Chapter Text
When Ranboo arrived at the city clearing, somebody else was already fiddling with the supply crate. The person was hunched over and focused, his back towards Ranboo, guard foolishly down.
Ranboo glanced around, making sure there was no threats in sight before lifting his hands up in front of him. He was probably a good fifty yards away from the guy, so Ranboo closed one eye to get a straight line of sight on the other, and clapped his hands together, squishing the guy between his palms from Ranboo's perspective.
The guy — clearly a weakling — let out a yelp of pain and surprise, hunching down further and clasping his arms around his torso in a pointless attempt at shielding himself, miserably unaware that his fate had already been sealed.
With one eye still closed, Ranboo lifted his finger right next to the guy who was already scrambling to his feet and looking around to figure out the cause of the invisible attack, and flicked it, watching with satisfaction as the weakling was knocked a good yard or two backwards. Just for good measure — and his own amusement — he swiped his palm to the side, sending the guy rolling.
Ranboo took one more look around the clearing before he sprinted towards the supply crate. He kept an eye on the weakling as well, but judging from the small groans and jerky, pained movements, he would not be a threat.
The crate was damaged on the corners, and the paint that read “THE FLOCK WILL SAVE YOU” had flaked off almost completely. It had been locked with some sort of a combination lock. On the ground was a sharp knife, a flashlight and a couple of strong pieces of metal wire that the guy had been using to try and bust the lock open.
Pathetic, Ranboo huffed. Once again, he closed his other eye, this time focusing on the lock. He brought up his hand and made a circle with his fingers, big enough that he could see the lock through the gap. Slowly he started to close the circle, applying more and more pressure.
Using his powers on inanimate objects was always a lot tougher than on people, animals or even plants, so he made another circle with his other hand and squeezed even harder. It did not require much physical effort, per se, but the mental effort was quite taxing. Just as he felt like he would have to blink and break the pressure, the lock broke into several mangled pieces.
“S-stop!” A weak voice called from behind him. “W-what the fuck are you… are you doing?”
Ranboo looked back to see the weakling still on the ground, propped up on his elbow, staring at Ranboo. His face was crunched up in pain and shock. Even though they were closer to each other than during the first attack, there was still enough distance between them that Ranboo could use his powers quite well. With a small outstretching of his hand he pushed the guy flat on his back again, knocking the wind out of him.
“If I were you, I’d shut up and lay perfectly still for a minute. Unless you wanna die, of course,” Ranboo threatened. A part of him wanted the other to keep being annoying just so he could follow up with the threat. Well, he’ll probably follow up regardless of what the weakling does. It had been a while since he had last played with someone so defenseless, and it would be nice to practice some of his attacks and moves again.
The guy groaned and rolled to his side. “Fine! F-fine, but y-you’re gonna—” The rest of his sentence was lost as Ranboo gave him another flick of his finger. Ranboo rolled his eyes, turning back to the crate. Weaklings rarely had anything worthwhile to offer to anyone, be it material or information, but this one seemed particularly useless.
At least he will make for a good punching bag.
Ranboo opened the crate. There was a small little click, followed by a low, aggressive hiss, and soon his vision was filled with fog.
It’s a gas trap it’s a gas trap it’s a gas trap shit shit shit—
His heart started racing in his chest, mind panicking. Obviously he had his mask on, but it’s not a fucking gas mask! He must have already inhaled some of the gas, but he still clapped a hand over his masked mouth and pinched his nose shut. He shot up, dizziness hitting him immediately, and managed to take a couple of hurried steps away from the crate before collapsing to the ground.
His lungs burned and muscles spasmed, and he had half a mind to be shocked at how fast the poison seemed to affect him. It hurt like hell, but he forced his eyes open to see if there was anything he could use to save himself. The only thing he saw was the weakling running away with a slight limp.
Useless fucking scum, he thought instinctively before he passed out.
-))()((----))()((-
He woke up to a weird feeling of moving — or rather being moved — and his head hurting. There was something scraping his back, tearing at his clothes, and little bumps kept bumping into the back of his skull. Opening his eyes he saw the dark blue morning sky, the same as before, and abandoned buildings moving slowly around him.
He craned his neck and saw the weakling, now with a hefty gas mask on his face, dragging Ranboo along the street by his wrist. A wave of disgust and fright shot through him at the thought of being in such a vulnerable position near a fucking weakling, so he closed his eye and brought his free palm up near his face, aiming the impact of his power on the other’s head since they were too close for him to do a full-body attack.
The guy stumbled and dropped Ranboo’s hand. Ranboo rolled to his side and sat up, noticing they were already a block away from the still-leaking crate. Luckily the wind was on their side.
“Stop that!” the guy yelled. He had turned around, hand on his head where the impact had hit him, his eyes above the mask both furious and scared. “I’m saving your life, you fucking prick!”
Ranboo brought up his hand, this time lower, and clearly the weakling had some sort of a capacity to learn because his eyes widened in fear and he tried to back away from the attack right before his feet were swept from underneath him.
Black and white dots danced at the edge of Ranboo’s vision and his breathing was ragged and painful, but he also saw the weakling bring out a knife from his back pocket. Grabbing the knife in the Dimension would take way too much effort in this situation, so instead he aimed at the guy’s hand and sure enough, the force knocked the item several feet away.
“P-please don’t, don’t kill me, I mean no harm,” the weakling started rambling, hands up in surrender, and good, he sounded scared, but he could also be bluffing. Panicked, cornered weaklings that had finally realized how incredibly underpowered they were tended to be unpredictable, desperately trying any strategies that might still save their lives, and even thought they lived up to their name in physical and dimensional strength, some of them managed to make it up with creativity, weapons, or allies.
Ranboo still felt sick to his stomach from the poisonous gas, but he had to eliminate the weakling before he could catch his breath in peace. He did not want to play around anymore, and he was not as confident in his close combat abilities relying only on his powers, so he got up and headed for the knife.
Stabbing him like a common thief, he thought annoyed. The guy, on the other hand, had clearly understood the situation, and was now begging for his life with small sniffles in between every few words while trying to crawl away.
“Stay put,” Ranboo commanded, frowning at how unstable his voice was. “Or I’ll make it hurt.” He sent a pressure wave down on the other, hard enough to smack the weakling’s head on the pavement, cracking the gas mask.
He bent down to grab the knife, but the movement caused a strong jolt of pain to flare up in his lungs. He coughed, feeling all the muscles usually involved in breathing cramp up, and he could only get small little gasps of air in between the coughs.
His head swam painfully, his legs gave out and he could not breathe, it felt like the gas was once again gripping him tight, filling his windpipe and suffocating him from the inside out even though he was now far away from the trapped crate. He could not help but cough and curl up on the ground, wondering semiconsciously if Dream or any of the protégés would know what to do in the situation, how to save themselves.
There was static, his frantic pulse and high-pitched tinnitus filling his ears, but after what felt like an eternity of him just clutching at his chest and struggling to breathe, the weakling finally reminded him of his existence with a hesitant voice.
“It’s… It’s the aftereffects of the… of the gas.”
Thanks a lot for this valuable fucking information, Ranboo wanted to snap back, but the thudding in his ears got louder and his coughs got weaker. He would either pass out or pass away, that much was sure, and he tried desperately to think whether or not he would be able to tell which one it would be beforehand. Would it feel the same either way, or would he know if he were to die?
“I h-have the medicine, the antidote,” the weakling spoke again from somewhere. Ranboo was not completely sure if he was actually hearing him or if it was just a hallucination. “But… but if you want it, you’ll have to let me t-tie up your hands, and p-promise not to use… not to use your powers.”
From the weakling’s perspective the demand was nothing but reasonable, but rage and offence filled Ranboo’s foggy mind. Not use his powers?! He opened his eyes to try and find the weakling just to give him one last lesson of who he was dealing with, but all he could see were weird geometrical shapes in a wild assortment of colors, brain giving up on processing the visuals due to lack of oxygen. He scrunched his eyes back closed, fingers clasping tight around his arms as the weak, pathetic coughs left his body.
As a last show of pride and defiance he shook his head. He would never bow down to the will of a weakling.
“Fucking…” the other muttered, exasperated. “You realize you’re gonna die, right?”
I don’t care, Ranboo answered to himself. Maybe it was true, maybe not, he was too far gone to really know.
You either die and the weakling lives, or you swallow your pride, take his medicine, and kill him slowly and painfully afterwards, a voice whispered to him, and honestly, even though the second option was not 100% guaranteed, the first one had no chance of any sort of justice.
Justice, power, and order. Control over your own universe, ability to claim anything you could ever need or want. They were empty words and corrupted guarantees, but Ranboo had known that before signing up at the Heart of Apocalypse. The deal had still been worth taking, he had managed to cheat the most powerful system of dimensional force to fulfill his old promise to himself.
I will never again rely on anybody else.
And now I am dying on the streets like a rat to poison. The thought was hollow and desperate to stay together, unconsciousness once again threatening his mind. Perhaps there were worse ways to die than a pathetic heap in front of a weakling, but Ranboo could not for the life of him come up with one.
Something grabbed his hair and it hurt. Blindly he flung his arm out, trying to swipe the offender away, but he was not sure if he was hitting anything or not. His whole chest felt like a bonfire. The hand yanked his head backwards, his scalp burning, and something cold and plasticky was placed in his mouth.
Fog, this time real and bitter tasting, filled his mouth and traveled down to his lungs with the small gasps that his body still tried to keep itself going with. He tried coughing the bad taste away but a new burst of it invaded his senses before the object was finally taken away.
Is this what death tastes like? he wondered briefly, mind hazy. The hand let go of the death grip but stayed in his hair, a gentle pressure against the top of his head.
“Please don’t make me regret this,” a voice mumbled somewhere above him. The fingers in his hair moved slowly, absentmindedly, and it actually felt… nice. It was nothing much, just a thumb moving half an inch back and forth along his scalp, but suddenly that was all Ranboo could focus on.
Back and forth, back and forth. The bonfire in his chest had died out and he noticed he was breathing, taking small little gasps to the rhythm of the finger. He tried to lengthen it out, counting one, two when inhaling, and again one, two when exhaling. It still hurt his throat and lungs, but he was breathing.
One, two. One, two. One, two, three.
The hand disappeared from his head, and soon he felt his hands being grabbed. A part of him wanted to let go and just lay there, blissed out from the oxygen finally reaching the cells in his body, but soon the grip started to hurt and he opened his eyes again.
The weakling was crouched down in front of him with a long piece of cargo strap in his hands, wrapping it around Ranboo’s wrists.
Oh, absolutely not!
He stayed still and spared a second to take a mental feel for his body, making sure his muscles would execute whatever movement he would try to do in order to escape.
The weakling noticed he had opened his eyes and sped up his work, hands shaking. “I saved you, again, so… so don’t try anything!” he said, trying to sound confident. “Y-you’ll get more of those lung spasms, maybe even four or five times, a-and... And I’ll give you the medicine, all of it, if you just… if you just let me go. Alive. O-okay?”
For once, the weakling had said something worth listening to. I’ll get more of these… spasms. And he has more medicine. That was all Ranboo needed to know, really.
With one sudden motion he tried to yank his hands free and roll away, but the other’s grip was tighter than he anticipated, so the guy ended up just stumbling closer. The guy started shouting, panicked, “Stop, I’ll help you, please don’t—” but Ranboo paid no mind, swinging his leg in an arch up and close to his body, in between himself and the weakling, and with a good old-fashioned kick he got some distance between the two of them.
Ranboo sat up, slightly dizzy, and started to detangle his hands free while staring at the other with as much fury as he could, daring him to move. The other had his hands raised up in surrender once again, eyes wide and tired. Ranboo noticed that the gas mask, which had been abandoned on the ground when Ranboo was hacking his lungs out, had left red marks along his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose.
“How fucking dumb are you?” Ranboo said, speaking his mind without really meaning to.
“Apparently very,” the guy answered quietly. “I just… I just don’t like watching people die if… if I can help it.”
Ranboo scoffed. Unbelievable. He had no idea how such a naïve, stupid little weakling had managed to survive this long in Apocalypse.
Then again, that stupid, naïve weakling just saved your life twice, a voice snickered. Ranboo frowned, furious.
There was a moment of silence as Ranboo caught his breath and finally managed to get the cargo strap unwrapped. The weakling just sat on the ground, opening his mouth a couple of times but closing it again, unsure if speaking would provoke Ranboo to attack again.
“Give me the medicine and I’ll make it quick and somewhat painless,” Ranboo said with a hoarse throat. He was pretty sure he had already threatened the guy’s life before, but he hoped the repetition didn’t lessen the impact.
The guy’s shoulders slumped, and he seemed to debate between putting up a fight or begging for his life. He ended up just repeating what he said before as well. “I’ll give you all of it if you let me go alive.”
Ranboo laughed, even though it sounded more hollow than joyous. He shut one eye, reached out his hand forward and closed it in front of the other’s throat, squeezing his fingers.
“Or I’ll just kill you and take it all, how about that,” he said, voice wobbly but full of malice.
The weakling gasped, airways completely blocked, hands flying up to his throat to try and get rid of the restriction but there was nothing there to grab.
Pathetic, Ranboo thought again, absolutely pathetic.
“Please please please…” the weakling mouthed, barely any actual noise coming out. Tears were falling down his face, and while the other hand kept clawing at his own throat, the other one started searching for his pockets. For a moment Ranboo thought he had a third knife hidden there, but soon a small white container was thrown on the ground between them.
The medicine.
Without breaking his dimensional hold of the other, Ranboo reached for the inhalator. Once it was secured in his pocket he stood up, frowning at the guy who had now closed his eyes and let his hands rest tightly around his shoulders, mouth still moving in wordless sentences.
It did not matter that the guy had saved him two times. Or maybe even three, considering that he told Ranboo he would still need the medicine and then gave him the medicine. There was a huge yearning in Ranboo’s mind to crush his fingers together, to increase the pressure on the other until blood would pour out of his mouth and his arms would fall limply to his sides. The weakling was stupid and naïve, scum worth less than the mud on his boots, and a quick death would be better than what he deserved.
No-one would get to know that a weakling had saved Ranboo’s life.
But as he flexed his fingers, a vague memory passed through his mind.
Fingers in his hair moved slowly, absentmindedly, a thumb moving half an inch back and forth along his scalp, back and forth, one, two, three.
Something ugly screeched at the back of his mind, fear and uncertainty ran along his spine, and he let go, let the weakling fall to the ground, and ran away.