Hung.

It's been a while. I returned to Lungmen just to have another bite of your cooking. I took this hat when I escaped, because you'll look silly with it on your head. But you probably won't want it.

🞚 a night of rain 🞚

They say in Lungmen, to get by, you have to be clever and "flexible." You're not sure you can ever be the kind of flexible that they're asking for, but you'll certainly still do your best - that's what your dad would want. Maybe you'll see if Uncle Li will give you a job, maybe even your dad's old job, if you can't make it, here.

Things are already tough, living outside of a true city. But that's where you and the others find yourselves, traveling almost in a pack. At least you can all count on each other, nebulous as that trust might be in the long run for some, and they rely on you for making the meals - you have value and use here, even if you're reluctant to do some of the jobs that have been asked of your group.

None of them think you're cut out to be a mercenary. You agree.

She's there with you, though. Meng. You look out for everyone, of course, but she's always there to look out for you in return. You work well together, and have since the moment that you joined the group. Jobs feel easier - if still dangerous - when it's the two of you running point, and you become her shield as she lays waste to her opponents. A Liberi so small as her is a deceptive force to be reckoned with.

Especially when she starts to slip into something you have no explanation for.

Oripathy doesn't do this. Oripathy kills, slow and miserable or brutal and all at once. But it doesn't make someone lose their mind like this.

The others call her a monster. You could never. She's Meng - she's your friend. She's someone you love, someone that you've fought alongside, someone you trust. Whatever is happening to her, whatever's turning this strength into something dangerous, it doesn't make her a monster.

For a long time, it's directed at your enemies. The targets you're sent to infiltrate.

And, then... she attacks all of you. It's so sudden that you can't even predict it, but it is no less devastating in every way possible. Originium and rock shatter alike as she throws your companions around, sends one flying so hard through a spire that you're not even sure if he's made it to the other side, to the ground on a rough landing, alive. She even turns on you, her closest friend, and even you - even you, you struggle as you try to call out to her, head cracked into the hard rock ground beneath you, feeling the hands around your throat that'll surely bruise under your fur, trying to fight her off just as much as you're trying to fight for air.

You manage.

Barely.

And you have to get the worse off, the ones still alive, to Lungmen. You have to get them to a hospital. You have to leave.

You don't want to. It would mean leaving her, and doesn't she need help, too?

She tells you to, anyways, through lucid tears, looking at her hands for what she's done. Yells at you to take the others and go. To get away.

...

Meng stands on the dock as the small boat forges through the roiling waves of a storm, and you look back at her. You look back, and you refuse to look away even after she's nothing but a speck, until she's nothing but a memory, burned into your mind.