V5 Incline 21: Osibindah Nin

"GO BACK TO YOUR CAVES, BUG!" someone shouts, breaking through the sounds of an otherwise maliciously jeering crowd. I watch the crowd open up, an object flying at me.

It hits me.

Shattering across my face with a crack that feels too close to home. I bark in pain, staggering back with a dull blink. One of the guards behind me steps ahead, shoving me back to where I was with no regard for my footing. I stagger ahead, almost falling...

A firm slam of the foot stops me from moving anymore. Pants part my lips and I find my solid, reliable footing. Straightening up, I try to keep the firmness that kept me upright. However, with each step I fail to make, the guards behind me are able to do.

"Keep moving!" one directly behind me snaps, the rear of his rifle slamming straight into my lower half. I keel to the blow, staggering the direction he knocks me, and I twitch his way. A glare forms around my eyes, and it disappears in time with the smirk growing on his lips. His hands flex their entirety about his gun, doing so much to remind me of what he has without a word.

With so little justification, he can point the barrel right at me. Not like how he and the others have been up until this point. They will point to kill. It's a frail path I walk indeed... And I'm going to break before it will?

What makes it all the worse, though, is how I've been given such explicit orders to never raise my claws at all. Any slight rise in my arms and they will open fire. Any growl and they will open fire. Anything and they will open fire.

All I can do is take every bit of abuse literally thrown at me as I walk. Yet, for all these stones, little magical bolts and other items... Even the blades that have been drawn on me to cut at the gaps between my carapace... All this abuse drawing out small amounts of my sickly yellow blood... Nowhere near enough of it in their eyes... Yet... Yet...

The words bother me far more.

I've no means to act out on the anger that's boiling inside of me. The symbols of safety themselves are cheering it on in all their manipulative and cruel bigotry. I need to stay calm and collected in a loose sense of everything about the two words. There's irony in my safety... I need to put myself in danger to keep myself away from greater endangerment. Some skin... Or, my life?

If I fail at all, they'll shoot me here and now. They'll kill me and the world around me will cheer as I bleed out across the cobblestone. A death I will have done nothing to deserve other than being something I can do nothing about. I'm a monster, that's all that matters to these vile excuses for people. I never decided to be an osibindah, and yet they act as if I chose to be a monster, regardless.

In a way... Fairness and facts of it be damned... I can't help but feel anger towards Frihdeicalkbr. I am only here because of him, and it's that painful double-edged blade again. Some skin... Or, my life.

'Here, let me keep you alive so I can study you and expand our knowledge!'

That's the gist of why I'm still about. Yet here I am, out for a while in public, and he's nowhere to be seen at all. I know for an indisputable fact he's a part of those who decided this for me. Under what principle does a man come up to me... Saying he's helping me for his own selfish, knowledge-seeking goals and... And...

Only to then disappear and leave me in a situation where everyone is doing everything they can to provoke me!? What right did he have to fill me with a false sense of security!? He can't study me if I'm dead! He can't do anything with me if I'm a fist-sized hole's loss from being alive!

But... It's pointless to complain to him. In my head or otherwise. Even if he did his hardest to make as strong of a claim as he could for my life, something in my favour. There'd be no way he could push through the meaningful stuff when everyone else is against me through no fault of my own.

Hideously presumptuous as it is for me to do, I don't think many, if any, here are willing to look at this from a pragmatic mindset. After all, why would they? An osibindah is an osibindah. Of course, I'm just making baseless guesses, I'm sure I can find someone in this crowd to help me out...

"Ah..." I let out quietly, recognising the pain that rock really put into me. I raise a claw to touch the wound, wiping some of the blood away and even some of my shell. Somehow, I manage to hear it dribble on the path.

"LOOK OUT! THE BUG IS RAISING ITS CLAWS!" an insufferable guffaw rings out. A shot goes right on by, blowing a chunk of the path out from under me. I leap ahead, falling to the floor as the smell of my burning blood catches in my nose. I look up and around, eyes as wide as they will ever go to find...

Laughter. Laughter. Pointing fingers. Cruel smiles.

I can't stop myself from jittering from my place on the floor. Where they think I belong. My claws press against the floor, pushing me along so I can find my footing as items hit my back. I get up with a frown, fists clenching palm-scratchingly tight.

"FIRE!" a guard shouts, firing off his gun again. Nothing breaks apart around me, but I still flinch. The mass wave of laughter comes back as I get back to walking again.

The anger swells up inside of me begging me with all it has for a chance to kill at least one of them. It burns me, making me sweat in a way that shouldn't be possible. I'm red-faced in a way that no one should ever have to be and... It stops... A dull misery takes over, and I take in a deep breath.

And I sigh...