rating: mature
warning: graphic depictions of violence
fandom: parkour civilization (web series)
Raw beef was a delicacy Evbo hadn't touched since that Ticket event. The chicken was easier. Worse in regards to nausea, in the parkour it required, but it had been easier nonetheless.
His neighbor, the last one he ever had while at home, he would always talk on and on about how one day, he would prove all of those Pros wrong about them, about Noobs as a whole. There should have been no surprise that he had gone for the beef.
Evbo closed his eyes. He did not want to think of him anymore.
(His neighbor, his only cell-mate left in that cruel place, had looked at him one last time. Just before he fell, his eyes enlightened with both apology and the fiery damnation below.
But Evbo had already forgiven him. He had forgiven him the moment they had met, the moment he took in the faux permanency of missteps, the moment he glanced down to the true finality of the heat that licked at their heels, because what were they meant to have, if not stumbling feet?)
(For only a second, he had thought it was a shame that the body would go to waste, whilst his own hunger threatened to swallow him whole. The calf’s blood had still coated his mouth then.)
*
Steak was harder under his jaw. It wasn’t smooth like the raw meat Evbo had lived on his whole life, that was still stuck between the gaps of his teeth. Dry was what it was, a stark contrast to what he’s known, slime having covered every meal he’s had for just the cheap price of a one-block jump.
There was no bitterness on his tongue. It was firm though, just as the dead had been, though without any of the challenge the former had required.
Evbo could not forget every real piece of meat he had stolen and torn apart under his hands and teeth. Without the judgement, without the condemnation made by iron boots.
It is those memories, which serve him as a warning as to why he should not travel through his home layer so often. Not for eventual hunger pangs, not for sore legs, but to save himself from wandering in the pitch dark day, from listening to a creaking door, just to come face-to-face with another Noob, starvation clawing its hold into them both.
Similarities lived in them all, glassy eyes a common tell of future carrion. Some had their breaths come shallow, on the brink of death, haunting his ears. They all knew what someone like him was looking for. They knew that they could not prevent it, they could not stop what they were to become, in this digestive system the Pros labelled a layer.
No, Evbo much rather preferred it when he was the intended meal, than the eater. Always made his guilt higher and higher, even though the ache in his stomach lessened each time whatever the Pros threw down weren’t enough. They would never be enough.
Everyone was just so hungry down there.
And besides, down there with their waning numbers, who would miss one corpse?
Not the Pros, that’d be sure.
Because they were forgettable. Because Evbo was forgettable, and if he or his home layer had been completely done away, just like the Fighter level was, then no one important would have cared.
Evbo feels sick, whenever he thinks about that truth. Nausea builds in his throat even more, when he finds himself missing the security he had been granted, with the fact that if he had ever missed one jump, didn’t wake up for his daily Parkour check, then no one would care. He’d just be another abandoned house in a forever quiet neighborhood.
He’s convinced that the cramps in his stomach are something that’s stuck within him, that the taste of bile is glued to his tongue, that the burning in his throat was one of the things he was spawned in with. He’s had it the first time he watched entire neighborhoods succumb to illness. The first time he had to swallow down the chicken’s slime, trying his best to not gag. The first time he had to listen to hunger claw its way through his home, searching for anything to sink teeth into.
His knuckles hurt every time, and the scabs on them always reopen and bloom with red after the visits, with the stains on his wooden walls growing more and more each time, but his appetite would be sated, and that could be enough. Evbo would force it to be enough.
And should he have to make himself appear weak, to make himself interesting, in order to lure in his food, then so be it. He’s the one winning, either way.
The new ones were always the most desperate for their own fill. Evbo would not be the exception, no matter the taboo.
*
Before Parkour Civilization had metamorphosed into something new, the old God had been distant, ever-looming, a word only heard in prayers of piety or ones of sacrilege. Evbo was not that.
His friend would say that they were blessed, to have another guiding them through the motions of four-block jumps, of creation and change. Evbo would only say that he was doing just what friends were meant to do.
(Not that he really knew what that meant, the only example being given to him having been Seawatt’s fake memory, something that every spawned-in player had known, for reasons he never truly understood.
If the ranks of Parkour were so set in nature, so inevitable, then why would each layer be needed to be cleanly separated from one another? If leather, iron, and gold boots were meant to be, then what was the need for a fake memory? Evbo did not believe, not truly, that he was living proof of that system's hubris, but it was a thought to be had.)
Footsteps weighed down by diamond beat against the grass in a rhythm. His friend goes through the jumps with practiced ease, further and further from the city, to the place their god has avoided ever since the Villain’s defeat.
Evbo listens to the sound of his friend’s trail as a guide for his pulse. He forces every beat of his heart, still and dead, to be in tandem with their steps.
Why his heart feels like it’s pounding its way out of his chest, he does not know.
Why his friend’s feet skid against ice, towards white stairs, he does not know.
Why the lab was even standing after both his and the Villain's rule, he does not know.
Evbo blinks. Grips cold hands against sun-kissed marble, stares down at that speck of black from his champion’s layer, who waltzes through the archway of the building that had not made them, but had created him.
He wonders what his friend thinks they’ll find. He wonders if they think it’s worth it.
His heart goes quiet, like it is meant to be for a corpse as of him. Pale fingers caress the grooves of tile.
*
EMF drags their eyes against each clean wall, each spotless corner, before they rest their stare to glass stairs.
*
Evbo jumps.
*
On the third-to-last step of polished glass, EMF could have reached out and touched the ceiling. They could have, even with how childish the impulse is.
Instead, they redirect their focus back onto the next step, to the control room just above, because it was right there, and they would not be a champion who faltered in the face of what they wanted.
The computer and the spawning-mechanism is turned off, just like it was the last time they and Evbo had gone up here. Players were now made in the Temple, just as they had been.
How many changes had Seawatt implemented, how many things had Seawatt reversed, how much had he done, when biding his time, waiting for a chance to strike his revenge? Too many to count, EMF knows.
They curl around the computer’s edge, peering behind, when they hear another set of feet join them. They do not look back. Choose to seize the cable instead, grimacing at how dusty it is, before they're plugging it into the outlet.
Brightness illuminates the room with just a hum. EMF stands, retreating to let their eyes adjust to the change, having them stumble into Evbo’s figure. They turn, back away, apology right on their tongue, but he starts first.
“My friend,” he greets kindly, and at the brazen softness, their face warms. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same to you.” EMF replies, glancing to the screen as they do so, away from their god, towards the list of players they did not know with a burning shame. What sort of champion are they, not even know the names of their own people?
A flash of red is what draws them in. It forces them to blink in surprise, makes them look back at the list intensely. But no, for their just a second’s glance was right.
Because besides every name, besides every player's ID they can read, all the names that the computer can realistically fit, there lays the word dead, written in a bold crimson.
Dread pools into their veins, and suddenly, selfishly, EMF feels glad for their unfamiliarity.