Chapter Text
Zanka was blessed.
Blessed with many gifts.
He was blessed to still be alive despite his limited reach; blessed to recognize the chains of his failures and falls. Blessed to be a mere speck, for once being a peer to geniuses and the elite. He never needed anyone to remind him of that. He never needed an external voice to define him or carve out his place; that was his job alone, and he mastered it with a painful, ruthless precision. Riyo often told him he was harder on himself than the world could ever be—and she was likely right. Zanka hated how easily her words rang true.
Zanka was blessed with Enjin, blessed with Riyo, and sometimes, he even dared to say he was blessed with Rudo.
Blessed with the Cleaners, and blessed with Lovely Assistaff. But the thing about blessings is that they wither—especially when the owner doesn't deserve them. Zanka was blessed with the knowledge of this; the knowledge of their approaching end.
Now, Zanka was blessed with Enjin, waving from above the Pit. Extending ropes of hope and praise, or screaming his name as if an exit were possible. Now, Zanka was blessed with Riyo, who never ceased watering his barren land with kinship and love. Zanka was blessed with Lovely Assistaff more than anything else, and there she was—his beloved staff—three feet away, glowing, vibrating, and agonizing just as he was, while Jabber danced around her, and around him.
"Strychnine," Jabber sang in other rhymes. "Amphetamine... guillotine... unclean... obscene... spleen."
Zanka was not sure if Jabber even existed. He was more disoriented and lost than usual, exhausted, feeling his soul being crushed—if such a thing were possible. Everything... was there. And at the same time—it wasn’t.
He was far from grasping anything in the present moment. He felt a massive surge pulsing in his brain; every nerve in his system screamed for him to stand on his throbbing legs. His heart hammered with violent force, pumping his tainted blood to every limb. He felt his muscles contract and twist, bending under the stones of the Pit’s wall... The Pit. Always returning to the Pit.
His vision blurred as Jabber continued his singing in a hideous, discordant voice: "Datura... rapture... torture... creature."
His eyes kept twitching, drowning in sweat, blood, and small pebbles that grew larger and larger as they were thrown by—Jabber? No, that’s not Jabber’s face. Not his voice. Jabber doesn’t have wild blonde hair—Enjin! Why would he do this? Why would Enjin hurt him? Why was Zanka in the hole in the first place? He had escaped from it years ago; he had made sure it would not exist in his future... Why does it keep coming back to him? Is the well his real Jinki, chasing him to finally crush him in its depths? To put him where he has belonged from the beginning: the bottom.
"You could have done better!"
"Why are you slacking? Why are you bowing?!"
"What are you?! Who are you?!"
Zanka never thought he’d hate Enjin’s voice like this, but its overlap with Jabber’s screams made his nerves collapse under the weight of the toxins faster than he cared to admit. He wanted to silence them—the voices, the screams, the nonsense they threw at him as if he didn't already know. He could no longer tell who was throwing what; the walls of his trust in his own mind had crumbled.
"Oh, Zanka, you can't go and leave me now! You can't—the waves of euphoria are still on their way to you, you must be patient." Zanka trembled as Jabber’s face swelled, hovering right against his sweaty face. Jabber flashed a jagged smile, baring four long fangs capped with spiked metal rings. "Come on, Zanka! Leap, leap! Come on, we have all day! Leap, leap—
Jabber’s cheers were cut short by the teeth of Lovely Assistaff, piercing his shoulder. She was still vibrating, blinking with her usual blue aura, but she was unstable—just as Zanka himself was unstable.
The contractions stopped, leaving only the sting in his bones, but he could finally grip Lovely firmly. His vision remained a fragmented mess.
Jabber appeared in his cropped purple jacket, swaying as blood leaked from his shoulder, while Mankira's claws grew from his knuckles. Enjin appeared with his tattered umbrella on his shoulder, fading in a way that felt unnatural.
Zanka wheezed, cursing every blessing.
Because of these blessings, he was here—poisoned, exhausted, a mad prey refusing a merciful death. Blessed here and now for his staggering stance. Blessed by the stability of Lovely, which he drove into the dirt with every ounce of self-control.
Zanka leaned on Lovely as if she were the only stake preventing him from drifting away—and she was. Here, in the forgotten "Edges of Ruin" far from the walls of Canvas City, where the toxic dusk air mingled with the smell of rust and organic waste, Zanka had already completed his mission. The corpses of mid-sized Garbage Monsters lay around him, cold and lifeless. He had purged the place with a speed and efficiency that wouldn't interest anyone, but to him, it was the "Final Act."
He had insisted on coming alone, not out of bravery, but because he was searching for "salvation" in the isolation of this place. He wanted this routine mission to be the door he quietly closed behind him. He didn't expect to meet Jabber here. This wasteland wasn't part of their usual appointments—those monthly skirmishes disguised as "mutual training" and a desire for growth, where they traded blows in the dark corners of Canvas City, testing each other's limits in a surreal dance of pleasure and distinction.
But fate—or perhaps Zanka’s own "well"—refused to let it end quietly. Jabber’s sudden appearance amidst the polluted fog, with that laugh Zanka knew from his dreams, turned "quiet salvation" into a "final explosion."
Without a conscious decision—he let go.
Heat surged through his limbs like blind sparks, and his body was pulled forward before his mind could catch up. The ground became lighter, the air heavier, and every sound became a sharp edge guiding him and stabbing him all at once. He stepped—he leaped—and the scene fractured into overlapping shots... Jabber in front of him, Jabber to his left, Jabber behind him... or his ghosts. He saw Enjin’s face and the smoke of his cigarette; he saw Riyo’s high red braids, but they weren't here. They were in the false safety of the city, while Zanka was here, blessed by his pride and naivety, and finally blessed by a coincidence that placed his favorite rival in the path of his departure.
He didn't care because he couldn't care. Caring meant focus, a luxury he couldn't afford. He let his body choose—his only choices were to freeze, to fight, or to unravel. So he let himself flow, keeping his consciousness on autopilot.
A first strike sliced through the air with unfamiliar speed. It wasn't Zanka's doing, but Jabber's laughter rose as he dodged, rolling backward. A second strike, more surreal than the last—Lovely turned mid-air to catch a shoulder movement he didn't see but "felt"
A third came harsh, exaggerated, as if trying to prove something to someone who wasn't there. And it did; Zanka was hypersensitive now, catching Jabber’s pained—yet laughing—hiss. Lovely shook in his hands, both leading and resisting him. She was scorching hot, yet he felt no burn. Even if she did, Zanka would have clung to her.
Zanka turned surrealistically, following the happy groans behind him. His eyes met Jabber, crouching beneath Lovely, which Zanka had driven into the ground for a second—then ripped out with violent force as if the base had become one of his own nerves. He raised it high and slammed it again into Jabber’s shoulder, who offered no resistance.
"Zan-Zan, it’s working... It’s working!! Oh, the thrill! Look... look at you, pure madness!" Jabber laughed, gasping as Lovely’s vibrating teeth carved holes in his dirty jacket. Mankira extended slowly toward him—which made no sense; Mankira was never slow, nor was her owner. His senses must be failing him, or reality was melting, because the claws settled into his side again without him seeing them.
"It’s new... my new sacred blend of my precious plants, Zan~ka, tell me, tell me, does it burn? Do you burn" Jabber cried out, shouting as Zanka retreated with staggering steps, sliding down the length of Lovely. His tongue was numb, but his neural pathways cursed Jabber with a visceral hatred.
"Come on, Zan-Zan, let yourself go, let us dance—" Jabber’s sentence was cut short as he slipped away from Lovely’s teeth with rapid, hyena-like laughs. "It’s a new mix, I haven't tried it myself... it's quite special... for someone special, and the honor is all yours, Zan-Zan! Mankira felt you, can you believe that?!"
Zanka spat a mouthful of sour, foamy white saliva, stained with blood, which sparked Jabber’s laughter again. "It’s working! It’s working, Zan-Zan! Finally, you won't hold yourself back with me. We’ll have a real fight at last!"
Zanka’s vision was a mess; shapes danced and spun, colors bleeding and warping. It took Zanka longer than he wanted to admit to process Jabber’s words.
Won't hold back.
It’s working.
A real fight at last.
Real!
Jabber had poisoned him to push him past limits he knew he shouldn't cross—because he wasn't a genius or special. He wasn't capable of it in the first place! Jabber poisoned him because he thought Zanka had been holding back in their previous fights, while in reality, Zanka had given everything he had. Jabber poisoned him because he was a worn-out rag; because Jabber thought he was stronger than he was.
Zanka had never wanted to kill anyone as much as he did now.
He wheezed faster, dodging with a difficulty his former, sane self would envy. Now, he was in the depths of merciless surges of adrenaline. He gripped Lovely, raised her as high as he could, and brought her down, parrying the right Mankira claw as Jabber’s laughter escalated. Zanka felt the rush—the counterfeit control. He felt every artery in his body pulsing and burning, attributing the heat to the intensity of his fight with this foul hyena who swayed and danced as if fighting Zanka was the easiest, most delightful thing in the world.
Zanka didn't know what was being pumped into his veins, but he felt an animalistic ferocity unbefitting of him; he wanted to flay Jabber’s neck, to stab him with Mankira’s own claws after killing him.
Zanka wanted him.
Zanka needed him to be dead.
"Bless me with his death and bless me with nothing else," his vile inner voice screamed.
Zanka was faster now. He was sharper—to the point of danger and madness. He shook his head as he landed another blow on Jabber’s blood-soaked shoulder.
"Look at you... You’re mad, you’re mad!"
Jabber didn't give him a moment before lunging again, targeting Zanka’s wounded side. Zanka leaned back half a step, letting the claw pass near his ribs, and in the same motion, pushed his body forward into the gap. Lovely descended from above—not where he saw him, but where he felt him—and metal struck real flesh with a muffled thud.
But instead of Jabber’s gasps and jagged smile, he saw red braids clinging to trembling cheeks and a small smile his soul knew better than his eyes—Riyo. Zanka gasped in horror as Riyo laughed with a loud, mad voice. He raised Lovely quickly, panicked. "No— Zan-Zan, why—" The scene went black before Riyo vanished as quickly as she appeared, replaced by Rudo with his scowling expression, pinned to the ground but soon erupting in a resonant laugh as his form blurred. Zanka’s mind was playing with him—impossible—he would never hurt them.
Jabber’s gasping laugh returned as he slipped from the vibrating fangs of Lovely. "Ah... this is the best part..." He didn't finish, for a cold, steady shadow lunged at him faster than it should. Enjin. The voice cutting through his head
"You could have done better. Why are you retreating, Zanka!" Zanka didn't retreat. There was no longer a place to retreat to.
"STOP!" Zanka screamed madly, raising Lovely in a slow, wrong motion and broken timing. "Stop... stop!" He struck—a blow that wasn't for Enjin, for Zanka was too confused—but its pain was real. He laughed or coughed, it made no difference. He was no longer fighting to hit, but to stay standing between the blows, half a breath before suffocation. In that narrow space where illusion intersects with flesh, he no longer knew who was attacking him; all he knew was that every strike that kept him upright pushed him one step deeper into the Pit.
"Finally..." Jabber’s voice, the real Jabber, came faintly... closer than it should. "Now, I see you."
They both went still, panting, staring at each other. Jabber’s red eyes throbbed, staring with a longing toward Zanka, who was gripping the side of his head with immense force, trying to erase the hallucinations—the memory of pinning Riyo and Rudo under Lovely, the memory of crushing Enjin’s skull moments ago. Zanka felt his strength fading; the fire he felt inside began to wither, while Jabber grew more excited, licking whatever was on the tips of the Mankira's claws.
"Jab" The Raider's name left his mouth with bitterness. He wasn't sure if it was from the toxins or from his bitterness toward the smiling young man. It wasn't a call. It was an invitation to join him...
He took a measured step, and Jabber made no counter-move—not to dodge, but to ensure the collision. Lovely lowered, then rose, and Mankira came to meet her in the middle. The sound of grinding metal filled the air. He didn't try to be sharper. He tried to be closer. The pain was mutual—and that was enough. It was desired.
"Come..." he whispered, his voice cracked, "If you’re going to see me... then come with me." Jabber laughed, but this time his laugh was shorter, narrower, as if it had found an edge that wasn't there before.
"Oh~ Zanka, you make me feel so thrilled with these little speeches... let us fight to the death!"
The clash between them continued back and forth with no intention of changing direction. Each of their goals loomed in the sparks of the collision: to slit the other’s throat, to drop him, to bleed him... to bring him to salvation. Zanka's hopes were high; he felt superior, capable, feeling all the blessings he had cursed before. He felt salvation approaching—
Then, Zanka fell.
Not dramatically. He fell like someone having the rug pulled from under them—quickly, with a stupid weight, face-first into the dirt. Lovely hit the ground beside him, wobbled, then her flame died out. Jabber’s laugh—if it was a laugh—followed.
All he heard was his pulse... every beat: Failure. Failure. Failure. Arrogant. Reckless. Foolish. Reckless. Hopeful. Ordinary.
"Is this it?!" Zanka heard the disappointment in the young man's voice above him. "This wasn't what I expected from you! Why do you keep suppressing your power like this, Zan-Zan, even after I gave you my sacred doses! You disappoint me once again."
Zanka didn't move. Not because he didn't want to—but because his body... no longer obeyed him. The spasms returned. His fingers closed around the dirt instead of Lovely, his nails digging in aimlessly. The air became too heavy to pull. And the voices—they didn't disappear.
"You never learn." Enjin.
"You always overdo it." Riyo.
All of them are above him. All of them... right.
Jabber’s shadow finally moved, slowly, with just one step enough to stand over him. “Is this it?” he whispered, his voice disturbingly calm. “This… is you.” Zanka did not raise his head. He was consumed by shame, despair, and exhaustion. There was nothing left to see but the grains of dirt clinging to his tainted white saliva. He spat out what remained of the bitterness in his mouth. With a muffled laugh, like the hiss of a dying snake—he wasn't a snake; a snake is fluid and clever, and he was not—his body began to shake. These were not the spasms of the poison; it was a laugh starting from the depths of his pit, coming out cracked, humiliated, and broken.
"So..." his voice emerged as a whisper, "You are disappointed..." He slowly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes not seeking a fight, but looking at Jabber with a cold pity that froze the Raider's excitement. "Your disappointment... is the only truth your poisons haven't faked, Jabber." Zanka leaned on his palms. He fell and stumbled, his arms buckling weakly a few times until he could dig his nails into the ground and lift his torso with an effort that felt like lifting a mountain. "You didn't understand... did you? All those powers you thought I was holding back... that monster you were waiting for..." Zanka coughed violently, blood spattering the dirt, but he did not back down.
"This is it. There is no monster behind this collapse. I am not a genius hiding in the shadows of weakness. I am not like you—I am not what your sick mind expects—I am suppression itself, manifested before you. I am not blessed with hidden talents... I am only blessed because I knew my limits and accepted them... while you were fighting a mirage created by your imagination of me."
Jabber's eyes widened, becoming uncomfortably serious. Mankira seemed to stagger for a second. The suicidal honesty in Zanka's words was stronger than any poison. He had stolen the "thrill of the challenge"; for what is the point of conquering someone who admits they are already conquered? "I am your disappointment?, Jabber. And you... You are just a fool screaming into an empty well, waiting for a full bucket that will never come."
In that moment, Zanka felt something break inside Jabber. A heavy silence fell, broken only by Jabber's sudden, steady breathing. The cheap rhymes were gone. Mankira’s claws lost their aggressive luster, hanging limply by his side like dead limbs. Jabber tilted his head slightly, like a bird watching a corpse, then slowly knelt before the broken Zanka. His face, once a canvas of loud madness, was now pale, devoid of any expression except deep, dry disappointment.
"A full bucket..." Jabber muttered, as if tasting the words with a numb tongue. He reached out his hand, and with a sudden, unsettling movement, grabbed Zanka's chin and forced him to look at him. "Do you know what is worse than fighting to the death, Zan-Zan?" he whispered. "It is discovering that you were pouring your soul into stabbing a straw pillow. I thought you were a cellar full of treasures and pleasures, and I was ready to burn myself just to see the light you would release, Zan~ka. Is this how you repay me?... To be content with your poverty. I expected much from you, Zanka. You are breaking my heart."
Jabber laughed a short, dry laugh. "Do you know what is truly disgusting, Zan-Zan?" he whispered, his voice now sharp as a rusty knife. "That you are not just a disappointment... but that you dared to show this filth before me, making me believe you were special. You have tainted my fight. Tainted my image of you with these pathetic limits of yours."
Jabber squeezed Zanka's jaw with a sudden force that made his facial bones scream, leaning in until their eyes met in zero distance. "If you are just an ordinary insect that knows its place..." Jabber's tone shifted from disappointment to black hatred, "Insects are crushed simply because their existence has become nauseating. Sometimes I taxidermize them and take them apart; perhaps I will do this to you as a memory of the pleasant illusions you caused me. You were a special illusion to me, Zanka."
Jabber did not pull away. Instead, he began to laugh a low, hysterical laugh while the Mankira claws on his knuckles trembled as if preparing to tear something for the last time. "I will kill you now. Not because you are a worthy opponent—though I truly enjoyed fighting you—but to erase this truth you spoke. I will kill you as an act of cleaning this place—do you get the joke? Because you are a cleaner, I will do the cleaning—"
In that moment, amidst the fog of poison and pain, Zanka felt something move inside him. It wasn’t "genius," as Jabber wanted, but the final instinct of someone with nothing left to lose. Zanka's hand, which had been digging its nails into the dirt, was no longer doing so just out of weakness; it was clinging to the last pulse of pride he had left. It was no longer about who was stronger, but who would drag the other to the bottom of the pit first.
Zanka was here to complete the blessings. For salvation. Zanka refused to fall first—not like this, not after Jabber’s little speech that wiped the floor with his pride. He raised his heavy gaze. His fingers paused for a moment over Lovely's handle, then closed around it.
Everything shattered in that instant. No more distance, no more logic. "You talk too much," Zanka whispered.
"For someone who is going to die like me." In the moment Jabber's features changed—not in fear, but in late realization—Zanka pulled Lovely toward him with everything left in him. Not to stand, not to win, but to close the final distance between them. "I'm taking you with me." He slammed the staff into Jabber's knees as he knelt before him. It wasn't a powerful blow by combat standards, but it was decisive by the standards of despair. Jabber's knee shattered, and the Raider fell forward, losing his balance, crashing into Zanka's chest as if his body had finally answered the call he hadn't understood until it was too late. In that moment, they were no longer fighters; they were a single mass of torn flesh and burning breath. Salvation. Salvation.
A muffled gasp escaped Jabber, a mixture of pain and twisted pleasure, but it was cut short when he saw something in Zanka's eyes he had never seen before. Zanka was no longer the "cleaner" trying to maintain his limits. He was something mean, violent with a primitively Jabber hadn't anticipated. By blind instinct, the Mankira claws sank into Zanka's side, but Zanka did not back away; instead, he pushed his body over the claw to get closer, grabbing Jabber's neck with his free hand like an iron collar. Zanka's stabs with Lovely were not calculated; they were a continuous mauling, stabbing him again and again, sinking her teeth into Jabber's chest and ripping them out with a cruelty that made the flesh scream.
Jabber felt something like fear for the first time; fear of the monster he had awakened, yet he felt a thrill he couldn't suppress. He tried to push his claws through Zanka's chest, but Zanka had turned the tables; he pinned Jabber with suicidal force, pressing his elbow against his throat, gripping control in this final death dance. "Look..." Zanka's hiss in Jabber's ear was like tearing paper, "There is no pit... and there is no bottom... We are the ground now." Jabber laughed his final laugh, choked with blood. "We are... a joke... ugly... Zan-Zan..."
With hands trembling from adrenaline and hate, Zanka plunged Lovely for the last time deep enough to crush Jabber's ribs, at the same moment Jabber, in a desperate move, pushed his claws to pierce Zanka's heart. Both bodies shook together, not with a poison tremor, but with the earthquake of departing souls.
Everything went still. Despite the blood covering their faces, Jabber leaned his head weakly toward Zanka's ear, and in a voice stripped of all performance, said with honest weakness: "You know, Zan-Zan... despite all this filth... this life isn't worth living without you."
Zanka's body shook. It wasn't Jabber's stab that pained him in that moment, but the sentence itself; a final admission that they were, in a grotesque and humiliating way, tied to each other. Jabber found in him the only thrill worth burning for, and Zanka spent his short life trying to become more than ordinary, just to reach this body, this madness, this death—this salvation. Zanka smiled for the last time, feeling his heart slow down. He pressed his stained hand on Jabber's shoulder, not to push him away, but to hold him in place, to ensure they would leave together. "Then..." his voice came out raspy, "Let's go... and don't leave me... there."
The vision began to fade. Jabber's features disappeared, Lovely disappeared. Even the Pit that had haunted him finally grew still. There was no Enjin calling him, no Riyo scolding him, no Rudo laughing. In those final seconds, Zanka felt no fear. He felt only weight, a beautiful weight closing his eyes. He was blessed at last, not by his powers, nor by his friends, but by having completed the mission. He had truly cleaned the place, including himself. Their heads fell on each other's shoulders. Lovely went still, Mankira's pulse stopped. In the silence of the ruins, only one weak pulse remained, then...
He became blessed in death.
Returning to the same bottom where blessings were once showered upon him. Returning to the well, sharing the blessing of death with one who is truly blessed.