Authors note:
mapic gets punched by spoke for a couple hundred words
i completely fucking speedran this shit. im running off minimum sleep and maximum stress i just needed to vomit it into the world im sorry
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Everyone had been critting Spoke out earlier. It was fine, they could do anything. He couldn't die, and he wouldn't kill them. Not yet.
That's what Mapic had thought, when he dropped the floor from Spoke's feet, he thought it was fine. He wouldn't die, he wouldn't kill them. He would shatter their totems with a flick, leave their armor at the point of breaking, but it was all just a show of power.
If Spoke wanted any of them dead, they wouldn't of even made it to the nether.
That's what he thought.
He feels the moment the fist collides against his armor. It hits him in the back. Maybe something like him and Ro would do, just for fun. Because it didn't matter, it didn't hurt. It certainly didn't kill.
Yet in that moment, he feels himself tear apart, ripped at the seams like a stuffed doll. Fabric and fluff exploding everywhere. He feels himself collapse, from the inside out.
Every sensation hits at once, he feels as though every part of his body is shoving itself together. He feels as though their tearing away as his skin, each part separate, and equally desperate for escape.
He feels something grab his soul, his own being. Something that almost feels like getting banned. He would've thought he was, if not for something pulling him back down, keeping him there.
His hearts. One snaps, and another takes its place.
Mapic finds himself back at spawn. And before he even takes a step, he knows this death is different. This death is wrong.
The world itself is trying to repair him, to reverse the damage caused by something so unreal, something so defying of nature, of logic and its rules. Of life itself. It's trying to fix him, to fix him in the way they know how.
To fix him from the damage of something they don't know.
The world thinks something is wrong. The people know something is wrong. Neither of them know how to fix it, how to go forward knowing all they know. A fraction of the full picture. The truth hidden in each lie.
The death wasn't out of malice. If it was, he would've died in Detroit. If it was, Planet, Jaron, and Bacon, all with their low amount of hearts. Would be gone in the time it takes to blink.
It was an accident. An earth-shattering, logic-breaking death. It wasn't something that was meant to happen. He was meant to be sewn back together.
Like a toy, a toy that had been played with too aggressively. One with an imperfection, one that needed to be repaired.
That was all they were anymore. They were toys, the gods using them as nothing more than puppets. Puppets to dance around, and perform, and be repaired whenever a show got the stitches loose.
Something in his heart, something is different. It feels as though a clawed finger reached out to grab it. To keep it there, to make sure it doesn't escape.
It looms, it's not there to keep it safe forever. To preserve the heart.
Its there so it can be the one to pierce through it. To be the one to kill it. So nobody else gets to play with their toys. So they don't have to share with others.
