𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄

ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴᴛʏ - ᴇɪɢʜᴛ

The person that could mend the wound in his soul enough to at least allow him to stand back on two feet and proudly live on for the both of them—him in material figure, and her in his soul.

Nico fucking De La Vega.

Isaac's eyebrows furrowed deeper on his face as he climbed to a strong standing stance and watched as his blonde hair, wet and stringy, flopped through the warehouse's dim lights. Just as he managed to reach the other side of this deserted lower-level floor, he stole a look over his shoulder; those same manic black eyes danced a sonata of glee in his direction.

It was all it took for the rage in him to bubble over once more.

Curling his fingers into fists so tight, his nails burrowed under the first layer of skin, he sprinted directly toward him, aiming to do nothing more than end his miserable life. What Nico hadn't been expecting when he decided to toy with him was a locked wooden door and no escape.

He knew this was his vantage point.

Lowering his shoulder, Isaac stored up all the courage and strength he had left in his feeble body and pushed the sharp bone right into the center of his abdomen. A splurge of a grated noise exited the back of his throat disgustingly as the door snapped off his hinges and slammed backward. Splinters stung the parts of his body that weren't protected by the man underneath him at the same time his knees rubbed raw with pain as they'd dragged just as long against the ground.

Nico's opinion on the fight must have taken a turn between the ten seconds it took for him to shoot a teasing glance in his face and to be against the broken door right now because his demeanor switched faster than Isaac could muster a counterattack.

"If it's a fight you want," Nico grunted, grabbing his shirt, "—then it'll make sure to kill you!"

He launched Isaac across the way with the bare strength of his fingers and wrists, pulling himself free from the trap he'd just placed him in. He rose to his knees, buried under remorse and hatred as he glared at his enemy—he, who was ripping splinters from the back of his arms.

"Between the two of us, it is you who will never see daylight again," he spit to the side.

"That's a lot of talk coming from the same man I took down with a breath of air just a few months ago," Nico mocked him, standing tall.

"Things are different now."

Isaac stood up as he cackled a frantic laughter.

"How so?—is it because daddy and wifey are no longer around?"

"Don't you dare—!"

"Don't worry," he cut him off, grinning ear to ear, "Unlike daddy dearest, I plan to take you out quickly and rejoin with the group. How do you like your body?—sliced like this, too?"

The red pulsing behind his eyes was increasing at a rate he couldn't hope to control. His breathing ran ragged and it felt like every single limb, every muscle, every fiber, every tendon—every goddamn fucking cell in his body was on fire—blue with rage and heat.

He wanted nothing more than to articulately kill this sorry excuse for a man before him, but the anger was fusing with the ambiance of the room and he was slipping further and further from rationality and deeper and deeper into darkness.

The place he went when he needed to kill was no longer a room in his mind that he kept locked, but was now a mansion with free range. A building based on a foundation of pain and anguish—a tower constructed on force and drive without the desire to be desecrated.

"Breaking you was the easy part," Nico's hyena-like structure continued, "It's the destroying you at the end that I find a tad difficult. But I choose to pay no mind to it—after all, you are just the helpless member of a team you never truly belonged to."