. As soon as it landed, though, he wished he hadn’t. A part of him knew what was going to happen before it did, but the fiery explosion still rocked him to the core. A patch of smoke billowed out of the sleeves of his coat; his eyes turned snow white. For a brief moment, all he did see was fire. Red, all-consuming flames surrounding a charred carcass of a building. Screaming, there was so much screaming. The eye within the fire glared at him, hate filling the blackness of its pupil.

And, in the blink of an eye, the world returned to normalcy.

Nothing else had happened. It was just a deformed, ash-covered trees, the fragments of the grenade that had harmed it sticking out like spikes in the snow. No one else had been harmed. No one…

He realized he was hyperventilating. He shut his mouth.

“Efficient. I needed a field test anyways.” Dawn handled her weapon rather casually compared to her companion. She smirked at the results of her new weaponry. “They’re one of my favorites.” She explains as she turns to Ballad.

With her test all said and done, Dawn folded her arms and looked up at Ballad. “What now my green-skinned friend?”

“I… I’m not quite certain…” he said after a few moment’s hesitation. He looked around, eyes settling on the corpses strewn all around them. “I didn’t think past this.”

He was quiet, as was the girl before him. It was difficult to find much purpose for one’s actions without memory of a cause present. She ran her hand through her hair awkwardly in the silence. Whatever happened next, though, she would be ready to face it until this amnesia subsided.