shatterverse | (no subject)

Entry tags:

rachel (au),
tobias

(no subject)

Tobias and Rachel are using Lucy's morph again for the speed on a little trip down to Texas. Tobias is getting a feel for the dragon body. It's rather interesting, really. Power and grace and the ever-present hunger...

He and Rachel stoop simultaneously toward a deserted town. He's morphing almost as soon as he hits the ground.

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She doesn't bother responding - of course she'll call.

If she needs him. That's important.

The hole expands pretty quickly and soon enough, the mole is calm with its entire body covered and surrounded by earth. But mole mind aside, Rachel hates the claustrophobia or digging and can already feel it settling in her mind. But if she just keeps digging, keeps moving, it'll be fine. They have a job to do.

Do the job. Just do the job.

And for god's sake, don't crap out after twenty minutes like the first time.

Tobias doesn't say anything else, but he knows what it's like for her, at least a bit. He allows his mind to press slightly against hers. Not words, but a sort of comforting murmur. Just to remind her that he's there if she needs him.

Even if it's not for fighting.

As if she'd admit to claustrophobia in the first place.

Once settled, she tries to dig straight across, but her bottom-heavy mole body works as a leveler in her mind - she can tell she's not quite straight.

<I'm still going slightly downhill. The tunnel's going to come out looking v-shaped if we do the whole thing.>

If he had lips he'd smile. No one soldiers on as well as Rachel does.

Even while complaining about it. Though she does fall silent shortly after, counting down minutes (seconds). She's determined to get through at least one hour of this before making Tobias continue.

All the same, twenty minutes in, she has to check.

<Farther than that,> Tobias says with a sort of easy confidence in his voice. It's Rachel, she'll do fine.

<I'm just estimating, but I think about twice that much longer and you'll be inside where the walls used to be.>

<Great.>

If she sounds less than enthusiastic...

All the same, she makes it through the next hour with little trouble. She doesn't want to be just inside the walls, she wants to be inside, somewhere near where the heart had been. And as she nears it, she start thinking.

Mostly because thinking helps her ignore how many tasty worms and beetles are crawling along there with her, interested in the rotting flesh above.

<...so I have a question for the class.>

<I'm listening,> he answers easily.

<Once I dig my way out of the dirt, how am I getting out of the...>

Skin.

Flesh.

Rotting corpses.

<...rest of it?>

She has a feeling the answer is 'suck it up, morph out, and pick your way through' but she's hoping Tobias comes up with an alternative.

<You come back out,> he answers. Then he goes in.

<...what, back to you? The point was to get in, Tobias.>

<I'll go in.> She doesn't need to be the one to go in. Not that he's dumb enough to say it.

No, she doesn't. But while Rachel would have been fine with splitting up the work, splitting up this actual part of it...

<How much time do I have left?>

He can't possibly be surprised by her response.

<Half an hour 'til you've hit your limit,> he answers. <Don't push it.>

He shouldn't have added that last part.

Nope.

Blind and beady mole eyes can't narrow, but Rachel's silence is prickly all the same. <I'm going in a little more,> she informs him stiffly, and keeps digging.

Tobias mentally facepalms. He does the smart thing and doesn't say anything else for the moment.

At least he's learning.

She breaks ground within the next ten minutes, and even Rachel can't push it much further than that. Not when the prospect of being stuck in morph would leave her as a mole.

<Okay,> she says, once she pokes her nose out into fresh air again beside Tobias and squirms her fat little body out of the hole. <I'll take Lucy's morph and watch. Yell if you need anything.>

He morphs down to mole and moves through her tunnel quickly. She's pushed far, and it only takes another ten minutes to get into the building. He pushes through and morphs hawk before looking around. <This is disgusting,> he tells Rachel helpfully.

Rachel agrees, up in the air as a dragon, circling. She's up as high as she can go without compromising her vision and...

Well, she's hungry. It's a good thing she's already used to nightmares.

<See anything?>

He does so, arching up his neck up and reaching to bite off a structurally supporting section, opening up the roof.

<Are you su->

When the roof starts to open up below her, Rachel chuckles a little in their heads, vaguely approving. No one ever said she didn't appreciate straightforwardness.

Which is why she dives down to help, wings beating to keep her aloft while her claws dig into the hole Tobias made.

<Now we can actually take a look around,> Tobias says, taking a second to swallow a piece of the building.

Does that mean her, too? Rachel's taking it as such, tearing the hole a little wider so she can wriggle in after Tobias, looking around in the dim light. She comes to the following conclusion:

<Still gross.>

But at least she's stating the obvious while looking around, putting her nose to the ground and sniffing. That heart thing, the worm, it isn't going to smell like rot and blood. And it just might be the only thing that doesn't.

<That's what did all this?> Tobias asks, eying it with disgust. Which is a hard emotion to pick out on a dragon's face.

It's pale and crumpled, a few yards across. It hadn't really looked like a heart when they'd come across it the first time, when the worm had squirmed it's way free, but the wrinkled grey mass it is now looks quite a bit like a collapsed organ.

The disgust on Rachel's dragon face is similar to Tobias'.



That alone makes it kind of special.