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“Chain-smoking is great until it stops.”
— My friend
Taph was so fucking baked. Everything he was forced to experience ended up being processed through a marijuana-induced haze, actions preceding his thoughts by a thousand studs and beyond. The blunt between his teeth was makeshift as hell. Wrapped up in uncomfortably moist newspaper and lit via a subspace tripmine charge, it was stuffed with weed. Where did he acquire this weed? The Spectre. To put it simply, The Spectre loves planting weed and other addictive substances around. Nobody knows why. Taph decided to capitalize on this for the safety of himself and everyone around him.
During a match his anxiety was so fucking high that he could barely think, so his solution was to smoke until he couldn’t anymore. Nobody could see his bloodshot, watery eyes beneath his hood. Nobody could hear his slurred voice, because he didn’t have one. Listen. Listen. If he wasn’t high, he was too busy worrying about silly shit like how close the killer was or if any of his teammates were in close range of his tripmines, instead of important shit like how he could maximize the killer’s pain and annoyance with their life.
His sweaty hands fumbled with the tripwire he was in the middle of setting up. The damn stakes kept slipping between his fingers, and the wires got tangled around his legs. He had fallen at least four times before eventually just crawling around, which worked significantly better. Unfortunately, his nice robes got all covered in dirt and grass stains. But he could care less about that. Taph had bigger priorities. Like getting high and making the killers want to kill themselves.
He coughed violently as he stood up, the blunt nearly falling apart and shooting down his throat. Thankfully, it didn’t do that. He’d hate to die prematurely by choking on his weed. He pinches the base of the blunt and inhales deeply, wheezing as the ensuing buzz goes straight to his brain. He hears some commotion ahead of him and stumbles his way over.
It’s 1x1x1x1. The glitchy fucker is throwing down with Shedletsky, and winning. The ex-admin was scarfing down a chicken-wing in the middle of a chase. Dumbfuck. Luckily, Taph was high enough to want to help.
Taph ran up behind 1x1x1x1, gripped the thing’s shoulders, planted his feet, and then pulled back as hard as he could. Surely enough, 1x stumbled in place, whirled around with a positively pissed look on its face, and began swinging ‘n shit. Taph was already running in the opposite direction. The glitchy bastard gave chase with an all-too-eager fervor, missing each one of his attacks because, you know, like creator, like creation.
1x then made the biggest mistake of his eternal life.
Following Taph into his nest.
“WHAT the ####” 1x shrieks as pink, loud-as-sin bombardments assault him from every direction. Taph had extended his wings (albeit slower than he usually would) and shielded himself with them. This meant he didn’t get assfucked as bad as 1x.
Unfortunately, during the commotion, his blunt had fallen. It was incinerated, the ashen remains shone bright, a fallen angel, against the dirt. He fell to his knees and soundlessly wailed. He rarely cursed his inability to speak, but now he wished he could somehow vocalize his agony. He settled for gesturing angrily in every direction.
1x bore witness to a hatred that rivalled his own, that day. He subtly backed off to go target weaker, less anguished survivors.