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sorry doesn't cut it ততততত
SHE HAD PREPARED her mind for such a drain. Though she has exerted herself before, she knew it would be nothing like the moments of terror during the lei tai. She knew it would be nothing like her three hour training sessions with Hoji. And she knew it would be nothing like days where the sun grilled her back as she shucked corn, harvested the fields, watered their crops, moved around hey bales, and fead and rounded up their cattle
She was ready for an exertion that was worse than all her past struggles together, yet even still she had underestimated the toll that brought her here.
Acid has already feasted on her muscles, its silvery teeth already sinking deep into her skin. Venom having poisoning her blood with a stone stiffness, and its scorching clutch has shattered her bones.
She was her own meal, an animal that grew and adapted from what was once a minimal sting to an inferno inside of her veins. Her lungs may have already collapsed in on themselves, and Hika believes that if she is to take on another round of the Fire Nations turrets-- Sokka was right, they were ruthless not in their ways of brutalism, but in the ways of their mercy. The breaks in between each harassing pound in which they'd send fireballs after fireballs in infinite groups only weakened Hika's knees-- it will be her last.
Now, her hands dig their heels into the dying tissue right above her knees, a grimace stained on her face as she whips her head up, the searing sound of a screaming turret plummeting towards her. The girls bangs cover her eyes, deadly as the drained color painted an exhaustion she'd never again amount to, a throb begins to thud distantly in her mind as hot air puffs in fogged breaths past her lips.
Her temple is sweating bullets, matting the bangs that she looks past to her forehead and leaking into her eyes with a sting unlike the venom that results from threatening sobs.
She looks over to her brother, and he does the same, pleading eyes that beg her to some how make this stop. And she should. She should be able to give her brother that rest, that final rest where he can sink to his knees and let his aching limbs sleep.
Hoji nears a worst fate than her, his eyes grow red at the rims, deprivation flaunting it's grasp on him as he pushes off the snow-- having previously been squatting, one fist allowing weight to rest into the ice, the other draped over his knee-- with trembling legs.
The twins had a habit of reading each others mind, of doing the exact same thing, at the exact same time. Hoji stumbles into a slight lunge, weight in his back leg as the opposite arm's palm extends out in front of him, the tips of his fingers a burning red more vivid than the fire that blazes the turrets. His other arm is balled in a fist at his side, prepared to punch forward and break the turret into a size that he could control.
It's harder on the boy, the toll of having to break his element before blocking it.
Which is why Hika has yet to assume a lunge. She hasn't the need to dissolve her weapon, she hasn't the same moral to preserve the life of a stranger as her brother has. Truly it's his weakness. It's what has paled Hoji's skin, what has wrung the energy from his solid body.
