Dark Crow Rising

"GAME OVER!" the console yells and I slot my controller back into the frame.

Glancing over to Nin, my expression hardens, "Are you ready to talk, now?"

"Fine..." he goes as he firmly places the fun times away.

"I saw you were getting quite hot and bothered over those hostages in the game," I say and he steps back, trying to hide his gaze, "Before you became an osibindah, something to do with them happened?"

He nods, "Uh... Well... Me and a few others spent our time trapped in a camp we made out of the wreckage of some brass-coloured vehicle. And well, they managed to escape but I didn't."

"They left you?" I ask and he shakes his head, though, not with much conviction.

"I don't know... Vapooliar, the one who fought off this bug in a suit of rusty, crushed helmets... She didn't kill it, but the thing nearly killed her and I threw her away before it could. Only I ended up being swallowed into the caves deep underneath the ground."

"That's very impressive, Nin." I remark with a supporting nod, however, his face contorts and his voice hisses.

"Impressive!? I just let myself get captured, experimented on! If I hadn't been turned into one already by that point, it was then that I became what I became!"

"No, not that, the fact your instinct was to save someone else." I point out, hoping the good deed will calm him down.

"Not like it mattered..." he mutters.

"And why is that? Saving someone else's life is always something to be admired." I remind him in the event he is forgetting such a fact.

"Because when I finally got out, you know, after days and nights of having to kill my... I passed all these different creatures, many of which were children. I could've helped, I had the strength to do so, a magic little beetle in my grip! But, I didn't... You want to know what I did?"

"What did you do?" I ask so we can move along meaningfully.

"DO YOU WANT TO KNOW!? NOTHING! -NOTHING!- I MADE MY TUNNEL AND GOT OUT ON MY OWN, I TRIED TO FORCE THEM BACK DOWN INTO THAT HOLE!" he howls with increasing frantic distress. Moving my arse off the game machine, I walk up to him and place my hand on his shoulder. Hiding the rise in my fingers, I ward off my peeking siblings.

They need to leave us be and let me handle it.

"So you blame yourself for not being able to help them?"

"No... That's not it, because what happened afterwards is that everyone started calling me a hero. Champion Nin! Saviour of dozens and some unborn seed, bloody thing!" he seethes with heated blood.

"Why does this bother you, Nin? You went back and did the right thing." I say, using only what I know right now.

"But I didn't... I ran away, when I couldn't get them back into the hive, I ran. I leapt as high as these magic-rich legs could get me. Only to find myself facing the bugs again... It beat me bloody and nearly killed me then and there. Which, frankly, I should've let it done so in hindsight."

"Do not say such things." I firmly say with a shake of my head.

"Or what!? You'll kill me!? I'M ALREADY DEAD, GOD!" he blares in my face and my expression does not change.

"You may not be living anymore, Nin, but so long as everything up here works," I start to say as I tap his head before poking his chest, "So long as here still feels, you are alive."

"Hogwash..." he spits as he tries to overpower the divine power holding these arcade machines together. He suddenly kicks one of the motorcycle toys and it wobbles, unaffected but shaken.

"Nin, from what you have told me, there is nothing to be bothered about. You helped these people at the end of the day."

"I trailed behind them with bruises and bleeding cuts. I put them on a log after they had all fallen until their people found me. I did not save anyone... I didn't do anything right that night but they all still called me 'Champion' once I was awake."

I nod as he sighs.

"Then after all of it, all that praise... I die as a monster. Right after I was in the process of doing something horrible to a pestering, but ultimately well-meaning woman..." he groans as he walks around to some of the other machines. Following after him, we arrive at a claw machine filled with stuffed animals.

"How about we work out some of this anger?" I suggest as I do a careless grab for a prize, ending up with nothing in the end.

"So how does this one work?" he asks as he stares into the claw machine's on-view bounty. I smile a little at reality's greatest annoyance, a money-grubbing claw machine...

Opening my mouth to explain, a joyful little thing bounds into the room, barging past me.

"Oh! Oh! OH! I want to teach him how to use this one!" Clohniq squawks as she also knocks Nin down to the ground before her mouth just goes off on one. By the time the blurry, unintelligible mess of words ends, she is already holding a prize. Nin, who hasn't even got back to his feet, frowns with a twitching nose.

I help the mortal up as I stare at the back of my obnoxious, bratty sister.

"Wow, so helpful." Nin remarks sarcastically as Clohniq shows off the stuffed octopus that is now in her hands. Made up of two colours, the currently external pink fur carries on it a blushing smiley face. While its blue underside likely reveals a grumpy mood. Clohniq notices our shared mood and she nervously chuckles as she switches the octopus inside out.

I push her away by the head and she pouts before a huff of annoyance escapes. Needlessly dramatic in her departure, she storms off to back from whence she came. Or, rather, she's now behind us, silently watching with a mouth loaded with back-seat remarks. Our elder brother then also happens to walk in, in a rare moment of showing interest in something other than his forge.

The God of Thunder immediately sets himself up at the whack-a-mole and gets to it. Though, what he intends to do, I do not know. The high score is his, the scoreboard is full of his attempts and he's already broken the machine once by playing it for too long. How in all of reality is he still entertained by a little squeaky duck hammer and heads to bonk?

"So this is to go up... This is to go across-" I start to explain to Nin once the red button has been pushed.

"And that is to move the claw itself!" Clohniq interjects as she suddenly climbs over my back to then desperately reach for the buttons.

"Let him figure it out on his own!" I snap gently as I pull her back slightly, though awkwardly.

My eyes return to the human soul as he tries to get the claw to go down onto one of the larger toys. One whose label has been pried open over the years of it being in there or maybe Dad is toying with us. Initially, it seems to work, one of the three hooks goes through the gap and the other two secure themselves well. The toy rises and nears the exit, only for the claw to suddenly jolt and drop the toy in an unassailable spot.

"What in the actual...!?" Nin groans with a bullish snort as he is introduced to the pain of greedy arcade gimmicks. Dad is the one responsible, of course, he loves seeing us whine about the unfairness of it. He's always keeping an eye on this room, making us suffer with our time.

"No... Not like that, like this!" Clohniq goes as she barges past again, shoving him aside once again so she can win... Again. Grabbing my sister's arm as she reaches for the prize, I hoist her up at an odd angle and gently smack the back of her head.

"Hmmmmmmm..." Nin lets out lengthily as his foot eases the pressure his anger is placing on his mind. The human strokes his chin and leans towards the glass, eyeing one toy in particular by the looks of it. A goal is forming, one focused on a stuffed tomato with little leafy limbs.

The control sticks click as they are wiggled about with the music playing as the conveyor belt moves slowly. The grapple stops and swings, steadily, it comes to a halt and then Nin stamps the call to action. A firm grip grasps the toy. It falls right on the divider.

"STUPID BLOODY MACHINE!" Nin roars as he smashes its side, tilting the machine before the toy can fall back in.

It goes down the shoot.

"Yay..." Nin lets out, exhausted by the simple game.

I smile at him as he pulls the toy out of the rewards bin and he feels its fuzzy fur. His mouth comes to life with swears and complaints and he starts to walk. Following after him a different way, I try to interfere with my brother by patting his electric back, though my focus is on Nin. Who, in his growing annoyance over the toy, cannot help but hold it tighter.