Chapter Text
It all went to shit on a... quite a nice day, actually. No trash raining from the sky, no clouds of dust darkening the measly sunrays they manage to get down in this hellhole. At some point, one could hear an insistent whistling noise somewhere seemingly very far away and then Enjin was the first one in their group to point a finger upward where all their eyes followed. Zanka mindlessly heard Riyo mutter a "what the fuck" under her breath, as she was right beside him, and Rudo exclaiming something loudly somewhere to the far right.
There were missiles raining from the sky, their fiery trail visibly long, whistling noise becoming less and less easier to bear the closer they got. Countless of missiles, as far as the eye could see.
Zanka covered his ears, at some point. Somebody slammed into his shoulder, at some point. Somebody grabbed him by the arm, at some point. But it did not really matter.
When the missiles made it to land, the ground trembled violently, the buildings fell, and all Zanka could see through the dust of trash completely covering the area was his Assistaff, cluched by his chest like a lifeline.
Next thing he knew, something hard and heavy hit his back, his staff was pushed into his ribs painfully from gravity, and he was falling down and down and down. And down?... And then everything stopped and went black for a split second.
Or at least what seemed like a second to him.
When Zanka plied his dusty eyelashes open, he felt like shit. His eyes were so itchy he could barely keep them open, full of dust, as his mind supplied, his lungs stung and his head felt woozy. As he in fact could not see a single thing of significance in the darkness he was currently engulfed in, he moved his fingers slightly, just to make sure his limbs were working. Said fingers dug into a familiar trashy gravel and for a moment he thought, oh, so I'm not dead, words not sounding happy nor sad in his dazed head.
Right, assess the damage first. He pushed up from his spread hands with medium difficulty, coughing up from his dusty lungs as he did, until he was sitting on his knees with a hunched back, arms still providing support, palms digging into rough ground.
So, his shoulder was sprained. His right leg had weakness in it, although he could not yet tell if it was broken or merely bruised. His spine ached at the base, but not that much to cause immediate concern. His ribs were broken, on the left, the bottom two? Or three, he thought while gliding fingers on the spot on his skin where it hurt the most, pressing just a little to get a better feel. Shoulder and leg were from the fall, surely, back pain was easily explained by the wall of cement that so gracefully made him experience the said fall, and the ribs broke exactly where Assistaff had dug in--
Assistaff? His Lovely Assistaff, his vital instrument, was not in his hands, panic flooding him like a wave, seemingly nothing else was important at the moment. His palms searched blind in the gravel, the darkness around him not adding anything to help at all, and he realized he was holding his breath in his anxiousness by the way he blew out a deep sigh when fingers touched familiar wood on the ground.
She's here, his staff is here, and she broke his ribs and she was here and everything will be completely fine now, now that she's here. He pulled the staff close to him, running fingers blindly along her length, just to make sure she was whole. There were splinters that his fingers touched, but otherwise, Lovely Assistaff seemed to be in one piece, and the relief he felt at that moment was everything that still kept his mind sane. Sane enough.
Assess. He assessed the damage to the best of his capabilities and now the matter of... what the fuck had just happened. Zanka furrowed his brows, brain still sluggish, fingers still trailing on Assistaff's wood as a mental reminder that he is, in fact, still alive, even if his aching body seemed to imply otherwise. He activated his vital instrument, blue mist flowing into her to change her shape, and the dim light emitted from the staff made him see at least further than a noselenght like before.
He looked up - there was a ceiling alright, or at least something that classified as that, no natural light coming from up top. There were walls around him - nature-made, uneven and rocky, and he realized that he was indeed in a hole, again, like so many times literally and mentally in his youth. He would've laughed from the absurdity if not for his broken ribs making his weak chuckle disappear into a series of coughs.
The area he had fallen into was not that big or deep and so he reached over to grab onto a wall as a support as he pulled himself upward, Assistaff clenched like a crutch in his other hand. So all that was actually broken was his ribs, right leg apparently good enough to carry his weight. He still limped a little when he followed the wall, walking forward to see better in front of him.
Zanka heard a brief whistle of wind coming from somewhere in a corner, near the roof of this strange cave and dragged himself towards it, looking up. There was no apparent exit yet, but as he raised his staff to poke at the rocks above, some came undone and pettered onto the ground and his hair. Ah, so a weakpoint! Stepping a bit away, he poked it harder until bigger pieces of rocks came apart and he gnawed at the spot with his vital instrument until he made a small, albeit appropriately sized hole in the ceiling, natural light making him blink wildly.
Now it was just the matter of acrobatics, and with his trusty staff at his side, Zanka made short work of the small leap, hands grabbing onto the sides of the hole and pushing himself up, adrenaline kicking in for a second as he realized that this was it, this is how everyone will see him, crawling out of a hole by himself where he was almost buried alive.
Only... As he sat on his butt with a huff from exertion, on the surface now. There was.... nothing. He eyed his surroundings with half-closed eyes still, not used to the natural light, only to find absolutely nothing. No Cleaners HQ, no Enjin, no Riyo, no Rudo, even, just a plain old dusty field of rubble, familiar gravely sand under his fingertips, and... nothing else.
Realization has not hit him yet fully, it seemed. Zanka was still thinking logically at this point - maybe the blows have blasted him somewhere further? Maybe the rubble to his right was just random trash, and not the Cleaners HQ completely flattened? But as he looked around fully, wind picking up quite dramatically to ruffle his still-intact earrings and hair, there was nothing of significance to see among the dust and the plains of absolutely nothing but gravel, trash and rubble.
Oh, he thought, fingers subconsciously clenching on Assistaff on his lap. This was not a dream after all.