greaterthanone>‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ [ jade, hg sim.

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

↳ JADE SHORE-FRAY. 

A smile tugs on Jade's lips as her fingertips scroll through the list of tributes past. She's scanning the dozens and dozens and dozens of names, eyes catching on all but two surnames. Give me a Fray, she silently wills, or a Shore. Those fallen leaves from family trees, names her parents never say and names her grandparents scoff at. Disappointments, wasted energy, potential lost. Jade just finds them quietly fascinating, the ghosts of her intertwined roots.

She finds one: the first. Emerald Shore. She's got Mom's eyes. Her eyes. Gaping wounds filled with a soul that didn't yet carry the burden of all those lost. Jade knows what she is, what her brother Jasper is, to the last remaining Frays and Shores. Knows why her parents try to keep their own parents at arms length. The twins are redemption, a last-chance fail-safe. Time to put that to the test. 

Jade selects her arena and hits BEGIN, water swirling against her feet and panic filling Emerald.

Jade knows her Aunt couldn't swim. It's the only thing she knows about her, really.

Her knife flies and Emmy lunges: the start, the end.

[ coding by griffin ]

jade shore-fray attacks emerald shore, throwing knives:
RoO|iXmGT6throwing knife
miss, 0

emerald shore attacks jade shore-fray, axe:
axe
block, 0

throwing knife·axe

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

↳ JADE SHORE-FRAY. 

Emerald is fast, dodging the knife hurled at a distance and closes the space between them. Jade's impressed with how quickly she had steeled herself, pushed the fear down somewhere dark and lonely. Jade finds a familiarity in that. Swallowing down rage. Hot coals against her throat - she stands still, extinguished by the churning water beneath her. Closer Emerald gets, closer still, and without flinching she raises her hand at the last second and parries away the axe blade with her knife.

She pushes herself away, using the force of Emerald's impossibly solid state to gain momentum. The simulation stumbles backward, off-kilter from the shift of weight. One somersault later and Jade lands feet-first back in the water, now up to her shins. Another step back, and another, another - Jade taunts Emerald, beckons her deeper. She wants to see what fear does to this girl. Wants to see what it would do to her. If the strange storm of lightning in herself is hereditary or if it's something unique to Jade alone; no excuse of genetics to tie her to reason.

Come on, she urges her dead Aunt silently. Come and get me.

[ coding by griffin ]

jade shore-fray attacks emerald shore, throwing knives:
HFNuq8b4|Tthrowing knife
miss, knife lost 0

emerald shore attacks jade shore-fray, axe:
axe
shallow cut, 3.5

throwing knife·axe

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

↳ JADE SHORE-FRAY. 

Fucked up little stringmaster, playing with her toy. Jade throws another knife lazily, watches it hit the ocean surface and be swallowed up by the mouth of a wave. She doesn't care, endless knives reappearing in the straps buckled across her chest. Emerald is getting frustrated now, three wild swings of her axe and one slices through Jade - she cries out, grips her arm, smiles.

So much rage. So much rage and so much death. It simply must be inherited, a primal force - but uncontrollable, self-destruction. She's watched her mother and father swallow down that rage and consume it, attempting to be better people, rotting each-other from the inside-out. And she's seen it centre-stage, her childhood home the setting.

Her mother relapsed when they were three. Her father punched a dummy in the back yard until his knuckles bled. That's her first memory: the odour of white rum in the bathroom sink, pulling Jasper up to their hide-out in the attic. Her first instinct: hide. Protect Jasper.

She puts her second into the curve of her arm, aims it straight at the one who caused all of this.

[ coding by griffin ]

jade shore-fray attacks emerald shore, throwing knives:
Zv2ExW1E5dthrowing knife
jade hit something challenge

emerald shore attacks jade shore-fray, axe:
axe
4

throwing knife·axe

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

↳ JADE SHORE-FRAY. 

And what if she just

exploded?

Jade drops her knife and launches herself onto Emerald, pulling her into the sea with a splash and a thud. The sea's rage is muffled, filling her ears and drowning out everything. Emerald's simulation squirms and thrases against Jade's spindly arms - she is all her mother. None of that upper body strength her father possesses, gifted to her twin instead. Emerald overpowers her, gnashing with teeth and turning them over and over and over in the current.

"Pyrite-!" Emerald gasps, coming up for air. Jade can't see anything, a sullen mop of wet hair obscuring her vision. But she laughs at the sound of her mother's name on the simulation's tongue. Of course. It doesn't know who she is. It just remembers what she would have.

"I'm Jade," she growls, finding her footing and slamming her body weight down on Emerald. Her arm lifts above their heads, wiping those dripping, dark strands away. Jade wants to look her in the eyes. Look at the legacy her mother was forced to remedy. Look at what made her, ruined her, undid her - and then Jade, eventually.

"This one's for my Mom."

She brings the knife down, hard, as a wave crashes into her spine and Emerald's axe greets her arm.

[ coding by griffin ]

jade shore-fray attacks emerald shore, throwing knives
(for ic purposes she just starts stabbing)
K7WCFaZJ9Xthrowing knife
6

emerald shore attacks jade shore-fray, axe:
axe
8


em dmg: 6
jade dmg: 15.5

throwing knife·axe

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

↳ JADE SHORE-FRAY. 

"Py-"

"I said-" and she's furious now, pushing the handle of Emerald Shore's axe into her neck to hold her underwater, salt in her wounds "my name is Jade!"

I'm not like her. I'm not her. I'm not like her. I'm not. I'm not her. I'm not my Mom. I'm not my Dad. I'm not like them. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I don't want to be like her. I don't. I don't. I don't want this. I don't want this name. I don't want this legacy. I don't. I don't. I-

Emerald twists down, underneath, around. Gasps for air and grabs for Jade by her hair. Jade shrieks as she is pulled back, up, under, the wind taken from her with the shock and the way her rib cage slams against the shell-lined ocean floor.

She strikes out, blindly, feet kicking and raging underneath the weight of the simulation. (It's a dream.) She's better than this last name. She's more than this. She is. She is. She's not a Shore she's not a Fray. She's not Kellan. She's not Pyrite. She's Jade. She's Jade. She's Jade. ("I love you, Jade.") She's Jade. She's Jade. She's her own person. She has to be. She has to be. She has to be. Her parents don't love her. Only Jasper does. He does. She does. She is. (It wasn't a dream.) She isn't.

Fading fast, Jade chokes out a scream. It's just bubbles on the surface. Pop, pop, they float away.

[ coding by griffin ]

jade shore-fray attacks emerald shore, throwing knives
FYMLIKvaMBthrowing knife
0, for IC purposes she has no strength left to attack.

emerald shore attacks jade shore-fray, axe:
axe
9

em dmg: 6
jade dmg: 15.5

throwing knife·axe