metalogs | [Closed] Judged By the Company He Keeps

Who: Huvrye

effiomsfavorite and those close to him
What: Guess who's finally getting shot!
When: April 14-15
Where: Jason's safehouse, Huvrye's apartment
Content Warnings: Violence, gore, probably some PTSD, further CWs marked in threads as needed

Birds of a Feather (Narrative)

For all that Huvrye has been warning people against associating with the Red Hood, citing just how dangerous the gang leader can be, the consequences of his actions sure do blindside him.

Because he's been associating with the Red Hood - three times over a span of months, but two of them very visible and the third well known in crime circles - and people have noticed. Specifically the D'Amico family, who are only on Huvrye's radar under 'organized crime; do not interact.'

Which is why he's not prepared to find half a dozen of them waiting for him as he lands in an alley just outside of neutral territory, demanding he come with them and brandishing guns when he refuses.

Great. Wonderful.

The fight, such as it is, is mercifully short. There are no metas among the people the D'Amicos sent - they'd probably thought he couldn't do much more than fly, and weren't prepared to face down everything a Lasardhin homunculus is capable of bringing to combat. Two of them are down from broken spines or broken skulls, brick walls cracked and broken from where they'd died on impact. Three are torn apart, missing limbs or chunks of chest or half a head as a result of Huvrye bringing his alchemy to bear. The last has been shot with his own gun.

Huvrye stands, leaning heavily against a wall, covered in blood both his and not, with a pair of gunshot wounds in his gut for his trouble. Great. This is exactly what he needs tonight. With that much gunfire, someone's going to investigate sooner or later, which means he needs to get out of here soon. Neutral territory is close, and with it the Descendant. He can hole up in the safehouse overnight and heal for a bit. He shrugs his jacket off, wraps it tightly around his waist, around the wounds, and ties it off as best he can, and activates the magical disguise hidden under his sleeve. Wings hidden, hair and eyes and ears different, and a full foot shorter in appearance, he heads out of the alley looking like a normal human, walking quickly, pushing through the pain until he makes it to the safehouse (carefully, carefully, making sure he hadn't been followed) and slips inside.

1. Jumpscare (Closed to Dylan)

Thankfully, there'd been no one in the safehouse when Huvrye had arrived, and he'd set about taking care of himself - laying out towels in the corner, cleaning out his wounds as best he can, and applying pressure. He'll heal - it'll take a bit, but he's got enough energy that it'll happen sooner rather than later - but he's not going anywhere else tonight. After a couple of hours, the bleeding stops, and he passes out on top of the towels, fully intending to sleep the wounds off.

He's still very much asleep in the morning...lying on the floor, on bloodied towels, in bloodied clothes. Not the best impression to give anyone heading into the safehouse without context.

2. Just a Flesh Wound (Closed to Huvrye's friends)

He spends the morning recovering in the safehouse (charging his phone, apologizing yet again to Dylan, doing his best to make sure the D'Amicos don't know where he's gone to ground) before he heads home in the early afternoon. He leaves in disguise, drops it to fly back to his neighborhood, and activates another disguise to get in the front door of his apartment building. He sighs heavily when he walks in the door. He needs to clean up. He needs to get something to eat. He needs to rest - the bleeding may have stopped, but it'll still be a bit before his wounds are fully healed. And he needs to talk to quite a few people - he hadn't realized so many people had noticed he'd gone missing.

(It'd only been a day. They cared that much?)

He closes the door behind him and heads towards his room.

[I'm open to Huvrye's friends having heard from other friends about his situation/injury - if we haven't already talked about it and you think yours would know/care, let me know and we'll do a thing!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jason's frown deepens as he looks at the both of them. Nothing about the scene before him looks "fine." He can believe Huvrye will heal given his other abilities but at the moment, he's still clearly in the recovery stage.

Meanwhile, Dylan is shaky. Jason can hear it in the teenager's voice. This is the second time Dylan's had to call Jason after someone showed up in the attic bleeding. First time is terrifying enough for most people but the second time is worse and can easily trigger previous trauma. It doesn't help that Huvrye could pass as Hunter's relative too. Jason knows he'll need to talk to Dylan alone later to really check if he's okay.

"What happened?" Jason repeats as he walks over anyway with the kit, just in case. He then looks at Huvrye. "Who got you?"

Jason has seen Huvrye fight when they went after Hunter's shooters. Huvrye wouldn't get hurt as easily as most people.

Coming here had been Huvrye's attempt to avoid anyone having to deal with his injury, and yet here they are. He's going to need to find a good place to lie low in case this happens again.

(When it happens again. It may not be the D'Amicos again, but he has zero illusions he'll spend the rest of his time in Central unharmed.)

"The D'Amicos," he says in response. He doesn't necessarily want Dylan to know this, but he also doesn't think Jason is going to back down without an answer. "They think I'm working with the Red Hood, and they tried to kidnap me to flush him out. It didn't work out for them." He's probably already traumatized Dylan; he doesn't want to spell out the fact that he left six partially dismembered corpses in a nearby alley. Dylan doesn't need to hear that right now, or ever.

Dylan watches Huvrye as he explains. The D'Amicos — Dylan thinks he might have heard that name at some point before. It means something, but his head is too scrambled to try and focus on it.

Red Hood is significant, though. His eyes briefly dart to Jason, then back to Huvrye.

"Why?"

He's not entirely sure what he's asking — Why did they think you were with Red Hood? Why do they want to flush him out? Why is any of this happening?

Damnit. Evidently, the D'Amicos aren't as stupid as Jason thought. It doesn't help that Huvrye sticks out like a sore glowing red thumb.

"Who else knows about this?" Jason asks.

He knows the D'Amicos won't stop. Cassowary's known to hold long grudges too. He needs to know how bad this is before he can form a plan to get mobsters away from Huvrye. If he doesn't contain the damage soon, this could very easily spill over into getting kids like Dylan and Nico hurt.

"No one. I didn't leave any witnesses, and I left in disguise." The guilds provide holographic disguises to their members; very few people know about the magical one Huvrye obtained from Doctor Strange, and he's keeping it vague in order to keep it that way. It's still more than he wanted to say in front of Dylan - he'd wanted to keep the details under wraps and he's worried about the kid - but here they are. "You might have some upheaval nearby once they figure it out."

They're holding something back. Dylan's no stranger to being shut out of grown-up discussions. It mostly just left him uninformed and unprepared, with adults citing his safety or something dumb like that.

Normally, it frustrates and angers Dylan, but he can't seem to access those emotions right now. In fact, he's certain he doesn't want to her any more — at least not right now.

Dylan starts getting to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall as he does so. He's trembling again, but offers a confident smile.

"I'm gonna. Um. Bathroom." He nods in the intended direction, taking some slow steps toward it. Any attempts to help him over are going to be gently shrugged away.

When Dylan manages to get inside and lock the door, he sinks to his knees next to the toilet and starts retching.

Every nerve in his body is firing on all cylinders. Seems like this is the way his body wants to manifest that.

Jason is torn and nearly follows Dylan. The teenager is clearly not okay. He must be emotionally overwhelmed again, just like when Hunter got shot. But Huvrye remains hurt as well.

After a long, uncomfortable moment with Dylan audibly vomiting in the bathroom, Jason turns back to Huvrye. Dylan won't leave the attic for a while at least. Jason can check in on him soon.

"Is there anyway way to speed up the healing?" he asks.

Huvrye stays put as Dylan leaves. He caused this, and he's pretty sure his presence isn't going to help. Not when he's the second homunculus Dylan has found bleeding on this floor. Not after how he'd reacted to Dylan's attempt to help. For now, all he can do is wait for this horribly long moment to end.

"Just resting." It's not the full truth, but it's close enough; it's not like anyone here knows how to reset him anyway. "That's why I came here to hole up. I wasn't expecting to see anyone." He'd thought this was a bolt hole, not someplace Jason's crew of teenagers would come to hang out before school.

(The thought that maybe Dylan needed the safehouse is staggering. Does he still? Is that feeding into this?)

"Go take care of Dylan. I'll be okay." He doesn't know if it'll be enough to convince Jason, but it's pretty obvious that Dylan needs the help.

There's a slight moment of hesitation but Huvrye's right. It's not like Jason's a doctor and even if he was, he's not familiar with Huvrye's species. He'll just have to trust the other man that he'll be fine for now.

"All right. Let me know if you need anything though, okay? You can use this place until you're patched up," he says.

He then heads to the bathroom and gently knocks on the door.

"Dylan?"

Dylan's kneeling before the porcelain throne after his stomach upended itself. He takes a breath, trying to ignore the sour taste in his mouth and the feeling of chunks in his throat.

He hears Jason knock, and takes a shaky breath. "I'm f—"

The word is interrupted by another round of heaving.

So much for "fine." Jason patiently waits a pause from the upchucking sounds before speaking again.

"What do you need?" He asks.

My dad, he thinks — and feels a twinge of guilt when he realizes he isn't longing for the one from his own world.

Once this next bout of retching fades, he takes another breath, then calls out: "Some water. Maybe some gatorade if you have it."

It's a start at least. Jason walks over to the kitchen area's fridge and takes out a bottle of gatorade. Then he walks back to the bathroom door.

"It's here whenever you're ready," he says.

Eventually, the retching subsides, and Dylan finally feels safe coming out of the bathroom. He shakily grabs the Gatorade and takes a drink.

"Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it," Jason says. "Just want you to be okay. I know it's been a lot for you."

He still remembers Dylan breaking down in the clinic's bathroom after Hunter was shot.

[Closed] Judged By the Company He Keeps

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