[devil's den] war drums sing [ o o g i e ]

Grigoriy could hear nothing but the thundering of his own heart beat as he was lifted out of the wreckage of what was once a manor in the countryside. Kilo had been sent to the safe to lay low after doing a few things in Italy that were more illegal than usual tricks. Giampiero had been roaming around the UK, and things were getting hectic. So Kilo had been sent out of the country to attack one of his personal estates, if maybe to draw him out just so they could get some more information. Grisha hadn’t been on point for this one, so he’d been content to stay in the shadows, but there had been something bothering him since he’d stepped foot in Italy. Then coming back home, the feeling intensified. It had been an irritated buzzing in the back of his mind that he’d not been able to formulate for a week.

Stepping foot into the house had seemed like a good idea. Until this heavy sensation covered the area, and as much as he tried to escape, the apparation wards were up. He’d managed to get all but three of his teammates out of the house, and together they were trying to burst through doors that were spelled shut, all while mad yells and screams rang from outside. They made a mad dash for upstairs, hoping that the idiots who had them trapped hadn’t made the top floors. Grisha had shoved his partner out of the window, only for the house to give a great shudder before exploding. After that, he blacked out and remembered nothing but strong arms carrying him away. He felt like he was floating, and burning at the same time.

Pale coloured eyes flashed open, and Grisha shot up as if he was trying to escape, but sharp pain shot up his back, prompting an unbidden cry. He turned to look over his shoulder, and saw metal pieces and wood poking through his back. Some were small, with a dull shine. Two were massive, and blood sluggishly poured from the wound. His whole back was torn up A shaking hand reached up to touch one of the larger pieces, and his eyes bulged as he tried to block the shriek of pain. His face leaned forward, and he shook as he forced harsh breaths out of his nose. He hurt. Everything hurt. Even as he lifted just his head up to look around the room he recognized as one of the healer rooms that he tried to stay away from, pain just kept growing from every movement.

He heard sounds, but couldn’t define them as words with the roaring still in his ears. The healer shook his head, before coming in front of Grisha and holding a block of wood. Grisha stared at it for a moment, before looking as the healer motioned that he was going to take out the rebar that was poking through his shoulder. Almost hesitantly, Grisha opened his mouth and let the man put the wood between his teeth, and clenched his jaw down. He had no warning before the item was jerked out of his shoulder, but his teeth dug down into the wood as he let out a scream. It felt like molten fire against his skin as the rebar got stuck, and the healer had to readjust it to get it out again. His fingers scratched at the chair, before curling into a fist, before slamming his hand down repeatedly on the table beside him.

A hand was braced against his already heavily scarred back, and he could hear some noise out of his right ear. Shaking his head, he clenched his jaw down again, he looked up and stared into the abyss. Just as a figure, white and black walked into his view, another piece of metal was jerked out of his back. He stared at his Boss, a scream ripping through the clenched teeth, as if trapped in that gaze. It was just like he was trapped in the past, and this man was walking from the sunlight. For some reason, delirium, or just plain overdose on adrenaline, he was trapped in the past. As Oogie walked from the shadow into the rest of the healer’s room, in his minds eye he could see him and Rohan outside of the pit of a prison cell. Eyes rolling back, he fought unconsciousness, only to slump forward on table. Careful hands pulled the wood from his lips, and helped him so he could at least look up.

A bright smile, all blood soaked and lined with pain, and touched with something off appeared as he stared into what he could focus on of bone framed eyes. "Boss Bones! You made it to the party…” Then he let out a keening whimper as the healer went to work on pulling the pieces out of his back.

@Medusa 

Oogie had been in his office when he got the word. It was one of those rare days that the bone man was awake during the same time as the sun, albeit arriving to work at sunset was usually a bad thing for most people. In this case he was positively early. Things had been tense recently. More so than usual. He was already knee-deep in this mole hunt, and he didn’t like hiding things from his people. He had been relieved to discover that Ralphie’s betrayal was not related to Giampiero, and that the dead man was simply rebelling after what had happened with Morretti. For a few minutes Oogie allowed himself to relax slightly and believe that maybe this whole Giampiero business was being blown out of proportion.

And then Rohan knocked on his office door. At his expression, Oogie’s face fell. He took off his reading glasses slowly, looking critically at the other man in a don’t you dare say it sort of way. But Rohan did say it. The man had a knack for delivering bad news. Apparently there had been an explosion at one of the safe houses while Team Kilo was inside. Team Foxtrot was currently on-route to the site for extraction and damage control. Oogie sighed tiredly, though he quickly stood up from his desk and grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair. As he strode hastily pass Rohan, he frowned. “I wish just once that you would surprise me with good news, Rohan. This pattern is getting depressing.”

The two men walked down the hallway to the platform, quickly casting the spell and floating up seven floors. When Oogie exited onto the work floor, everything around him was in chaos. His analysts were running from desk to desk, papers scattering everywhere. He strode through the parchment tornado to the other side of the room. Two doors and one flight of stairs later and he was standing in the War Room. The expansive area wasn’t as full of people as it usually was during a mission. Rohan must have specifically only asked for top authorization since everyone was still a little paranoid. Oogie’s long legs ate up the large room as he walked forwards. One of the Handlers, the one who was currently in charge of Foxtrot, turned to him as he walked up. The man handed Oogie a small metallic beetle, which the skeleton pushed into his ear. It was fitting underneath the tattoo of a curling centipede on the side of his head.

“Talk to me,” he said to Team Foxtrot, dark eyes scanning the portals in front of him. There were four portals, each one approaching the same pile of rubble from a different angle. For a second all he could hear was the screeching chirp of bug chatter before a voice came through.

“We got bodies, sir” the female voice rang out. He recognized her portal as the one currently standing over the charred shape of what used to be a body. Oogie recognized this corpse as one of his by the singed dragon hide vest that was standard mission gear. For a few moments her voice was muffled. “Mathis, Albert, get this rubble out of the way. You, you’re with me.” Then the voice was loud again as her portal moved closer to the ruins. “We’re gonna see what we can salvage, sir.”

Oogie’s mouth was a grim line as his eyes took in the damage before him. The safe house was nothing but ashes and burnt wood. No one could have survived that. Well no one human. His people weren’t human. “No,” he said. “Check for survivors, Team Leader. Someone had to make it out alive”

The Handler beside him seemed to be holding his breath as they watched Team Foxtrot dig through the rubble. The War Room was deathly silent as they waited. Finally the Team Leader’s voice came through again, this time louder. “We found someone! Oh shit, it’s Grisha. Mathis, give me a hand! Come on, get him up… From the two portals Oogie could see very well the state Grisha was in as the young woman with dreads and large ginger man lifted his mangled body out from under a support beam.

“Get him back here,” Oogie said, though he knew he didn’t need to. Mathis’s portal staticked and buzzed off as he apparated away, probably appearing in the upper office a second later. Oogie sent some men to the upper office to help Mathis carry the injured man to the infirmary, where he had also sent Rohan, telling him to prepare Doc Holliday for the long, long operation ahead of them. Oogie remained in the War Room, watching Foxtrot collect bodies and whatever munitions and equipment they could salvage from the safe house. He knew sending Kilo to Italy was a risk, but the last thing he had expected was for a simple recon mission to turn so deadly. Someone had blown up the safe house and the kingpin wanted to know who.

Once Foxtrot was done, he had them burn the location and get rid of any evidence they were ever there. He and Brutus handled the debrief on Sublevel Two when Foxtrot finally made it back. The intel they had gathered from the burned site indicated that someone had tampered with it purposefully. Oogie listened carefully, his bony fingers steepling together as he considered just how much worse this mole hunt was going to get.  After debrief, Oogie went down to the infirmary, where Grisha was supposedly still in surgery. Two other members of the team had survived, though one was in a coma and the other had a broken leg from being tossed out a window.

Rohan quickly stepped into the hallway and beckoned for Oogie to come in. The skeleton tilted his head in surprise then walked in after the healer. Grisha was awake, and Oogie was disappointed in himself for being surprised. When Grisha smiled and greeted him, Oogie couldn’t help but smile back. He placed an inky hand on the two square inches of not-bloodied flesh on Grisha’s shoulder.

“You gave us quite the scare. Want to tell me what happened over there?”

His fingers scrambled against the too slick cover of the table he was laying on as he tried to grasp some semblance of balance. Grisha hurt. He’d been in pain before, and this was not the worst he’d experienced, but he hated this. He hated feeling like he’d been crushed under a building, too weak to protect himself. He was too weak to even buck out of his position, to climb into some open section of the room, away from all the eyes and the bodies towering around him. He felt the room crowding down on me, and his heartbeat began beating irregularly as he interposed stone and dirt walls around him. The room was getting smaller and smaller, and he puffed air out of his mouth, trying to breath in the oxygen. Wild light eyes focused on the Skeleton man in front of him, and all of the black on Oogie’s face blended into the background, and the man was just white lines and menace.

Before Grisha could even answer Oogie’s question, a molten white pain startled him into a pained scream as the Doc poured a healing potion into the gaping would in his shoulder. It hurt so badly that Grisha couldn’t even see 2 cm in front of him, much less focus on conversation. He gagged, letting his head fall heavily on the table, breathing through his mouth as the pain slowly faded, and he could literally feel his body sew itself back together from the inside out. He let out a soft whimper when the pain was bearable. Grisha let the pain haze fade away before he uncurled his hands, laying them flat beside himself. It took even a bit longer to turn so he was able to see the 2 new Oogie’s around the original one, and he laughed. It was raspy and hysterical, laced with a thickness that came from the blood he was spitting out.

“I’m t-tired of b-being surprised, Oogie…” Grisha’s laugh tapered off with a hiccup, but the smile remained. “N-None of these surprises come with a prize.” He should have been prepared. He should have thought of every contingency and situation, but he’d been too focused on getting home. Too focused on being somewhere that should have been safe, and depending on one mortal being that no matter how connected he was, couldn’t have his eyes everywhere. “My t-team…g-gone?” It was a statement and a question  mashed into one, as Grigoriy tried to be hopeful. Maybe the two he’d ran out with were still alive, though Grisha should have been able to save more.

“Italy is…quiet. Something happening.” He spat blood on the ground, prepared to continue, when the haze of one of those special spells that Doc was good for settled on him. A dopey euphoric smile appeared on Grigoriy’s face as the pain disappeared. He was numb, numb, numb, and he wanted to sing. A sing song cadence laced his words as he absently slipped into Bulgarian. “It’s empty. Nothing is beating. No crime in the streets. Gone gone gone…” He shivered as he felt the odd feeling of something being yanked out of his back, and blood slowly sliding down his side, but not feeling anything. He struggled to focus again, yanking him back into present more firmly. Slowly, as if he was placing every word in a particular place, sticking to English as much as he could, although Bulgarian words slipped in every so often.

“Something is sour in Italy. None of the big players are making move, like they are w-waiting for something. Anticipation…” He bobbed his head to the small melody that the word invoked. “No one talking…Didn’t want to make noise…couldn’t work like I work. Need someone better…” With that, he let his head slump on the bed, breath rattling, and coughing out blood. “Can’t..I can’t..”