No preamble whatsoever as she starts stalking towards him: "What did I fucking say about you and Aerith Gainsborough."
The facial expression is completely incongruous with the malice in her voice, but that's normal. That's two different modes of expression. Why would they have anything to do with each other?
Tonight's outfit includes a scoop back top. For situations like this, having her shoulder blades readily available without fabric in the way is always useful.
"Do you think I remember the things you say?" He does, sometimes, but it's still a very offensive suggestion.
He has his own divides between methods of expression, so there's nothing strange to him about the difference. For a shapeshifter, there's even less reason to see any incongruity.
"Something unreasonable, I'm sure."
Something that had confirmed his every suspicion of Ashton's inability to completely discard every aspect of a fake life.
"Playing the fool doesn't suit you," she purrs. God, but she wants to break his pretty little neck tonight. "But I'm feeling nice, so here's a refresher: don't interact with her? Ideally, don't think about her? If she comes to you, turn her down? Very simple instructions."
"How cute." He's on his feet. He doesn't have his full vampire speed, but he still moves from sitting to standing with a slightly unnatural grace. He's inhabiting a human body, but that's not all he is.
"As much as I'd usually feel beholden to your instructions, somehow I can't see a reason to. Despite how reasonable they are."
One of the things nobody ever appreciates correctly about fleshcrafting is how hard it can be to control additional appendages without taking the bypass of syncing them to an existing one. However, Ash is great at this kind of multitasking, and she can reshape pieces of herself with immense specificity; she likes her shoulderblades free to the air because that's one of the easiest places to build tentacles out from.
And it is tentacles, plural, one on each side of her back; she's been weaving that flesh and muscle and blood into position as she speaks. She doesn't need to be in "arms' reach" when she's got a longer reach than her frame implies.
She's faster when she's not shackled by the Admiral. She's a lot faster. But these tentacles are things of her body, and they inherit her speed as is (which is pretty good!), so it's easy to drive one of them towards the iPad with piercing intent. A warning shot, whether or not it connects.
Normally she keeps to four limbs, give or take, but special circumstances call for special approaches.
There are a number of ways to learn someone's body. Getting into vicious, extremely physical fights where - perhaps most importantly in this case - you're working to make sure that you don't cross the line into killing them, is a way not available to most. For some reason.
If Armand ever thought about it consciously he might think that the fleshcrafting at least allow for a distance in the knowledge. But he doesn't think about that sort of thing or it might have to touch on how adjusting to deal with a shapeshifter can involve paying even closer attention.
He scoffs slightly at the hit to the iPad. He, of course, is above such petty destruction.
He can believe she'd just come out and say it, but that doesn't make it less embarrassing for her. Such a lack of tack. "She doesn't agree." He smiles. "You have no power to enforce your belief."
"She doesn't know what she's doing." It's dismissive. Her little sister just doesn't know what's good for her! "I'm not interested in seeing her wind up as a blood doll. Which is why we're having this conversation."
One step forward. There's a growl building in the back of her throat, a sound that has no business coming from a human frame.
Just because she doesn't know what she's doing doesn't mean Ashton can stop her. That's the charm of it. Armand smiled. "There's no risk of Aerith becoming that. Not that what you're interested in has any weight to it."
"And if she thought she wanted to be, would you stop her?"
The first strike was a pretense at a warning shot; one attack, not at him directly. Never say she's not benevolent every now and again.
This time she goes for the stomach and one thigh, slightly staggered, as one arm ripples; less an arm and more - she's unwound it, mostly. It's not that she's made something new from her arm, it's that she's pulled apart and repurposed the muscles, the nerves, realigned the bone. It's not as stylish as she likes to do it, but raw and ugly always has its own charm.
Armand's already moving, expecting something like that. It would be rude not to, after she'd been so kind as to take a warning shot. They both of their benevolent sides.
He aims to get closer. Of all the differences between them, the matter of reach is one that she can cross in ways he can't. But he has speed and awareness of how much physical damage he can handle.
"Is that what she wants?" Casual as if she hasn't gotten him in the thigh and he isn't aiming to grab hold.
"She doesn't have extensive experience with vampires. I'm just trying to do what's best for her." It's what Ash actually believes! She's just maybe leaving a few things out.
There's a very easy target for grabbing: her unwound arm, raised in front of her, blocking easy egress to her neck. It may not really be a limb anymore inasmuch as it's tightly-tensed tendrils, meat twisted into a new purpose & slicked with gore, serrated with pieces of bladed bone that were probably her ulna? But it's extremely holdable.
The tentacle she's got in his thigh she doesn't rip out. Armand's not mortal, as they both know full well; that'd just be making it easier for him. Instead she digs it further in and drags it down: there's a lot going on in that area & shoving anything in there too fast, too hard, causes problems easily. And Ash pulls her other tentacle back, outwards and forward in a loose curve, plenty of space between it and him for the second before it snaps forward towards his neck.
Love means protecting someone, even if what you're protecting them from themselves. However, there are people qualified for that and then there's Ashton. ...And most other people, really, but Ashton is the one in front of him. He just scoffs, which is the only response she deserves.
...Well, he can wait on rubbing in how little she can truly do to protect someone she cares about.
If you aren't willing to seize hold of twisted meat and gore, while recognizing the most likely former location of bone, what's the point of being a centuries old vampire? Not that he remembers ever struggling much with it. Death is part of life, complete with every gruesome detail.
He'd expected the tentacle to remain in his thigh. He had made his choice on what to avoid, and that meant sacrificing his leg for the moment. He pulls the unwound arm down with him, sinking his teeth in just for fun.
The great thing about having a fleshcrafter as your nemesis is that Armand has gotten to be very familiar with several of the more curious purposes any given part of a body can be put to! Like spines. Spines are such a great canvas. Ribs, too. And she's a big fan of tendons.
Most of the time she tries to go for -- not pretty, but she has an aesthetic, she has a lot of stylistic control over the changes she makes. This? The point of this is to work. Aesthetically pleasing is optional.
If Armand's willing to tear up his hands and put his mouth in inadvisable places, she has to admire the spirit. Not respect! But at least admire. He drops and she drops to her knees in echo, biting her lip, eyes so-slightly unfocused: her focus is elsewhere. Reweighting what used to be her arm, shifting tissue around to new positions, trying something uncommon --
Shoving tendrils of gore down a man's throat is a valid strategy for the purpose of 'being a freak' and has thematical similarities to absolutely nothing else. Invasive takes effort, after all. There's much easier strategies for probably about just as much of a return.
What one thing Armand might be willing to admit about Ashton depends on the moment, but if he centers it on what it gives him there is the chance to see the ways someone can repurpose parts of their body. In life, too - well, as much as they're alive - not just as an art exhibit. It allows for more variety.
If further forced to say something nice, he'd go so far as to say that it's far more aesthetically pleasing. Raw functionality can prove a point.
Armand does always consider there to be something sexual about violence, just as there's always a thread of violence to the sexual. Even if it's not visible to those who don't have the proper eyes to see. But there is such a thing as subtlety.
It's probably for the best that he's not capable of speaking to her mind to mind, as it saves them both from commentary on Ashton's feelings on her 'sister'. He currently can't say them out loud, for obvious reasons. There are vampires who can't get rid of an instinctive fear of choking even when they don't need to breathe (Armand has reasons to appreciate that), but he's not one of them. And blood is blood.
Ashton being this deep inside him is always dangerous, but that's an accepted danger. The slight lack of focus is far more important, and taking as much advantage as can be in terms of slashing.
The potential sexuality of it is nowhere near the forefront of her mind, or at least she's not letting it get anywhere near there. If she never consciously acknowledges she's into him, she never has to deal with any complications or reexaminations that would cause. Which means there's no subtlety for her to worry about! Isn't that great.
It doesn't work as well on someone who hasn't been breathing for centuries as it does someone who's been dead for less than two years, he doesn't reflexively thrash like a worm on the hook like she like fledglings did, but it does its job. Ash is paying enough attention to know she's been hurt -- how could she not -- but this is still her show, as far as she's concerned, even if the fact she's not trying to dodge means it's easy for him to shear through cloth and skin and fat and muscle.
That's just how the game works. He won't kill her. She's the one who gets to decide if any of the pain he manages to inflict is meaningful to her at all.
The good thing about a vampire's body is that the internals can take so much punishment before it has any meaningful consequence but pain. Ash is free to do as much damage as she likes, isn't she?
Armand has long done his best to prevent creating any connection between something he considers sexual and what that might mean for him in any way. He feels it's served him very well. For example, it lets him contemplate vampire pornography on worlds where they're abilities are more 'varied'.
It's hard to imagine it's not just still snuff films.
The combination of, on the one hand, the pain from the vestigial internal organs that vampires really don't need so deserve to be ignored and, on the other, that it's mixed with the rush of drinking her blood is... something.
He doesn't let that get in the way of doing his best to take her apart with only sharp claws, good will, and a knowledge of the body on his side!
Maybe if she's lucky, if enough of it gets into his system a blood bond might kick in -- if it'll even work on him, anyway, who knows how that works with non-kindred vampires. Not that it'd help her much, drinks need to be spread out over time to generate any real meaningful effect and she really doesn't need him to be obsessed with her any more than he already is, but a sort-of-advantage is (would be) a sort-of-advantage.
The free tentacle gives her the leverage to shift her balance forward, working to shove him on his back, without needing a free arm and without having to pay attention to the damage he's done to her core muscles. Or to her body in general. Walking would be impossible, so it's great she's not interested in doing that! The angle's bad, but the angle's always bad, because he's so bloody tall; she's used to that by now.
Then she moves to break his spine and stabs through his back. She is, of course, still genuinely pissed, and the more damage she does the longer he'll have to ruminate on it.
Armand does keep up with the latest science, so he won't experience the same sudden shock of yet another world completely gone as he had when he'd first left the catacombs in Paris. He also knows the works of the human body in the way a vampire can. Still, Ashton has given him a lot more practical experience. In terms of both their bodies, really.
Over the centuries, there have been a lot of people who have tried to give Armand the chance to think about what he's done and why it's made them mad via completely proportionate violence. For some reason, it doesn't always work as intended.
Perhaps Ashton can blame one of them for the fact that a broken spine and major damage to various parts of the body work to incapacitate him, but not to make him regret anything. The opposite might be more accurate.
"Do," Ashton says, as pleasantly as she possibly can, using her free arm to brace herself with his chest as she drags the ruins of her other arm out of his body, parts reshaping and twisting into place until his teeth are set in the perfectly normal skin of her perfectly normal forearm, "I make myself clear."
Her wounds are, pointedly, knitting back together already. She could wait! She won't.
Armand needs a few moments more before he's recovered enough to speak, and even then his voice is still rough from having the tentacle down his throat, though that's also the reason he doesn't need even longer to heal. "Clear there is nothing you can do? And yet so possessive."
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 07:35 am (UTC)The facial expression is completely incongruous with the malice in her voice, but that's normal. That's two different modes of expression. Why would they have anything to do with each other?
Tonight's outfit includes a scoop back top. For situations like this, having her shoulder blades readily available without fabric in the way is always useful.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 07:40 am (UTC)He has his own divides between methods of expression, so there's nothing strange to him about the difference. For a shapeshifter, there's even less reason to see any incongruity.
"Something unreasonable, I'm sure."
Something that had confirmed his every suspicion of Ashton's inability to completely discard every aspect of a fake life.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 05:04 pm (UTC)"As much as I'd usually feel beholden to your instructions, somehow I can't see a reason to. Despite how reasonable they are."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 07:23 pm (UTC)One of the things nobody ever appreciates correctly about fleshcrafting is how hard it can be to control additional appendages without taking the bypass of syncing them to an existing one. However, Ash is great at this kind of multitasking, and she can reshape pieces of herself with immense specificity; she likes her shoulderblades free to the air because that's one of the easiest places to build tentacles out from.
And it is tentacles, plural, one on each side of her back; she's been weaving that flesh and muscle and blood into position as she speaks. She doesn't need to be in "arms' reach" when she's got a longer reach than her frame implies.
She's faster when she's not shackled by the Admiral. She's a lot faster. But these tentacles are things of her body, and they inherit her speed as is (which is pretty good!), so it's easy to drive one of them towards the iPad with piercing intent. A warning shot, whether or not it connects.
Normally she keeps to four limbs, give or take, but special circumstances call for special approaches.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 07:33 pm (UTC)If Armand ever thought about it consciously he might think that the fleshcrafting at least allow for a distance in the knowledge. But he doesn't think about that sort of thing or it might have to touch on how adjusting to deal with a shapeshifter can involve paying even closer attention.
He scoffs slightly at the hit to the iPad. He, of course, is above such petty destruction.
"Nor is it a matter you have any say in."
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:02 pm (UTC)One step forward. There's a growl building in the back of her throat, a sound that has no business coming from a human frame.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:25 pm (UTC)The first strike was a pretense at a warning shot; one attack, not at him directly. Never say she's not benevolent every now and again.
This time she goes for the stomach and one thigh, slightly staggered, as one arm ripples; less an arm and more - she's unwound it, mostly. It's not that she's made something new from her arm, it's that she's pulled apart and repurposed the muscles, the nerves, realigned the bone. It's not as stylish as she likes to do it, but raw and ugly always has its own charm.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 09:37 pm (UTC)He aims to get closer. Of all the differences between them, the matter of reach is one that she can cross in ways he can't. But he has speed and awareness of how much physical damage he can handle.
"Is that what she wants?" Casual as if she hasn't gotten him in the thigh and he isn't aiming to grab hold.
general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 04:12 am (UTC)There's a very easy target for grabbing: her unwound arm, raised in front of her, blocking easy egress to her neck. It may not really be a limb anymore inasmuch as it's tightly-tensed tendrils, meat twisted into a new purpose & slicked with gore, serrated with pieces of bladed bone that were probably her ulna? But it's extremely holdable.
The tentacle she's got in his thigh she doesn't rip out. Armand's not mortal, as they both know full well; that'd just be making it easier for him. Instead she digs it further in and drags it down: there's a lot going on in that area & shoving anything in there too fast, too hard, causes problems easily. And Ash pulls her other tentacle back, outwards and forward in a loose curve, plenty of space between it and him for the second before it snaps forward towards his neck.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 04:32 am (UTC)...Well, he can wait on rubbing in how little she can truly do to protect someone she cares about.
If you aren't willing to seize hold of twisted meat and gore, while recognizing the most likely former location of bone, what's the point of being a centuries old vampire? Not that he remembers ever struggling much with it. Death is part of life, complete with every gruesome detail.
He'd expected the tentacle to remain in his thigh. He had made his choice on what to avoid, and that meant sacrificing his leg for the moment. He pulls the unwound arm down with him, sinking his teeth in just for fun.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 05:33 am (UTC)Most of the time she tries to go for -- not pretty, but she has an aesthetic, she has a lot of stylistic control over the changes she makes. This? The point of this is to work. Aesthetically pleasing is optional.
If Armand's willing to tear up his hands and put his mouth in inadvisable places, she has to admire the spirit. Not respect! But at least admire. He drops and she drops to her knees in echo, biting her lip, eyes so-slightly unfocused: her focus is elsewhere. Reweighting what used to be her arm, shifting tissue around to new positions, trying something uncommon --
Shoving tendrils of gore down a man's throat is a valid strategy for the purpose of 'being a freak' and has thematical similarities to absolutely nothing else. Invasive takes effort, after all. There's much easier strategies for probably about just as much of a return.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 05:59 am (UTC)If further forced to say something nice, he'd go so far as to say that it's far more aesthetically pleasing. Raw functionality can prove a point.
Armand does always consider there to be something sexual about violence, just as there's always a thread of violence to the sexual. Even if it's not visible to those who don't have the proper eyes to see. But there is such a thing as subtlety.
It's probably for the best that he's not capable of speaking to her mind to mind, as it saves them both from commentary on Ashton's feelings on her 'sister'. He currently can't say them out loud, for obvious reasons. There are vampires who can't get rid of an instinctive fear of choking even when they don't need to breathe (Armand has reasons to appreciate that), but he's not one of them. And blood is blood.
Ashton being this deep inside him is always dangerous, but that's an accepted danger. The slight lack of focus is far more important, and taking as much advantage as can be in terms of slashing.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 06:37 pm (UTC)It doesn't work as well on someone who hasn't been breathing for centuries as it does someone who's been dead for less than two years, he doesn't reflexively thrash like a worm on the hook
like shelike fledglings did, but it does its job. Ash is paying enough attention to know she's been hurt -- how could she not -- but this is still her show, as far as she's concerned, even if the fact she's not trying to dodge means it's easy for him to shear through cloth and skin and fat and muscle.That's just how the game works. He won't kill her. She's the one who gets to decide if any of the pain he manages to inflict is meaningful to her at all.
The good thing about a vampire's body is that the internals can take so much punishment before it has any meaningful consequence but pain. Ash is free to do as much damage as she likes, isn't she?
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 06:57 pm (UTC)It's hard to imagine it's not just still snuff films.
The combination of, on the one hand, the pain from the vestigial internal organs that vampires really don't need so deserve to be ignored and, on the other, that it's mixed with the rush of drinking her blood is... something.
He doesn't let that get in the way of doing his best to take her apart with only sharp claws, good will, and a knowledge of the body on his side!
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 07:53 pm (UTC)The free tentacle gives her the leverage to shift her balance forward, working to shove him on his back, without needing a free arm and without having to pay attention to the damage he's done to her core muscles. Or to her body in general. Walking would be impossible, so it's great she's not interested in doing that! The angle's bad, but the angle's always bad, because he's so bloody tall; she's used to that by now.
Then she moves to break his spine and stabs through his back. She is, of course, still genuinely pissed, and the more damage she does the longer he'll have to ruminate on it.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 08:11 pm (UTC)Over the centuries, there have been a lot of people who have tried to give Armand the chance to think about what he's done and why it's made them mad via completely proportionate violence. For some reason, it doesn't always work as intended.
Perhaps Ashton can blame one of them for the fact that a broken spine and major damage to various parts of the body work to incapacitate him, but not to make him regret anything. The opposite might be more accurate.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 10:34 pm (UTC)Her wounds are, pointedly, knitting back together already. She could wait! She won't.
Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-01 11:01 pm (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:02 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:07 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
Date: 2025-08-02 12:19 am (UTC)Re: general cw for violence / gore / potential body horror for the rest of the thread tbh
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