The Rupture
Shoutout to Isaac Coria For Patron Support!
***
“Hah! Ain’t it March?” Revy groans, drenched in sweat. “It would be sweet spring right about now in some continental countries. Why the fuck I’m stuck with you?” She wipes her towel over her naked body before glaring at Nik, who sits cool as a cucumber in a black shirt and brown shorts. “And why the hell aren’t you sweating? You say there is no ship, but we’ve been here for three days, and you’ve changed thrice! And you have water bottles!”
Nik shrugs. “Blame not the man who helps but yourself for your bitchy attitude.”
She gapes before sprawling back. “Fuck that. I don’t have the energy to argue. Just tell me how you got the supplies.”
“My magical asshole,” Nik flips the page of his book, reading about the skeletal structures and everything there is to know about bones to boost his knowledge of Bonebending. There is also other information stored in his mind in his Mental Library. “Did you know thin fractures on bones lead to their growth?”
“Did you know I don’t give a shit?” Revy replies.
He ignores her rambling, wondering if he should bonebend to cause minor fractures in his body. It will hurt, but he will endure it if the results are worthwhile. After all, his body has another boost of potential after his evolution, and every bit of growth can make the difference between life and death.
“Come on, Nik!” Revy groans. “Let’s get out of here! I know you have a ship around somewhere!”
It would be annoying if not for the derived amusement as to how Revy experiences her five stages of grief and anger as she stands firmly on the step of Bargaining.
“You wanna fuck me? Is that it?” Revy spread her legs. “I don’t want to move. So, be my guest. Just wake me up once you’re done.”
“You’re awfully cocky in thinking that. Do you know how bad you smell? Worse than dick cheese.”
“So, you smell dick cheese?” She snorts as Nik blinks, noting how he should make better comparisons the next time, or it’ll blow on his face.
“I don’t have a ship. I just believe Ray will come around. I don’t mind that you don’t trust me, but that’s all.”
Revy grows quiet before rolling over and finding her towel to tie around her body as she sits cross-legged opposite him, not minding how it exposes her assets to his gaze. “Why would I ever trust a freak who looks down on me? Sure, you saved my life. But let’s not kid ourselves. You did that to make yourself feel better. There’s no other reason you will rescue a sewer rat like me. You get off on feeling high and mighty and to have someone owe you.” Her glare hardens. “Would you like me to tell you how great you are? That you saved a pathetic piece of shit like me who kills anyone in my way?”
She tilts her head, losing all the heat in her voice as she questions coolly with her bangs matted on her forehead, “Do you want to hear it in detail? The man who banged me? My first kill? I bet you’d feel accomplished when you know the ‘depths’ you saved me from—no?”
Nik glances at her from his book before closing it.
“A woman raised me as a ‘perfect’ gigolo and sent me to a rotting 70-something-year-old woman to be used,” he tilts his head. “Was yours worst?”
Revy blinks, momentarily forgetting her speech as Nik cups his chin. “And then my ‘Mother’ punished me. I don’t even remember the reason. But I bet you never had your toes clipped, flesh branded, and cock lacerated. Do you know how I know that? Because you’re too ruined by that time to project on others.”
The woman stares at Nik with widened eyes.
“I bet a woman like you only feels worse with each murder,” his smile twists as she feels a sense of coldness seize her. “Killing becomes a coping mechanism, letting you think you aren’t worth shit. That maybe you deserve the shittiest lifestyle. Not me. I did the same thing. I cut their toes, melted their flesh, gouged their eyes, and skinned them alive. I still feel I deserve more love.”
He leans forward as her breath catches in her throat. “Worst of all, you don’t know how to play the victim card well enough. When you say those things, actually mean that you’re ready to forfeit your life and desires.”
She gazes into his blank violet eyes before they recover life, and his smile becomes less ‘twisted.’
“So, I should warn you. If you keep playing stupid like that, It’ll tempt me to turn you into a similar monster like me. I do whatever I like AND still desire more.”
He picks up his book, reading it until Revy recollects herself and grows quiet.
“It’s your first time, right?” Nik questions without looking up.
“What?”
“To be on the other side of the story about who had a shittier life,” Nik smirks. “But don’t feel awkward. I’m sure you will get over your issues as long as you live. I got over mine, after all.”
Revy looks down with an unreadable expression before muttering, “That’s wishful thinking. So, there really isn’t any ship?”
“None.”
“And you’re not going to tell me how you keep bringing things here, right?”
“Maybe I will if I feel like it. You should just enjoy the water and food. I would say to do the same with clothes, but you clearly don’t like them.”
She stares at him for a while, prompting him to look at her. There’s a question in her gaze with no small amount of hesitation. They’ve been here for a few days, so Nik does admit he knows a little about how Revy thinks. So, he understands prompting her to talk is a mistake, and he waits without a bit of impatience. There aren’t many things to do, after all.
“Why did you return to such a world if you escaped once?” Revy questions with a defeated sigh.
“Did I kill anyone?” Nik smiles. “But I’m not too ‘high and mighty’ to not see your point. And you’re right. If I wasn’t the man I am, I wouldn’t stay in Roanapur.”
Revy slumps back on the ground with arms spread out and knees folded up. Revy blankly stares at the sky until she mumbles. “I suppose I get it.” She explains without any prompts, “I would usually say not to feel sorry when I let others in a little. I would tell them to treat me like a whore instead with pity. I said the same thing to Dutch, and the asshole never let up on calling me a whore when I was just a dancer. Right now, I can’t help but feel sorry. And I just know it’s not me pitying you.”
“It’s funny,” Revy tilts her head to glance at him past her legs. “I still feel shitty despite knowing the shit you went through. It sounds just as horrible as the stuff I watched about the twins Ray asked me to look into, but that didn’t get me down.”
“Shitty things exist everywhere. You feel for those you’re connected to,” Nik returns to his book with a smile. “Ah, did you know the stapes bone is the shortest bone in the human body?”
“Nah, it’s still your dick.”
He chuckles. “Heat is fucking with your head.”
“At least someone has the balls for it.”
“You can wag all you want. But I’m not fucking anyone just for the sake of it… now.” Yeah, he has to be firm about it!
“Pfft!” Revy chuckles and sits up. “What? You said you have multiple women. You’re saying all of them are ‘tied’ to you.”
“Not all,” Nik smirks fondly. “There’s this Bookstore owner and my landlord. I would like to work for it.”
His words earn him an unamused glare, “So, you’re just a sex junkie.”
He gapes. “What? No, I’m not! If anything, they are!”
“Sure, shift the blame, Mr. Victim.”
“No! Really! You don’t know them. Especially, Mai. Heh, she actually has an interest in guns.”
“Swell.”
“What?”
“I don’t care about your women, dumbass! It’s still hot here!”
“Tch. And here I thought we made friends.”
“In your dreams!”
They both scoff before returning to their tasks—boredom.
---
“There aren’t any in Roanapur,” Ray huffs. Her compass works based on her deepest desires. It just so happens she understands those desires clearly. If it isn’t finding HER—Ray will foremost look for her safety. And that’s what she did. She scouted Roanapur’s perimeter with her compass pointing in different directions to point out threats to her existence—other hosts. There weren’t any in Roanapur, but that’s more likely due to her peer’s cautiousness of entering someone else’s area and falling into a home-ground advantage.
She wants to find Nik, but Ray cannot prioritize him over HER. One is a budding relationship, while the latter is an obsession! Even now, HER memories would filter into her thoughts, occupying Ray’s head. No, she needs to do something else.
“I’m back!” Ray calls out to Dutch and Benny as the former nods. He returns to talking into the telephone as Ray sits beside Benny, who’s using satellite images of the area to locate clues. “Did you find them?”
“It’s very strange,” Benny adjusts his glasses, frowning. “They should be near the blast. But I’ve looked over a 25-kilometer radius of the area. Even searching on Lagoon isn’t working. I…”
“They’re alive,” Ray asserts with thinned lips. But where did Nik wash upto?
“Thanks,” Dutch hangs the telephone before sitting on the sofa. “Man, finding good help isn’t easy. You’re good, Ray, but you can’t swim. Revy could shoot and dive. And someone of her expertise is hard to come by.”
“Tell me about it,” Ray mutters. “So, finding Revy is your priority, right?”
“That’s a weird way to put it,” Dutch grabs his beer before leaning back. “But if she’s alive, yes. We’ve only completed one mission without her, but we’re bound to have a job that requires diving.”
“Here!” Ray tosses something at Dutch, appearing beside him the second he catches it to see where her compass points.
“What?” Dutch blinks as Ray takes note of the direction before grinning. ‘Hah! It actually worked! Thank god I watched Pirates of the Caribbean!’
“Come on! No time to lose. I know where Nik and Revy are!” Ray snatches her compass as the pointer wildly rotates again, revealing her genuine desire isn’t ‘here.’
They move reluctantly under Ray’s insistence as she goes on by taking charge of costs should they fail to find Revy and Nik. Unfortunately, they received a call at this time.
“Mister Chang?” Dutch answers. “No. We were setting out to find her.” He frowns at the words from the other side before replying, “If the price is right, I don’t see why not?”
The company’s owner muses before sighing. “I see. Alright. We’ll meet you at the pier.”
He cuts the call before looking at Ray and Benny, “Change of plans. We will earn 15000 dollars before finding those two. If they can hold out till now, a few more hours won’t matter.”
Ray shrugs. She is sure those two are just fine. The succubus notes the direction from before and leaves with the company to perform another job.
---
“Ah, nights are awesome here,” Revy glances at the star-carpeted night sky with a full moon hanging from the sky. The cold breeze feels refreshing, and lying on the mattress doesn’t drench it with her sweat. She snickers to herself with her hands behind her head. “Roanapur has too many lights during the night, and you can’t see shit in the sky.” She glances at a distracted Nik, frowning. “What is your problem?”
“Hmm?” He looks up at her before shaking his head. “I’m just waiting.”
“Forget it. I know the seas around Roanapur, and I never saw this Island. It’s still a wonder how we got swept away so far. But Dutch and others are probably going to forget about us.”
‘Did I overdo it?’ He admits he exhausted the entirety of his reserves to make a getaway, but he couldn’t have been this far… right?
He feels something from within—Mokshi.
‘Did you ‘help’ me somehow?’ He rolls his eyes. If he can ‘connect’ with Mokshi to display the full extent of his bending, the Paradox Primordial can do the same.
There’s also the fact that his mission will be revealed in a few hours. He feels oddly nervous.
[Smexy-succu-succu: I found the general direction of your stay. We’ll pick you up in a few hours. Hope you’re decent~!]
[Nut-Cracking-Messiah: You would think I would get a hard-on about crashing waves being a waterbender, but no. I’m dry.]
He smiles and glances at Revy. “You didn’t have nights like these in New York?”
“That pile of shit?” She scoffs. “You’d be lucky to see the next day. But I suppose every city is like that. For every plump bitch in her ivory tower, there will be a rat used by the city’s filth.”
Nik glances at the sky, hearing Revy mutter, “What would you tell your fiancees if we return alive? They’ll have their panties in a bunch when they learn you spent your nights with someone like me.”
“You’re oddly focused on my love life.”
“It’s the only interesting thing aside from the stars!”
“Well,” Nik smiles. “I bet a few would like to knock you out for your dumb attitude. They’re pretty caring, you know? You’ll hate them.”
“Hah!” Revy laughs.
“I wouldn’t laugh,” Nik hums. “They taught me most of the things I know.”
That gets her to quiet down as she stares at him weirdly, “You slept with your teachers?”
“And their mothers. Why?” He blinks and looks at her questioningly.
“Whatever,” Revy rolls her eyes before pointing out. “Why not huddle in if you don’t have a mattress?”
“One would think you would do the courtesy of being a little honest with me after all we’ve talked about,” Nik smiles, moving his gaze from her to the stars. ‘I wonder if I can bend the stars. That’d be awesome. Meteorbending!’
A small voice snaps him out of his childish fantasies as he imagines overtaking Toph and her talents.
“Just watch them with me…”
He looks at the woman before touching his head. There’s already a tiny length of hair growing out. Only he knows the amount of waterbender’s product he uses to keep his bodily hair trimmed, if not cleanly shaven due to his hair growth after his evolution.
“Are you sure?” He grins. “You might just want to shoot me later.”
Revy snarks with a smirk. “I might just do it someway if you don’t get in now. For all you know, I’ve got a bullet in my coochie with your name on it.”
“Poor bullet,” he mutters as he shifts onto the mattress, finding her back resting on his chest as she snuggles into him. It only ‘helps’ them that she’s entirely naked.
“You really believe we’re going to die on this island, huh?” Nik sighs.
“There hasn’t been a single trade ship or smuggler steering about. Wherever this is—others don’t care about this route at all.” Revy smiles wanely. “Just like pieces of shit like us.”
She feels his arms coil around her comfortingly, rousing a contended sigh from her. “It’s a shame about your fiancees. I would love to look at their expressions when I kick the shit out of them.”
“Remember that,” Nik chuckles. “I’m going to snap a picture of your expression once we survive this. You’d never live it down.”
“Yeah, right,” She tilts her head, exposing a swathe of her neck. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t care enough to do that. But she feels that he would like it… just a bit. She feels his lips nearing before he stops with a weird noise escaping his lips.
‘Do I smell that bad?’
She fails to form any other thoughts as two things occur with barely a difference of a second!
[Mission formation duration shortened. Compensating remaining hosts.]
[Received 10 AP]
It’s hard to describe the noise and shock as Revy’s and Nik’s heads whip to look at the sky. The sea shudders positively, and their little island trembles as if it would give immediately! But their wide eyes stare at the once round moon in the shatters!
The moon… exploded!
---
She was wrong.
She recalled the High Table from the John Wick series, expecting their ‘Super Serious’ Mission to stem from that timeline. She admits she doesn’t have any experience with a ‘mixed’ verse. But it can’t be that bad if one knows the content of both verses, right? Sure, she didn’t watch John Wick and only read online reviews, but it can’t be that bad. She found Hansel and Gretel and will soon try to contact the Washimine Group in Japan to see if things turned to the point of no return.
But this?!
She stares at the sky alongside Benny and Dutch.
Isn’t this from—
[Objectives from Reincarnation Paradise detected.]
[Objective: To Deviate from The Intended Course of World, Kill The Former High Table Assassin—Grim Reaper.
Mission Rank: 6
Rewards: 3x Diamond Mystery Boxes; 2x Gold Mystery Box; 1x Silver Mystery Box
Time Limit: 363 Days 23:57 Hours]
[Objective: To Deviate From the Intended Course of World, Find a Way to Save The Former High Table Assassin—Grim Reaper
Mission Rank: 6
Rewards: 3x Diamond Mystery Boxes; 2x Gold Mystery Box; 1x Silver Mystery Box
Time Limit: 363 Days 23:57 Hours]
[Optional Objectives Detected, the completion of which is not mandatory by Reincarnation Paradise.]
[Optional Objective: Locate and Save John Wick’s Dog.
Mission Rank: 1
Rewards: 1x Silver Mystery Box
Time Limit: 3:12 hours]
[Optional Objective: Destroy The High Table
Mission Rank: 2
Rewards: 1x Gold Mystery Box
Time Limit: —]
[Optional Objective: Kill Students of Kunugigaoka High School, Class 3-E.
Mission Rank: 1
Rewards: 1x Silver Box
Time Limit: 4:25 minutes]
Waves start to act weird as the Black Lagoon company decides how unlucky they were to leave Roanapur today!
“Holy—” Ray gasps.
---
“—shit!” Nik sucks in a breath of cold air after going through the missions. The optional ones were a bust for him except for the High Table, but a Rank 6 Mission?! A Silver Gift Box raised his bloodline by one! What about gold and diamond ones?!
“I knew it!” Revy hisses! “The world is fucking ending! Those shady movies were right!”
She turns over to look at Nik, blinking for a moment before leaning into his lips despite how the island shakes.
‘The world isn’t ending, you dumbass!’ Nik blinks at her actions before shrugging. Oh, well. At least he isn’t the one who started things this time around.
***
Alternate Title: Sweaty Revy; The Victim Heroine? Wait Until The Victim Hero Rears His Ugly Head; The Monster; A Twisted Inside; Nik On His Way To Have One Of The Most Fucked Past; Changed Sides; Sadness Is Not Pity; Revy: Treat Me Like A Whore *Dutch: Hmm*; Revy Trying To Kick Toph’s Ass Without Guns *Toph: So, Anyway. I Started Bending The Broad Over*; Revy’s A Mess; The Special Compass; Lagoon’s New Members; Nik and Ray: Maybe Assassinations Cannot Be Non-Fatal? *Balalaika Dying From Inside*; The Wrong Time To Enter Sea; Snuggle Or I’ll Shoot; Nik of Magical Ass and Revy of Magical Cooch; The Stars; A Genuinely Happy Revy Only Exists Outside Her Natural Habitat; Nik” What A Beautiful Moon. Reminds Me Of Yue. *Kaboom!* Nik: Oh, It’s Just Like Her to Orgasm; The Missions!; Three Verses!
***
A/N: Did you guys catch on about the third world being Assassination Classroom? I hope not~! But I added a few references, like the Red Eye Sniper, who tries to snipe Koro-Sensei during their class trip, and Grim Reaper as is, which is Koro’s former alias.