@Punished GN@Atrophy@FernStone@NoriWasHere@everyone
Kari Wilson's Yard

---

The gaunt latino was out of sight and mind for now, the rotting influence disconnected; Clancy barely noticed that the sleeve of his hoodie had withered for the moment he'd grabbed Luca.

The stench of smoke, rain, charred wood and rotting meat continued to wash over him like waves against rocks. The smoke was almost worse than the heat at this point, although neither bothered him. Like with the tear gas, the only effect it had on him was ruining his clothes and blinding them to - the torrential downpour had only amplified it by half-smothering the fire.

Overhead, he caught a glimpse of a familiar purple light, spearing through the flesh-beast's 'leg' and out the other side into the ground like an oversized magic bullet. The creature, for its part, seemed unbothered by the chunk of meat that had been removed apart from some loss of mass and balance, and remained steadfast.

Somehow, that didn't surprise him either. It wasn't as though the cane Shayton pushed through his eye socket and out the back of is skull had made any lasting damage, apart from drawing unnecessary attention at the festival.

Then, accentuating htis was the feminine silhouete overhead with an almost iridescent glow. The voice calling out confirmed his suspicions about the other girl, the one that had struck him as odd.

Everyone had their secrets, he recalled.

Pacing towards Lila, at a distance beyond his reach, was one of the 8th Street assholes - Vashti, enshrouded by a distorted weather-effect that he could only describe as harder rain than the torrent raging over them, barely obscuring her form.

A few paces behind her was Linqian's red-hot silhouette, sprawled nude in a literal mud-bath as steam rose from wherever the water made contact with her skin. Was she dead? Not yet, there was still warmth - too much of it for him, Much as he didn't want to see her hurt any further, she was beyond his ability help at this stage, and his focus was on the greater threat.

Assholes. The word sprung to mind, a phrase he'd inherited from his brother reading

Clancy had dropped down from the burning patio at this point, maneuvering apart from the others. Each footstep more waterlogged than the last; the wind and rain tugging at his senses like a swarm of insects buzzing in on ear.

His shoes were going to be ruined at this- no, his clothes were already ruined at this stage, he knew. The Donald Duck knock-off mascot now a distorted, faceless abomination from where the heat had destroyed the transfer on the hoodie, and his denim pants were more like uneven summer shorts at this stage, not unlike the fashion of the '80s.

Even the dufflebag had seen better days with the plastic clips twisted and shrunken by the heat, and halfway across the yard he was forced to withdraw its contents before it fell apart on him and dumped it into the mud.

In his hand was the Baldur Axe that had been the possession of the tattooed Victor Villarian of the Wolfpack, an unrepentant asshole through-and-through, who wielded it like an ogre with a club.

In the hands of most, it made them stronger, dangerous, but its last owner had learned the hard way that idealogical purity and performance enhancers meant nothing in the face of someone with common sense.

In his hands? A useful tool. He didn't need strength.

In front of him and partially obscured from the others by the flesh beast, he saw the greater collective of 8th Street clustering around and behind it. Their self-styled boss clung to the 'shoulder' of the now-hobbled flesh-beast as it pawed at a jacket like a cat with a toy.

Truth be told, he was tired of the facade. A part of him below the surface waiting to push beyond the self-imposed barriers he'd set for himself, kept in check only by estalished rules of self-control and sheer will.

These people? 8th Street? They fell outside those rules. They were the worst example of it, he knew. Ashley had told him. The vision had showed it too.

They were fair game.

His smouldering, hooded silhouette approached clutching the axe in one hand by the mid-section of its handle, maneuvering past the beast's flank.

"Not too old to be acting like high school assholes?" His voice was close enough it didn't matter that he'd been downwind of them, and only just managed to carry across in the cacophony of the brawl. "Are you so weak you need this fucking prom-queen to matter?"

There were three close enough for him to reach. Of them; the strawberry blonde wielding an ornate crossbow, the short-haired girl who was older than she looked, wielding a bat and hockey mask, and the lean, dark-haired man, it was the latter of the three was close enough for him to strike at.

To his credit, he was completely unaware this was Aaron Sawyer he was dealing with. And no doubt, Aaron could look back into the abyss at who and what he was.

---

---

---

Jack's trick would have worked on anyone else... except Aaron Sawyer. Using his White and Pink Lux, he was able to see through the illusion like it was nothing. However, that didn't save him from getting clocked, and that sent him stumbling backward a little bit. He quickly raised his pistol and let off a few shots, destroying it, and gaining intuitive knowledge of the abstraction user, Jack Hawthorne. Using his radar pulse, he couldn't find out where Jack could be, but there were a ton of people bunched up together... however, it wasn't his job to pick fights anyway. His Danger-Sense activated, as he quickly turned to Carol and shouted,

"... Carol! Take cover!"

"Aw, what the-" Carol quickly dove behind its leg as the volley of explosive arrows hit the undead behemoth. Carol laughed as she drank one final bottle of the potion Greta had given her. She slid it back into her raincoat pocket before sticking her other hand against the undead behemoth that she was taking cover behind. When Jasper's arrows hit the monster, they exploded, sending rotting flesh in all directions - and in a second later, Carol had the monster fixed right up. She grinned from behind her mask...

"KEEP WASTING YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN' TIME, DUMBASS! BITCH! I CAN DO THIS ALLLLLLL NIGHT LONG! ALL! NIGHT! LONG! KEEP TRYING ME AND I'LL COME IN THERE AND TEAR YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN' BALLS OFF AND THEN MAKE YOU EAT 'IM!"

She screamed out the battle cry, but Aaron's White Lux quickly told him how many arrows he had left. Then he sent in the knight at Carol, and for a moment, Aaron thought that it was over because George and Vashti were tied up, and Flora didn't have enough firepower to take that thing down. However, Vashti clotheslined him, and Flora quickly aimed the Aegis Piercer at it, then unleashed a volley of arrows at it. Excellen-

"... WHAT THE FUCK?!" Carol shouted as the undead monster began marching over towards the treeline - and of course, Aaron automatically deduced that somebody had hexed it. He knew where the hex was, but unfortunately, it would be incredibly stupid to run over to pull it out. "... WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR GODDAMN MONSTER DOING, EMILY!?" Carol shouted again, as the 8th Street members had no choice but to run behind it or risk being shredded by whatever ranged abstractions they had.

Aaron ran behind it, turning his head away from the direction of the rain while also being mindful of where the monster was stepping. Otherwise, he would be turned into a pancake. Fortunately, Pulse-Radar informed him that Emily had finally enacted the second half of her plan, which gave him plenty of cover. The damn monster went for the jacket and yanked it off the tree before it started playing with it like it was a toddler playing with a new toy. Unfortunately, while Aaron knew what it was, there wasn't much he could do about it. Shoot it? He'd be wasting bullets. However, he had a hot-headed leader with a lust for unwarranted destruction.

"EMILY!" Aaron shouted at Emily, before pointing at it. "BURN THAT JACKET!"

However, in his distraction, he barely paid attention to the subtle radar that gave him knowledge of everyone's position. He noticed that three had snuck around, but there was someone who approached them, despite it all, slipping past their defenses. He quickly turned on his heel to see... a kid. However, .

"... Not too old to be acting like high school assholes? Are you so weak you need this fucking prom-queen to matter?"

"Who the fuck are you?! Why the fuck are you here?! Matter of fact, get the fuck outta here before you get hurt, dumbass!" Carol hissed, throwing her bat over her shoulder.

However, Aaron immediately took some steps back, drawing his pistol at Clancy. His abstraction told him about the axe and, more importantly, told him about this kid.

He (or better yet, it) wasn't a kid.

It wasn't even human.

"FLORA!" Aaron shouted. "SHOOT HIM!"

"It's just a-" Flora tried to protest.

"... That thing's not a kid! TRUST ME!" Aaron said, before he pulled the trigger a few times on his pistol, letting off a few rounds in the direction of Clancy. As instructed, Flora also fired a few piercing arrows from the Aegis Piercer.

---

Greta glanced up from her phone, and the few dozen zombies that Nadine previously summoned were now in the hundreds. Though, from the chaos in the distance, it sounded like it was absolute chaos out there - triggering mere seconds after they arrived. Well, Greta wasn't sure who was to blame for that one, but that meant that Emily's master plan didn't account for how unpredictable the "reformed" Coven was.

However, the peaceful ice fortress was disturbed by something crashing into the ice walls, followed by an explosion. It was enough to rattle Greta, and the chubby gal fell off the crate that she was sitting on, and she looked up at the source of the explosion. She didn't even notice it, but fortunately, Phoebe's ice walls were thick enough to not cause more than some cracks. Then, Greta looked down and saw that her poor cell phone had fallen into a puddle of water.

"... What the fuck was that?!" Amy asked, swinging her club around with one hand as she looked at it.

"No clue!" Greta shouted back before she knelt forward, grabbed her cell phone, and opened the crate. She quickly tossed Phoebe another blue potion and shouted, "Drink this and reinforce the barriers! We are not fighting."

However, Cynthia exploded into a cloud of pink smoke, transforming into her Abyssal Hunter form. And Greta rolled her eyes.

"Cynthia, heel!" Greta shouted. Typically, when Emily shouted it, Cynthia transformed back, but it was clear that Cynthia didn't obey Greta as she did Emily. This was typical of the monster. Greta shook her head. "Don't go chasing after them! That could have been a distraction."

"Cynthia detects more!" Cynthia raised a clawed hand, pointing at the ice wall. Greta could see three silhouettes on the other side, and grit her teeth. She couldn't see what they were doing, but that was the most concerning part.

"... Can Cynthia eat?" She asked.

"No," Greta said. "We're-"

"... Wave one." The walkie-talkie in her pocket played Emily's voice, which created a sort of echo on Nadine's walkie-talkie.

"Son of a bitch," Greta said to herself. Of course, it was time for wave one. She shook her head as she watched Brianna create a circular portal just outside of the Teleportation Nulification Veil, and the legion of zombies simply wandered into it. The portal would lead up into the air above Kari's house, and if Emily did her part, the Coven would be caught off guard by it. The zombies would then, attack anyone not a member of the 8th Street Coven.

"Pack Member Greta-" Cynthia tried to say as Greta reached into the crate and pulled out a grey, smokey, potion. Then turned to Malik, pointing at the other side of the wall. "Malik, barrage the other side of that wall."

With a nod of his head, Malik shot both of his hands out toward the wall, unleashing a volley of glowing orbs that flew above Layla, Luna, and Aislin... before they came crashing down and left them with severe burns.

---

---

---

”... LINQIAN!”

Britney couldn't help but scream as Vashti slammed Linqian into the ground... she could barely pay attention to whatever Vashti's next target was as she quickly ran over to Linqian - stopping herself when she realized that she was still making the draper point her bitch. Linqian created a cloud of steam when the rain hit her, so she wouldn't be hot for long. Britney got on her knees, and as a test of her new mode, Mode: Sea, Britney forced as much of the rain as she could (not a whole lot) onto Linqian. The giant monster moved towards the treeline, and Britney felt some type of relief as maybe some of the attention was off of her.

”Linqian! Say something! Anything!”

She saw a light above her... well, behind and above her, but still a light. It was bright enough to pierce through the chaotic rainstorm that she was trapped in. Britney glanced over her shoulder and saw a swirling portal that looked just a little bit familiar. It was some distance into the air, far enough that it would be impossible for someone short of Kenshiro, Blackmore, and Jack to get to it in a reasonable amount of time. However, the portal itself wasn't the concerning part; it was what was coming out of the portal.

Zombies. Undead minions. Hundreds of them just fell out of the portal like a dam had just broken. Britney's jaw dropped, as they obviously had to be the result of Emily's machinations. It was foolish of her to assume that Vashti, Carol, Emily, George, the undead monster, and the other two, were the extent of the 8th Street attack. She hissed in pain as she watched them hit the ground - some of them instantly died, but the dead undead only cushioned the fall for the rest of them.

They got up, and spread out in all directions - some of them went into the house, some followed after Vashti and Lila... and some went towards Britney. With some quick thinking, Britney raised a hand in the air and created a curved barrier of vines, roots, wood, and other plant life. It wasn't a complete dome around her, but it was enough to give her some breathing room while she tended to Linqian.

She was surprised Emily didn't nuke her or something!

---

Emily's raging fireball was met by a wall of green.

The shields orbiting Linqian, and Britney by extension, snapped out of existence to make room for a dome of damn near impenetrable yellow Lux that wrapped around him, Drake, Luca and Sully. The sound of rain battering against metal could be heard as it washed across the outer surface of the Iron Fortress, loud and hollow. Everyone on the inside was detached from everything on the outside. No one could see in or out, and the look on Stormy's face implied it wasn't easy to keep this thing up. He was tense, yet still, like he was focusing on the barrier and nothing else.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

"When this barrier falls..." he began, slowly. "Be. Ready. To. Run. Emily may be waiting. They can not hear us. Leave. The monster. To me." His fists were clenched with the glow of individual auras yet to be cast. He held one out for Sully, the Witchveil aura. He only had to touch it, and it would be applied, and then Stormy would drop the Iron Fortress to let them all loose.

Meanwhile, that prick with the gun seemed to catch on quick. Not quick enough to avoid getting clocked, but at least he was distracted. As Aaron shot the shadow puppet, it cracked into dozens of pieces as if he had shot a porcelain cup, and then dissolved into black smoke. Vashti's storm was sure to bog them down, but it had an advantage that Jack could work with: The storm clouds made everything all the more dark. The light from the hellfire was bright, but the clouds were shading everything else, making it dim enough that Jack didn't have to worry about walking into the bright sun. It was a small advantage, but in these situations, everything mattered.

He decided to quickly teleport into another tree nearby, not bothering to stick around and risk getting shot. He heard the shouting in the distance, and he saw the flesh abomination moving to do... Something. If Jack had a guess it was Sloane's Hexmarking if they were all lucky. Jack looked up through the leaves of the new tree he had moved to, and saw the swirling portal that rained down undead. Far in the direction of the left, there was that camp surrounded by ice, and it didn't look like there was anything he missed. So Jack made a quick, educated guess that the portal was connected to that.

He held a hand out, and formed his usual weapon of choice out of the darkness. A scythe, with a blade sharp enough to cut through the bodies of many apparitions. He swiped his fingers through the air, and the weapon duplicated itself. He made a twisting motion with his hold hand, and Jack's pair of scythes began to spin rapidly, faster and faster until they were a black blur. Faster. Faster. Faster.

And then, using his the telekinetic control he had over the shadows, Jack sent them whirling upwards into the sky, through the portal that the undead were spilling out of. Bodies were chopped up like hands caught in a thresher, and whoever was on the opposite end would be treated to the equivalent of high speed, magic sawblades flying out to chop them up. Jack blinked a dark spot out of the corner of his vision, making a mental note to use that trick sparingly, if at all again.

Staying mobile was ideal in Jack's opinion. He wasn't equipped for being at the center of fights like this. When a fight got to this magnitude, Jack belonged in the shadows, sabotaging and making life easier on his allies.

He teleported again, onto the far side, of the battlefield, just in time to almost smack headfirst into Greyson fucking Devola.

"...Where have you been?"

Kari's House, Outside the Ice Fortress
_{Interactions: Everyone inside the ice fortress}

---

Luna saw the volley of orbs falling on them before they hit. Alas, she was too slow to move, and it was a direct hit. There were screams. The smell of burnt flesh mixing with acrid rain. And when Luna opened her eyes, Aislin and Layla were on the ground, clothes fused to their skin, charred, red, and painful. Covered head to toe in burns.

Luna clicked her tongue, then shifted her gaze to her armour. Cracked, but no worse for wear. It had protected her from the worst of the burns. She was the only one who remained unscathed.

She watched as Layla’s ghost materialized, scooping the little girl into his lap. She wrinkled her nose at that, but ignored it, focusing on Aislin.

“_Shit. Hey, heyyyy… You okay?” She said, rolling Aislin over with an armored hand so Aislin was on her back.

Aislin softly whimpered, tears in her eyes as her face scrunched up reflexively. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a gurgled, weak mash of syllables. Luna clicked her tongue. She’d seen worse: a man cut with his entrails spilling out of his gut. But this… this was hard to see, too.

Luna’s gaze shifted to Layla, then to her masked ghost. “How’s she?”

“She’s passed out, but she’ll live.” Kipnu said, his voice disinterested.

Luna stared at him flatly. “Really?”

“Hm?”

Luna shook her head, eyes on the portal in the sky. Not her business.

The undead were just pouring out, falling to the ground and spilling out in all directions. Some were headed in their direction. That meant they had to move fast. Luna considered her options, cursed under her breath, and stared hard at the ghost.

“I need another favour.”

“That’s going to be another soul.”

Luna snarled. “If you don’t help me, Layla might not make it out of this alive.”

“I can whisk her, and you away, if you beg me.” There was a deep chuckle in Kipnu’s voice as he spoke.

Luna glared. “Fine, fine! Another soul. But you have to listen to me, no questions asked.”

Kipnu’s masked lenses gleamed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Luna sighed a bit, before she dropped her gaze to Aislin. “Hey… I know you don’t like me, but I need your help. I have an idea…”

---

From where Aislin lay, her hand connected with the earth. Teeth gritted through the rain and the pain, she pulled away at the earth, creating a tunnel underneath the ice palace, allowing Luna a way inside. The moment it was completed, Kipnu took both Layla and Aislin through Smoke’s Crossing, removing them from the battlefield.

That left only Bahlok with Luna, who appeared resentful and not at all interested in being there. She turned her attention to the tunnel, whistled, and ten hellhounds, growling with their teeth bared, stormed the ice palace. Bahlok jerked with her chin, and Luna and her followed after the hellhounds through the tunnel, Luna with a white broadsword in each hand, Bahlok with her Eldritch Appendage bared and ready.

“You all bitches are done!” Luna yelled as they advanced inside.

”As long as I get to spear someone!” Bahlok said with an eye roll.

A pain unlike any other manifested in Lila’s mind. It was sharp, quick, but the feeling of the pain left a sense of unease. It felt, for the briefest of moments, like the pain came with a scream. Not her scream, nor that of the maidens, but someone else. The scream only lasted as long as the pain did, and the pain only lasted a second, but it was enough for Lila to pause her run and look back to the murders descent on 8th street. She then watched the sky catch fire and get mind was filled with the brief scream of a few hundred crows, and a pain that threatened to split her mind from her soul.

Lila doubled over as her clawed hands gripped her head as she began to press against her skull to alleviate the pain but it offered no relief. Lila pressed, pressed, and pressed done more claws digging into the flesh of her skull causing a steady and warm stream of blackened blood to spill forth. And the psychic pain only grew. And grew. And it grew with each subsequent bird that got burnt by Emily’s inferno. Each second that passed a new scream was added, removed, replaced, and the cycle repeated and repeated until the last bird caught was nothing more than a charred crisp. Lila felt herself try to fall as her vision narrowed, but she managed to pull herself away from falling unconscious.

Yet the silence did not bring Lila peace, the lack of screaming voices did not bring peace. Instead, it brought a clarity that she never knew. The crows were once people, and Emily just killed whatever was left of them. She knew that she would not let their sacrifice be in vain. And she knew it was time to start replacing her losses. All across her exposed chest feathers began to erupt outward with a rapid pace, covering herself within a few seconds. Her black eyes began to seemingly leak, sending pitch black tears streaming down her face. Lila and the maiden weeped together and as one for their fallen murder. And their dour expression slowly turned insidious as they caught a slightly wounded Vashti running towards them. The two knew in a straight up fight they’d lose to Vashti, she was far too strong and quick in her storm. However, even the strongest could not resist the temptation of the maiden, and the duo cackled with laughter as she drew close.

Vashti launched herself at Lila, no doubt trying to kick her into the fire wall that Emily oh so confidently put up to block her exit. They made one crucial error Lila thought as she side-stepped the kick, grabbing Vashti legs with one clawed hand and stabbing the other hand into Vashti’s thigh.

Lila turned her body, pulling Vashti along with the turn, and launched Vashti back towards the house. Lila took a step forward as Lila and The Maiden chucked a devious chuckle, their wings flashing green several times in a second. Their crucial error was they were not afraid, and Lila was about to remind them that they should be.

“Emmmmily,” the two shouted as one, “…...watch.”

---

Jasper frantically added detail to his painting, using his large frame to block out as much of the rain as he could. He was close to the wood line on the side of the house, and he slowly crept towards the shelter offered by the canopy above. On his canvas his greatest creation yet was nearly finished, and he hoped that he could catch Carol by suprise once more. The Magnum Opus was a complex construct, featuring layers upon layers of paint and infused intentions. His intention to protect, to safeguard, and to kill.

Jasper still knew that shooting Carol would not be murder. Her little hourglass would simply bring her back at the end of the day and she would simply be angrier.

Once he reached the tree line he quickly returned to painting his weapon. This would be his moment to protect the coven, to show them the power that he possessed. This would be his moment to make a difference in a real fight, and not just act like the creator of distractions. No one else would die while he was around. Jasper quickly added the finishing details and dried the painting with his spell. It was ready. He’d only pulled it once on an enemy, and this time he was ready for the kick of the gun. Jasper engaged his abstraction and used his paintbrush to pull the gun from the canvas and grabbed it with his arm. Jasper pressed up against a nearby tree, pushed the butt of the gun and raised the rifle and aimed down the field. In an instant he cursed his decision to make this a bolt action rifle with a iron sight instead of something lighter, and more modern. He was finding it hard to not only locate his target, but to also get the sight on her. Jasper exhaled completely and found that he was granted a bit more control over the wayward weapon. A moment later he had his target in sight, and he squeezed the trigger engaging the magic within the gun, firing it, and sending the first round down range. Whatever it would hit it would burry itself deep into the target, exploding outwards a moment later.

The kick was strong, however, and the barrel fought its way back and upwards. Jasper groaned at the pain he felt in his shoulder but he could not let that stop him. He pulled the bolt back, ejecting the hot painted casing that hissed as it collided with a drop of rain, before it melted away with it. He slammed the bolt forward, got the sight on what he thought was the target, and sent a second round down range. As the second shot left the barrel the gun was finally caught by the raindrops as well, with parts of it melting away. Jasper did not know what would happen if he tried to fire a third time and instead of testing that idea he simply threw the gun into the open and let it get dissolved in quick fashion.

Jasper couldn’t make out the after effects of his attack but he did catch the tail end of the Aryin George fight. He began to paint his hammer just in case someone tried to sneak up to him. He began to move towards Linqian, keeping to the tree line to protect his painting as he did.

---

Aryin saw the kick coming and she did not move. Instead she threw her arms out wide and as the kick connected with her body, the impact exploded outward with an explosive boom creating a momentary umbrella with the shockwave, and then grabbed George’s leg with her arms. She could only hold on for a few seconds before the sheer power of George’s kick launched her across the battlefield . Aryin skipped across the ground once, twice, and a third time more before she finally caught the ground properly and gouged a path through the dirt. Eventually her momentum slowed and she eventually rolled to a stop. The ground left a sizzling trail marking where she hit and a small steam cloud showed where she travelled.

That hurt. Aryin had forgotten that Too Hot To Handle came with a noticeable reduction in defensive power, and she was thankful for the magma like skin because she knew she’d be even worse for wear in this moment without it. Still, she was broken, bruised, and no longer able to carry on a fight like this. She needed her normal durability back. She needed Aaron.

Aryin began the slow process of walking towards Linqian. She knew she was alive because their magic was still strong however it looked like she took a beating when she faced Vashti. They both needed a quick sip of that good healing juice from Sully before long. They would also need clothes once their spell wore off. One problem at a time.

Eventually the arduous journey was nearly complete. Aryin could see Linqian, and she could see she was truly alive. Good. If she was alive she could survive what needed to happen. ”I thought you were stronger,” Aryin said before they pulled back their arm and punched Linqian in the gut once more, pulling back her own part of the spell breaking Too Hot To Handle in an instant. They slowly pulled their fist off her exposed stomach and offered her a hand up. “Get up bitch, the fights not done. And CAN SOMEONE GET US SOME FUCKING CLOTHES?”

“Here,” Jasper paused as he put his painting down and took off his coat, before he unbuttoned his tucked in shirt. Both were big enough that they should offer some ‘protection’ against wandering eyes. The removal of his clothes revealed his hairy muscular chest to the world, and a small smile crept across his face at his fate.

---

Lynn looked at Ken as tears streamed down her face. There was a look of shock on her face at the words Ken spoke to her. Kari wanted many things from Lynn. Dying on the battlefield was not one of them. And with what Lynn just learned her story was not going to end here. She knew this much to be true. “No, I don’t die here,” Lynn said with a dismissive tone that suggested that, in this moment, she was upset at that fact. Despite Ken’s kind words Lynn still remained in the funk. The battle, the zombies, and Lila falling further into the maiden all felt like it was not worth it anymore. Lynn was a burden that needed to be babysit. Lynn was a failure who could not help her coven. Lynn was-

bang………bang

The sound of Jasper firing his gun broke Lynn from her spiral, at least for the moment, as she swapped to the possible future to see what he was trying to do. Her eyes remained glazed for a few seconds before she returned to the present and she chuckled. Jasper was smart. Carol was the key to opening up the rest of 8th street to defeat. It just sucked that his power was rendered so inert by the rain. In the possible future Jasper’s range of attack was great. In some, he developed a new spell on the spot for a pair of revolvers, in another he turned his ranger into an army ranger by giving it a semi automatic magically powered rifle that made up for his shit fucking aim by putting that responsibility into his creation. Regardless, he was never able to take out Carol. She always had an early warning system.

“Ken, take out Carol,” Lynn paused as she pointed towards the man shooting his gun at the kid. Lynn knew it wasn’t a kid but she had no idea what he actually was. “That guy is keeping her safe from Jasper, he’s distracted but Jasper won’t be able to do much with that rain. Take Carol out, take out their ability to keep up the fight.”. Lynn’s eyes fell to the ground.

“Once we’re done here today you and I need to have a little talk,” Lynn paused as she slowly looked Ken in the eyes, “because I know Kari is alive. The future is certain with that at least.”. Lynn paused as she looked over the battlefield. “We need to leave this battle, we’re not ready for this fight yet.”

---

---

Linqian’s head was spinning, the blackness of her closed eyes somehow spinning in front of her. She zoned out, brain moving at a sluggish pace, as she tried to get it under control. She could deal with the pain, which was honestly pretty minimal, much better than this. Pain could be fought through, dizziness fucking destroyed her. How was she supposed to punch shit when it kept moving? Ugh, she really needed Sully to-

Ice cold water smacked her face, sizzling off her heated skin - cooling further and further in the rain and steam. She spluttered, shaking her head as some of it went up her nose. It was enough to give her a bit of clarity, eyes cracking open with a groan.

”Heyyyy, Brit, since when could you water slap people?” She coughed, spitting out water that trickled into her mouth. Maybe a little bit of blood too. ”Don't worry, I'm all good, it'll take more than that to kill me.”

Linqian raised one hand, a half assed thumbs up. She didn't try to sit up yet, because she was pretty sure she'd just fall back down which would be fucking embarrassing. ”Just real fucking dizzy, Aryin's tough skin is no joke, but Vashti's skull is fucking hard... But I was too hot for that crazy bitch to kill, fuck.”

She closed her eyes again for a moment. When they opened, they were clearer, her lips curving into half of a smirk. She looked a fucking mess - glowing orange face covered in blood, nose crooked, covered in mud and rain… but she felt pretty fucking fine. Sure, Britney was waving so quickly above her that she might as well be splitting into three, but that’d be fixed in a little bit. She didn’t feel so dazed anymore.

”Remind me to just shoot Vashti the next time I see her... No attempted seduction... even if it totally worked...”

She turned her head, catching sight of the fucking zombies through the vines and then…

Linqian sat up suddenly, groaning and holding her head. Her vision swayed and blinked in and out. The burning house was a fuzzy outline in front of her, coming more and more into focus as she got more and more pissed off. Fuck. Fuck.

”All my shit's in there! My clothes, my phone, my money... my only winter jacket! Fuck! I can't fucking afford to replace any of that!” Linqian's hands raked through mud stained, damp molten curls. Fuck, she was going to have to wash her hair again as well... That was an hour or so of her time that'd be wasted tonight. Fuck. At least she could just sit and chat shit with Aryin for half of it in her bathroom… But that wasn’t important right now. ”I only got this fucking hot cause I knew I could put my fucking clothes back on… Fuck.”

The rain was cooling her further, temperature ticking down from the thousands. Still hot enough to burn through zombies, and durable enough to tank a few more hits than normal - but the longer she was getting fucking soaked, the cooler she'd get till it was practically useless.

She needed to go the opposite way - cold as fuck. But she couldn't do that without gut punching Aryin again... Would she even realise what was going on?! The heat was entirely on Linqian, so she was much more in tune with it.

And then she'd be even more fucking naked without the orange glow and molten skin to cover her. She had no fucking clothes! Where the fuck was Greyson with his very borrowable jackets when she fucking needed him?!

As if called by her thoughts, Aryin appeared - after what must’ve been a sluggish walk over. ”You look uglier than- Oof!”

Linqian should’ve expected the punch to the gut, but her mind was still running at a slower pace even as the world finally stopped spinning. She reached up and clasped Aryin’s hand, using it to pull herself up to a crouched position. ”You try taking Vashti’s skull to your face, asshole.”

She pulled back her fist and slammed it into Aryin’s stomach, pulling back in the heat. A zombie creeped around through the gap in Britney’s barrier and Linqian’s other arm shot out, grabbing it and burning away its already rotten flesh. She shoved a knee in its gut to finish it off.

”Here.”

”Thanks, dude, I’ll try not to destroy it.”

Linqian lowered her temperature back to normal and took Jasper's shirt - she was shorter, so going for the smaller one made sense. She pulled it on and quickly buttoned it up… leaving the top two undone because she wasn't uptight like that. It covered what it had to: her tits and ass. Just. Unfortunately the risk of her flashing someone was still very fucking high, because it was loose and just the fucking wind was threatened to blow it up. It barely reached the top of her thighs…

Better than nothing.

A decaying hand pushed through a gap in the plant barrier, and Linqian’s shot up to grab it. At the same time her temperature plummeted, freezing the arm off. Linqian pulled her hand back with a grimace. The water that hadn’t already evaporated turned to ice, visibly spiralling down her bare legs like spiderwebs. Her temperature raised again slightly - still much lower than normal, but not enough so that she’d badly hurt anyone who accidentally hurt her.

She took a moment to take a look at what was going on. Zombies everywhere, Emily acting like some goofy evil bitch, Vashti and Lila fighting… the horrible massive undead creature still fucking fine. The kid taking on three alone… shit, but he could survive being shot, he’d probably be fine right? Another 8th member attacking Ken.

Linqian wasn't very good at strategy. She was good at the fighting itself - predicting her opponents moves, getting the upper hand, where to hit so that it hurt most… the individual fight, but not the overarching battle. Point her at someone and she would win, but she couldn't plan.

You have practical intelligence, not academic, is what Jinhai always said when she called herself dumb.

She wasn't sure how much she believed that, but she knew this wasn’t a fight they could easily win. There were far too many undead - they’d be overwhelmed by numbers alone. Linqian wasn’t a quitter, but she was also realistic. Or at least, having her face near smashed in by Vashti had curbed her recklessness a bit.

”We should get you out of here,” Linqian said to Britney, frowning. ”I can get rid of the zombies easily… or just fucking freeze them, then we can go out through the woods? I don’t fucking know.”

She raised her hands in an exasperated gesture, glancing over at Jasper, then Aryin. ”I’m not being a coward or some shit like that, just we don’t have enough people to deal with these assholes… they’re actually fucking organised. Better to get the ones they want the fuck away from it all… but I don’t know. I’m not a planner. Maybe I should just punch Aryin till she’s super charged then we can go destroy them or some shit.”

For once Linqian was stopping and thinking - but she fucking hated thinking. She'd had to do it far too often recently, without Jinhai to do it for her. Fuck, she was getting nowhere with this. Linqian looked back at Britney. She was smart, and she'd helped with the actual plans to defeat the Stygian Snake. ”What should we do?”

---

---

Oh Emily, Emily, Emily. Honestly, it still amazed Vashti sometimes how often Emily just didn’t get it. Perhaps a prude like her would see it as a bad thing, but in Vashti’s mind being mobbed by sluts wasn’t a consequence—it was a reward. Yet there was more. Perhaps Emily thought that Vashti was just an idiot, a violent, uncontrollable, chaotic adrenaline junkie looking for her next hit and, well, perhaps she was mostly right, but there was one glaring flaw in Emily’s plan: Vashti didn’t fucking care about her plan. Vashti had a plan of her own. It was a good plan. The best kind of plan. It was to do whatever she wanted to do, and right now it was going off without a hitch.

Maybe a bunch of Sycamore losers would come chase after her and Lila, and maybe that would leave the rest of 8th Street with easy targets to pick off—or maybe without Vashti running interference Sycamore would actually get their shit together and garrote the whole gang. Who cared? It was just a bunch of bodies either way. Honestly, she was doing everyone a favor. Dying young was sexy. Vashti licked her lips. She really should go back and tear out Linqian’s throat while she was still hot. It was settled. Once she ripped out Lila’s wings she would go back and finish what she had started. Vashti sighed as a wall of fire erupted in front of Lila, cutting off the bird’s retreat and ruining Vashti’s hunt. Nevermind. Once Vashti was down with Lila she was going to go back to Emily and shove her head so far up her stupid tight ass that when her body decomposed her thick skull would be revealed to have become the world’s largest diamond.

“Oh caw caw caw to you too, you emo Big Bird bitch!” shouted Vashti as Lila laughed in harmony with herself.

Vashti jumped and swung her feet out in front of her with a flying kick to knock Lila into the flames, letting out a quiet “huh?” as she felt a claw wrap around her leg followed by a pained groan that morphed into a chuckle as claws pierced into her thigh. Vashti’s hand lashed down to grab ahold of Lila and teach her the important lesson that both Leon and Linqian had to learn the hard way, but she found nothing but air as the feathery bitch launched Vashti through the air and back towards Kari’s house. Vashti crashed through a first-story window, a sudden swell of fire erupting out of the window as more oxygen fed the flames, accompanied by the faint popping sound of exploding bullets as a certain winter coat was turned to ash in the inferno.

---

"Make your choice, miss Faris."

Sloane furrowed her brow, unhappy with the way Amara had hinted that the best thing for Sloane to do right now was to abandon the others and run. Tactically, it was likely the right assessment: Sloane had done all she could in the fight by distracting the ghoulish giant. Any more lingering around and she’d only be getting in the way of the actual competent combatants. Yet the idea of being the first to fallback made her sick. Plus, if any of Sycamore lived they would never let her live it down. She’d lay her life down for a bunch of people that she didn’t even care for than be viewed as weak.

“I’m not going anywhere!” said Sloane defensively, raising her voice to be heard over the storm, grimacing in pain.

Her grip tightened on her knife as she felt a tug on her pant leg. The stern intensity of Sloane's face momentarily faded as she looked down, her eyes softening and her lips parting into a silent “aww” as she saw one of Anya’s cute little shadow helpers. Its presence calmed the queasiness that Sloane was feeling, partially due to how incredibly adorable it was but more so because it existing meant that Anya had to be safe. She followed the gesture of the creature towards where Anya was hiding, her face returning to granite once again as Sloane horrifically realized that the tree she had distracted the monster to was the same one Anya had chosen to hide behind. Sloane turned to the Amara phantom and cocked her head towards the tree.

“I mean, I’m not going anywhere until everyone else is safe. You, get Anya out of there,” said Sloane.

---

Sully blinked, a bright ball of red flames suddenly erupting before him, a wave of heat evaporating the rain from his skin, his incredibly short and ultimately unsatisfying life flashing before his eyes as he blinked again and the flames dispersed against a wall of green. Sully stared at the green ball of energy that Stormy held out from him. The magical mumbo-jumbo was something Sully had paid too little attention to back in the day and now didn’t feel like it was a time to ask for clarification. However, it sounded like homeboy was offering him an invincibility field, so Sully was so down.

“Good stuff, man, said Sully.

He dapped Stormy up, the green lightning of the Witchveil’s crackling up Sully’s arm and made his whole body tingle for a moment before the feeling faded. Sully flexed his fingers and stared at his hand. He didn’t feel any more or less emotional than usual after giving someone a bro hug, but he’d take Stormy’s word for it.

“Oh yeah, I’m going to heal the absolute shit out of Linqian now,” said Sully, standing up on his feet. He waved his hand in a circle over his head calling for the Jock Squad (and Luc—) no, fuck that, today Luca was an honorary member of the Squad. He called for them to all move out. “Drop that shit, Stormy.

---

Sloane moved as the Amara phantom departed, scooping Anya’s shadow fox up to her chest like an emotional support summon, taking care to cover its ears as another explosion rang out. The storm had grown increasingly violent with pounding rain and howling wind that shook trees and knocked down loose limbs and branches. Sloane was careful where she stepped, her head still throbbing from where it had been blasted by a piece of debris earlier. It made it difficult to think, to plan, to strategize. She just moved, her small frame pushing against the rain and the wind, seeking to reconvene with the members of Sycamore huddling around a fallen body.

Linqian…

Sloane found herself moving faster, her pace only slowing as she saw Linqian begin to stir before coming to a dead halt as she got close enough for her vision to fully pierce through the storm. Was she hallucinating? Had she hit her head that hard? Why were they naked? Her hand slid down to cover the summon’s eyes, hers lingering for a moment longer on Jasper’s wet chest before her view, as well as her path to the group, was cut off by a barrier of flora. She hadn’t even begun to process the visual that she saw as a body dropped to the ground beside her. She covered her mouth to prevent a scream, the summon falling free from her grasp and darting back after Anya as it began to rain bodies from the sky.

---

Oh god, it felt like he was going to die. Sully held his side as he jogged over to where Linqian had fallen. After tonight Sully was going to start hitting the gym and working on some cardio. As he ran, Sully caught the flash of metal reflecting a strike of lightning, the light causing him to glance over and see the kid, lightly roasted and still smoking, holding an axe and going off by himself to confront a pack of 8th Street goons. What are you doing, kid? Sully figured the boy had to be in some kind of shock. He jerked his head back towards Linqian—a group had formed around her and she was starting to stir. It was all he needed to know.

Sully didn’t know exactly what had happened at the strip club. He thought he had seen the kid get shot but then the body had disappeared. Maybe the kid was some kind of paranormal. Maybe he had just gotten lucky. Maybe Sully had taken a few too many sips from the Chalice that evening. He didn’t want to take a gamble on the truth. Actually, it was more simple than that: he didn’t want to see a kid get hurt. Sully veered, slipping slightly in the mud but correcting himself, and turned to chase after the kid.

---

Thunder rumbled. Wet hair clung to Sloane’s face as she held her knife out like a fencing foil, her channeler in her offhand in place of a main-gauche. One foot crossed in front of the other as she circled, looking for an opening that wasn’t there. Lightning crashed, the horde of undead that around her reflected in her dark eyes. She controlled her breathing. No point in panicking. She caught sight of a limb reaching out and reacted. Her knife launched itself out of her hand, buried into the forehead of a zombie, and flew back to her hand with a wet pop. The corpse fell, another one immediately taking its place.

Surrounded.

Her breath quickened.

---

“Kid! Hey, kid!” shouted Sully between ragged breaths.

The thunder drowned out his calls to get Clancy to stop. Sully gagged as they scampered past the undead monstrosity playing with an expensive looking coat. His eyes bulged as he saw one of Emily’s cronies lift up a gun. Sully put every last ounce of will he had into running as fast as he could before he leapt, facing towards the kid in an attempt to dive in front of Clancy as the gun clapped bang bang bang BANG!

---

The smoke, the heat, and the light. How nostalgic. Back before this was all there was. The smoke, the heat, and the light. Volcanic eruptions, impacing meteors, and striking lightning. Destructive waves that burned the land, and from those ashes came new life. The nature cycle, beautiful in its wanton randomness, nothing planned, no design, everything just happenstance. Then they took it—the smoke, the heat, and the light—took control over it, gave it a name, built homes around it, formed cults to worship it, took its power of destruction and used it to enforce order. It would try and break free, burn wild, but they always found ways to contain it.

So a storm came and with it came the flood, the waters taking away the smoke, the heat, and the light, if only for a moment. A warning shot. A little reminder. A life lesson. One that has since been forgotten by many, making it so much sweeter to be able to teach them again and again: they are not the ones in control. No one is; it doesn’t exist.

Not even for her.

She opened her eyes, a flash of yellow fleeing from the irises. The shawl was pulled up over her nose to help with the smoke. She didn’t remember doing that. She crawled on all fours beneath the smoke like a beast, the heat causing her to sweat, the light hurting her eyes, but she could see it, she could see it. The storm. The wind blew so strongly that rain was pelting in through the broken window. The storm was reaching out to her. She reached back, one hand in front of the other. The tips of her fingers reached the puddle forming beneath the broken window. The rainwater began to retreat in reverence from her holy digits, but like a flash of lightning she smacked her hand down in the puddle and splashed it. This was her storm.

“Emmmmily,” she heard the voices from outside shout, “…...watch.”

The approach wasn’t flashy like last time. It wasn’t announced with a quip or a shout. She just slithered out of the window and began stalking up behind Lila. The only sound made was the spilling of entrails as a poor zombie stepped in the path between her and her prey, the splashing of its guts largely masked by the pounding of the rain and the roaring of the fire. The murder, if they saw her, were kept away by the winds, the storm working in her favor. Her eyes flashed yellow as Lila’s wings flashed green, the want to pluck a feather drowned out by a more intrinsic want—the need for her to remain with the Leviathan, although who could say from which one of them the need originated.

“For what it’s worth,” whispered Vashti into Lila’s ear, her voice strangely gentle as she bared her fangs in a hungry smile, “I think you’re beautiful.”

She lunged at Lila’s back, her claws reaching out to carve through Lila’s back near the base of her wings so that Vashti could latch onto the bone. If she got a good grasp she would then make Lila drop to her knees by kicking at the back of her legs before putting her foot on their spine. Once she had Lila in position, it was only a matter of pushing, pulling, and twisting before the hollow bones would crack with a sickening snap and, like a cruel child who had just captured a monarch butterfly, Vashti would tear the wings free from the body.

---

---

Fire, then a glowing green shield saving them from an inevitable death. Luca let out a sigh of relief.

He at least wanted the year or so he had left.

”I'll get out of the way.”

The shield dropped, and Luca ran away from the group... Not at a particularly fast pace. He didn't want to collapse, his lungs already protesting going any faster than a walk. But he didn't want to flee. He may be a burden on the battlefield, but maybe he could protect someone... Luca stopped jogging as he almost tripped over a body. What the fuck?

Zombies were falling from the sky. Luca looked up, shielding his eyes from the bright light of the portal. Brianna's portal, Nadine's undead. Shit.

He wasn't worried about himself. The aura around him already started to hurt them, and a single touch would destroy them. It was the others he was worried about. People who didn't have a body that destroyed anything it touched - so close to being just like those zombies, dead and rotten from inside and out.

A zombie meandered near him, and he stepped out of the way, hand shooting up to catch it. The flesh rotted further beneath his fingers, travelling down the undead creature before it was destroyed.

Luca grimaced. He pulled off his button down shirt, strengthening the decay in his hands so it disintegrated beneath his fingers. Underneath was a loose tank top - leaving his shoulders and arms bare. His shoulder bones were prominent, arms skinny but currently undamaged aside from a myriad of scars he couldn't even remember the origin of. More skin to touch, and to rot them away.

Another zombie came for him, and Luca just raised a bare arm. It went for it... and already rotting flesh disintegrated in moments.

Without much to worry about himself, Luca quickly looked around. His head went towards Linqian first - plenty of people there, she was awake, they were fine... Jasper was there too. Jasper was topless. Luca had seen it before when he'd rotted off Jasper's shirt when terrified by Skelly but... With the effect of the rain it looked- stop looking at Jasper's chest!

Luca tore his gaze away and caught sight of Sloane, surrounded by zombies. Sloane didn't have an offensive abstraction. She was close enough for him to help. Luca changed direction, and started to run towards him. He didn't bother avoiding the zombies - rotting his way through them, ignoring the pain that came whenever they managed to touch him. The healing elixir had given him enough strength to be more functional than he had in a long time.

”Sloane!” Luca shouted. He shoved his whole body through the zombies - the moment they touched him, they rotted away in a gory display of peeling flesh revealing muscle and bone until it all turned to dust. Another lunged for him. Luca didn't bother to move as it crashed into his shoulder, causing him to wobble as it decayed. Even as it died his skin tore from the impact, blood dripping down his arm. He caught himself on another zombie, grimacing at the feeling of already decomposed skin turning soft beneath his fingers. He ignored the bleeding - a surface level wound, not something that would kill him.

Luca properly pushed through the undead surrounding Sloane, getting close enough that she'd feel his aura prickling against her. Only a step away - closer than he tended to get to people.

”They can't hurt me,” he panted, ignoring what felt like glass shards scraping his lungs. The running, the rain... It was taking its toll on his weak organs. But it was a base level pain that he was used to, and an improvement over the last few days.

Left.

Hearing the Rot's warning he twisted around, arm shooting out to catch a zombie that lunged for Sloane. He was so close to her now, just narrowly avoiding brushing against her as the zombies rotting flesh peeled off and dropped to the mud covered floor with a wet plop. He smiled at her as the rest of it was easily destroyed.

”I'll clear us a path. Stay close to me... But not too close, I can't choose what I rot. It's cooperating right now, but...” he pointed to his left eye, hints of putrid green tendrils pushing at the edges of his iris. The effect of actively choosing to use his rotting, giving the Rot the destruction it desired. He would have to suppress it to turn off his rotting touch, and that would take concentration and energy he didn't have. He needed to stay in control, but he couldn't guarantee it. ”If it gets worse, get away from me too. Just in case! I'm in control, and it rarely gets through- so it'll be fine! Just make sure not to touch me.”

He turned back around, hands pushing forward through the nearest zombies, forcing an opening where there hadn't been one before.

@Punished GN Aaron & Flora @Atrophy Sully @NoriWasHere Jasper
No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard

---

“Kid..”

"..SHOOT HIM!"

A cacophany of voices were upon him from all sides.

“...kid!”

"That thing's not a kid! TRUST ME!"

Clancy felt the ground giving way beneath him before he felt the impacts, one foot sinking further into the mud than he'd expected. Someone with a beard closed in his periphery, skidding in the mud too late - Sully.

Was the man trying to save him? His thoughts shifted back to the yard.

It was for all intents and purposes a No Man's Land. The descriptions of pockmarked, waterlogged muddy fields portrayed to him by history books and old neighbours who spoke of the war.

This wasn't a yard anymore; it was a war zone. And he was another casualty, it seemed. Half a magazine dumped into him, most punching through his mid-section if they didn't miss. One bolt caught him in the mid-section, bedded where his heart should've been. A second through his throat - like a medieval tracheotomy. The third lodged itself just below his cheekbone, and sank deep, the fletching just edging out in his peripheral vision.



"Idiots," Clancy growled, his one free hand touching at his face as he crunched down on something with his teeth - and another round punching through the back of his wrist like a crucifixial as Aaron continued to dump the remaining contents of their magazine, "It. Doesn't. Work!"

The word was emphasised by an inhuman, guttural echo that overlapped his own voice.

Sully had been too late to stop either shooting, and truthfully, he was glad for it, because Ashley had referred to him as an old friend. Clancy stepped over the man, and his fingers tightened around the shaft of the bolt lodged in his face, twisted and broke most of it away with the fletching. A moment later, he spat out the remaining length of the bolt, the mangled tip sinking into into a growing puddle beneath him.

Overhead, the invoked cloud formations had caused the sky to darken enough that it was loathe to relinquish any form of light, natural or otherwise. The punctures to his smouldering hoodie were all too clear, but no blood stained his clothes, nor did he double over like he had that night at the club.

There was no need to put on the show anymore, because they knew. They'd see, soon enough.

"She's using you," Clancy warned, a guttural intonation in his voice. His attention had briefly shifted on the girl with the bat and hockey mask, the only one of the three who hadn't attacked him, "Leave-" he was interrupted by a crack sounding off behind them, followed by a second as he forced himself forward. It took a moment, to see the girl in the mask crumple, that he realised that it waasn't intended for him.

Truthfully, he didn't know the girl or her capabilites, but of the three, she was the only one who hadn't attacked him. Yet. And she was out of focus for now.

But the other two...

Fingernails parted, then the tips themselves peeled back, like a reptile shedding a portion of its dead skin. Sharper digits pushed through the gaps,thin stalactites formed of oily, black shadows in a third-dimensional representation, inches-long. Clancy's eyes were two flinty chips of ice, locked on Aaron as his claws snapped away the remaining two bolts lodged in his windpipe and torso like dead twigs.

The bolts hadn't hurt him, harmless splinters to be pulled out. Bullets were an annoyance, but far from the worst he'd taken. But the man who pulled the trigger had known he was a threat without having met him before.

Bypassing Sully, who was a few feet behind him at this point, Clancy lunged towards Aaron, slashing outwardly with those long black digits.

"Now you're just meat." The depth of his consciousness spoke outwardly, with a voice that wasn't entirely his own.

---

The Phantom assigned to Sloane merely nodded as its responsibility was taken by another construct. Silently, it turned and ran off into the dismal battlefield. Through its course, Amara, and the Army by extension, gained an understanding of the overall situation. One voice in an endless chorus, amplified into infinity and relayed unto itself. The movements of the fleshy abomination and the jacket with which it played, the zombies falling from the sky, the light in the dark that was Linqian’s burning body. This phantom saw it all as it searched for the one called Anya Baksh.

And it found her in due time.

It appeared through the rain like a guardian angel, and approached Anya calmly.

”Your companion has gone ahead, into the fray,” the phantom stated, plainly without a hint of emotion. ”I come to escort you away.”

Meanwhile, another phantom ran like the Hound was chasing it, through the soaked trees and dimly lit woods. Using the blaze of red as a lighthouse, the Legion squad knew where every piece was on its chessboard. And they were convening on one location, the place where their VIP was. Four phantoms came forth, one carrying a Beretta 1201, a semi-automatic shotgun. Across its chest was a belt loaded with extra shells. Amara caught the sight of Vashti on Lila’s back, and almost got distracted by the feathers.

Avert your eyes, it corrupts.

We want Lila alive and intact. Act accordingly.

Amara aimed her pistol at Vashti’s back, and fired two .45 hollow points into her midsection. The sound was completely unheard thanks to the rain, but she refused to be ignored.



The three unarmed phantoms squared up, inching closer to her and Lila while keeping their eyes low to the ground.

Meanwhile, the shotgunner kept the barrel aimed right at Vashti’s face. It knew not to fire, but who could say whether Vashti knew that?

”GET AWAY FROM HER, RIGHT NOW!!!”

---

---

Sully Ran.

Luca ran.

Someone had Linqian covered. He didn’t need to stop and wait to see if Drake was going to act. He quickly swiped his hand across Drake’s shoulder, resetting the 15 minute timer for his Phantombane and then, without any shields weighing him down, bolted.

Stormy ran faster than he had ran in a while, charging through the downpour and the mud like an unstoppable force. It was almost difficult to really see the target he had in mind in all the wet gloom, but the smell of death and ammoniating flesh was unmistakable. His hands radiated a green glow, unmistakable in the heat of battle. As a kid, Stormy was one of the go-to Adepts for combatting inhuman creatures. Apparitions that the Stygian Snake spawned simply through the act of existing were never short in numbers. They always took many forms, and some of them just happened to be a bit more on the Abberant side. Creatures made by creatures were a whole other class of entity of their own.

It made things complicated when working with the coven’s human Aberrants. He could recall a few times when members that uses artifacts of were Adjoined couldn’t tag along with him or they’d risk getting caught in the crossfire. But those skirmishes of pest control taught Stormy a valuable lesson: Intelligence was often a prerequisite to Emotional Fields.

Human beings that were paranormal usually had Emotional Fields evade they were, in fact, emotional. Apparitions that were powerful enough to have a sense of self took on personalities, and therefore became resistant to magic. But that monster moved and behaved stupidly. It just battered and played with Sloane’s hexed jacket like a toddler. So Stormy got close, took in a deep breath, slammed his hands into it. His assumption was confirmed when he felt the influence on his being. Like a rope was lashed end-to-end between himself and the creature, and it was pulled quite strongly in the direction of the monster.

Stormy leaned into the fleshy mass, uncaring of the putrid gunk he’d likely get on his clothes and hands. If he got infected by something, he could just find Sully. 8th Street’s alleged heavy hitter lit up like a green bonfire, as the Consecration spell took hold. Every square inch of its festering body rejected it. And with nowhere for it to go that could get it away from that magic, the only thing it could do was suffer. And 8th Street’s time traveler couldn’t get within 20 feet without feeling the same way.

Stormy grit his teeth, and hauled himself backward to put a few feet of distance between himself and the monster. Deep breath… This could work.

Ken listened to what Lynn had to say as best he could. If Kari was still alive, and Lynn was telling the truth about the future she saw, then things were only going to get more complicated here. But Maya Choi wasn't someone to be easily played with, and Ken knew it wasn't going to be easy shaking her to get to Carol. He could outpace her easily, but the motivating factor was Evelynn's safety now.

If she knew Kari was alive, maybe she'd be able to help find their favorite girl. Would she leave him for her? He couldn't know. Maybe she had her hand in all of this, and it wouldn't even matter. For now, he had two goals: Beat Maya Choi's ass, and live long enough to see Kari again.
They already blew up her house. There were probably a couple of otherworldly rocks in the explosion that survived, but all the feathers. All the little things. All gone.

It sent Ken into a battle trance just thinking about it. Sound and sand meant nothing in the long run when you spent your time in a vacuum sealed bubble, but magical sound was different. It didn't need air to travel, it didn't need a medium to exist in. It simply penetrated every single defensive layer short of his Emotional Field.

Lynn had said to go for Carol, but as the zombies rolled in and Maya managed to force him out of the pocket they met in, damage control became top priority. If Maya was paying attention to him, it meant she wasn't watching Lynn.

He took advantage of being blasted by Maya's amplifiers, feeling his guts and other soft parts recoiling from the acoustic reverberations as his voice echoed across the battlefield.

Carol, Carol… What the fuck was happening? He couldn't keep track, all he knew was that things weren't good, and he had to cover. Or did he?
Maya was like a glue he couldn't shake. He didn't want her rushing back to Lynn, or worse fucking with someone like Stormy who was clearly trying to get the Hulking Dead taken care of.

Fuck it. They had zombies, he had toads. The two combatants' movements had kicked up a lot of errant dirt and stone, and Ken had slowly collected them in his field as they danced about. Once he had enough, he swung them forward and shifted their momentum with false weight that launched the pile like a blunderbuss payload. Even if it didn't hit Maya, the nightmare of having a hundred or so supersonic rocks traveling at her would be a real audio treat.

In the distraction, Ken went for a pouch on his hip and pulled out several slips of warm green paper. Dollar bills: Real federal currency that was about to be defiled in the most glorious way. Freshly washed, Ken stuffed the paper into his mouth as he channeled a great deal of Gold Lux. He felt the curse mark on his back react, contracting and waiting as if it was going to be one of those times again…
But he needed coverage. Or needed Maya distracted. Something had to give.

As the money moistened in his mouth, he could feel it burning up on his tongue. Maya attacked again, and all he could do was accept it as his body rattled from the pressure.
But he spit the wet wad out onto the ground, and it was no longer money. An otherworldly toad barked out into the air and took a couple hops before a huff of golden smoke filled the air. Maya was now surrounded.

Ten figures, standing roughly the same height as Clancy, golden eyes peering out from beneath various hats and masks. A single sonorous ribbit vibrated the ground around them.
Ten Bullfrog Mercenaries with bladed weapons gleaming instantly scattered across the battlefield in mighty hops. A few went for Lynn, to keep her protected. The bulk went for Carol, mindful of Clancy as they bound into combat with furious ribbits and equally furious weapon strikes.

And then Ken noticed the blood. It was his, no doubt from his ears, and a potent sign that this wasn't going anywhere. He'd have to get close and break her off a stronger piece. Ken's body surged forward with tremendous speed, the noise only getting worse until he had to stop again. It wasn't like he wanted to, of course, the body simply reacted to this kind of pain. It was involuntary.
But he was close. Close enough to suck the atmosphere away from her too as the pressure around them swapped. All at once, he tried to rip her from the ground..

He reached back, grabbed the last hourglass, and attempted to smash it over Maya's head.
“Dojo!”
An extra burst of pressure from behind, he hoped, would make her struggle enough that she'd get caught in the impact.
“You're mine!”

Edict was scared to death by the sudden appearance of Classic Jack. Nothing like watching your prized gift go up in a useless explosion only to have someone scare the shit out of you in the middle of an active combat zone.
“Jesus Christ! Jack!?”
At least it was someone useful. It could've been McPherson. Big body, no brain to go with it. But it was the man with the bad habit himself, teleporting about as usual.

“I was fucking a nun, Jack, what's it matter where I was!? Catch me up!”
Edict stuck his hand out, and Jack clasped it in a shake as the Recollective power of all Adepts rushed into his mind. He got a great view from Jack's perspective, and the rundown finished with a deep breath.
“Fucking Emily, Man… I knew things were gonna-”
Edict shuffled, getting up from his cover and starting to move toward the ice wall.
“Just get me over! No way they're getting Britney on my fuckin’ watch, not after all the hard work!”

Whatever hard work he meant wasn't clear, but he stared at Jack expectantly.
“Please!”

”Stay close, and we can all get out of there alive.” In one hand, a solid black scythe appeared. Jack held the other out to Edict with a very pissed off look in his eyes.

”There were easier ways for them to kill themselves.”
“God damn ri-”
The old familiarity of the split second shunting between shadows was a feeling Edict had forgotten until then. It was always so jarring, especially reorienting at the destination. Vision was blurry, sounds muffled, but he could still cast.

There were zombies, frogs, corpses exploding, the smell of fire all around, yelling and screaming. Ken's voice echoed like a loud speaker telling everyone to run. He wasn't planning on it. Across the field, dozens and dozens of corpses shambled and clogged up pathways to get in and out of the action.
Remembering the Stygian Snake back in the day, Zombies were always a painfully annoying byproduct of the otherwise mostly harmless Black Lux varieties. Rarely did they do more than get in the way.

He needed that now.

“You're the Man, Jackie! Now keep out of the line of fire, and get to Britney! Keep her safe!”

His sunglasses shimmered with Pink Lux as he took a deep breath. There was a wide burst of his energy as Edict allowed the mental image of his powers to unfurl into complete openness.
Now watch, you doubters, as I show you what true Pink Lux can do!
The tendrils of his energy burst forth by the hundreds. Each one sunk into an individual Zombie until all the threads connected back to Edict.
“Pink Lotus’ Guiding Principle! Power Word: Dance!”



The command took a moment to spread, but once it started hitting the legion of undead, they began to halt. Their rotting limbs gained supple movement,and dexterity that wasn't their own trickled into their near worthless minds until each had only one compulsion. The obvious compulsion.
In their various degrees of decay, the hordes began to break it down to an unheard tune. Some frantically gyrated until they came apart. Others found a rhythm, staying whole but trapped.

Edict began to run through the crowds of inactive corpses now, knowing that whatever Necromancer was in charge would be doing their best to clear his little brain bomb before they'd probably refocus on him. He had to find targets. The submachine gun was shouldered, and Edict started to rattle off shots toward a nearby melee. If they hit, the magically enhanced bullets would calculate penetration distance on their own before being compelled to fracture and separate with greater force than they normally would.

These bullets penetrate and explode! It was great for Edict. Not so great for Clancy and the people he was fighting, however.

When Jack popped up out of nowhere, it shocked Tayla out of her concentration on Greyson. She pulled her headphones off for a few seconds, but only a few. She needed to know what he knew. Ways to get him alone and vulnerable to take him out. She put the headphones back on and found her way back to him. She did her best to ignore Jack's thoughts, but Greyson was in his head trying to catch up on everything. Which meant she also saw what happened in that house while she was outside confronting their stalker.

So much useless drama. The interesting parts are the house catching fire and the fight going on. She avoided everyone's thoughts from the battle. It was too for her to handle at once. From Jack's view, it was digestible. Shit's gone to hell in a handbag. There are zombies now? What the fuck are 8th Street doing? Greyson didn't stay in Jack's head long. That left him open for that 'hard work' he was talking about. He didn't explain to Jack, but he didn't need to Tayla saw him having a conversation with a woman named Phantasia. She seems to be with the mob and for some reason wants Britney dead. No, not some reason. The Void. Alizee's thing. Britney did something to it and Phantasia's pissed about it. She killed it. Or had a hand in it being killed. She pulled her headphones off at a surprising piece of news.

She doesn't know who the hell the Temple are, but Greyson's a go between for them and the Dollhouse. Motherfucker's working for them? What was the point of pulling her into their shit if they had Greyson the whole time? Oh she's pissed. They're playing her for a fool.

She had two ideas and one involved finding Tsukino. The other, she didn't want to think about.

In the time she listened to Greyson's thoughts, the rain had gotten worse. The tree no longer worked in keeping her from getting wet. She had to get down. Next thing she knew, lightning would strike and she'd be a burnt biscuit. She slowly climbed down. Her feet slipped several times and it took time for her to get her footing back. She finally made it down safely.

She put the headphones on and hoped Tsukino wasn't in the middle of the battlefield. She needed to find her before this all ended and everyone went their separate ways. She didn't know how to find her if she didn't do it now. Just her dumb luck she's where the ice is trying to stop whoever's blocking their way. Better than in the middle of the zombie fight.

She slipped the headphones off again and headed for the ice wall, which happened to be the direction the zombies were going in. With everyone fighting them, she's sure they'll end up dead-dead before she gets there. She could only hope so.

---

---

---

Clancy's claw tore open Aaron's stomach before he could dodge, and Flora kept barraging him with arrows. His eyes flew open as he stumbled backward, falling onto his back as he gained information on Clancy's abstraction and his actions. However, he barely had time to process it with his organs splayed out all over the floor, and that axe shimmered against the storm clouds, it was like a horror movie. In a desperate, last-second attempt to save himself, he applied the Spotlight Spell on Clancy so that all the attention was on Clancy - and so somebody, anybody, could help him. However, someone began blasting and that axe hit the ground at Clancy's feet. Flora went down too, Carol was already down - Aaron wasn't sure if they were dead, only his vision was fading.

George ran up, kicked Clancy into the distance like a football, and screamed, "TOUCHDOWN!" Throwing his hands up into the air as bullets hit him and seemingly bounced off. "Wait, is somebody shooting at me?" He said as he turned to the source. He jumped in the way, driving his hand into the ground and pulling out a chunk of soil and sediment.

"Buzz off!" George shouted, about to throw the chunk at Greyson, but he saw the burning cross in the sky. That meant it was time to mask up! He reached for the pouch on his hip, then he whipped around and put the gas mask on his face.

He just laughed at Greyson as the pink mist overcame them.

---

Vashti and Maya wandered off.

Carol, Aaron, and Flora are down.

The zombies are dancing.

Stormy's aura is active.

Shit was going down in the ice fortress.

And her monster is obsessed with a stupid jacket.

The plan was just going south.

If only Vashti and Maya remained in position... the entire plan wouldn't have fallen apart, but Emily would have to correct that behavior later. Emily weighed her options here, she could still attrition the Coven to death, but the risk of losing her special tools was too high. Not only that, she didn't have the patience or attention to herd all these cats (Well, no, Emily has also really been craving some Dairy Queen right now). It wasn't like they couldn't get Lila another time, they knew where she lived. They'll just jump her later and kill her and then keep it moving.

The jacket the monster was obsessed with burst into flames as Emily's hand reached into the sky; using the utmost extent of her power, she managed to create a burning cross in the sky. Which was the signal to 8th Street that they were going to retreat, but that wasn't all the signal meant. Emily saw those two strippers hop out and rolled her eyes as she quickly put her gas mask on.

A pink, sparkling mist overcame the battlefield, as Emily teleported off the monster. Stormy was still in range, and she focused on one of its legs as it burst into flames. The monster, which was previously stunned by Stormy's aura, stumbled over towards Stormy. If that didn't kill him, Emily was going to barrage him from fire from a distance.

Though, the mist was so thick that it was difficult to see through, light sources still shined through. Not that these sluts would have noticed because of the effects of... inhaling it.

Brianna's portal opened, and George was chucking their injured through it, fighting through the Phantombane Aura.

---

---

"Brrrrrr!" Violet shouted. "It's cold as fuck! Why did we agree to this plan?!"

"Well, maybe you should have worn a rain jacket," Pink said, wearing a hooded trench coat, while Violet was wearing that same black hoodie from earlier, which was currently drenched. The two of them were hiding in the bushes, far away from the action, but also being able to see it; thankfully nobody noticed that they were even in there!

"What? That ugly ass thing?" Violet scoffed. "I'd rather be caught dead than be caught in that."

"Well," Pink said, shaking her head. "Then be cold then."

"What? A hoe never gets cold!"

"You were just complaining about being cold!" Pink shook her head.

However, they saw that burning cross made out of hellfire in the sky... Pink shook her head, and at her feet was a glowing blue potion. She quickly knelt down and popped the top off before downing it. She gagged, sticking her tongue out, as she said, "Stuff tastes like shit, but... I feel powerful!" She grinned.

Violet grinned back.

"... Go out with style?"

"Go out with style!" Pink said.

The two of them hopped out of the foliage and posed.

Nobody could see them.

They both screamed in unison.

Nobody could hear them.

Using the abstraction-boosting concoction that Greta Faust gifted them, Pink's abstraction was boosted to exponential levels. She spread her hands out, and a thick pink cloud of mist expanded outwards and quickly covered the entire battlefield from the ice fortress all the way to Kari's house. Anyone who inhaled this mist would find themselves experiencing vivid hallucinations; they would see, hear, and feel convincing images of their greatest desires tempting them. It bypassed Emotional-Fields and any resistance - if they inhaled the pink mist, then they would be hallucinating.

---

---

---

”Heyyyy, Brit, since when could you water slap people? Don't worry, I'm all good, it'll take more than that to kill me.”

A renewed smile appeared on Britney's face, which was dripping in the rain, her barrier providing minimal protection against it all.

”Since I started preparing for the next wet t-shirt contest, duh.” Britney laughed, adding some levity to the situation, which didn't look super good at the moment.

”All my shit's in there! My clothes, my phone, my money... my only winter jacket! Fuck! I can't fucking afford to replace any of that! I only got this fucking hot cause I knew I could put my fucking clothes back on… Fuck.”

Britney resisted the urge to say, "That's what you get," but she couldn't help but sigh. That compassionate side of her defeated that stern and unforgiving side. ”... When we get out of this, just hit me up, I got you.” Britney said with a sigh - she was hoping that she wasn't making it too obvious that she was being hesitant.

Aryin came over and helped Linqian to her feet, and Britney stood up herself.

”We should get you out of here. I can get rid of the zombies easily… or just fucking freeze them, then we can go out through the woods? I don’t fucking know. I’m not being a coward or some shit like that, just we don’t have enough people to deal with these assholes… they’re actually fucking organised. Better to get the ones they want the fuck away from it all… but I don’t know. I’m not a planner. Maybe I should just punch Aryin till she’s super charged then we can go destroy them or some shit. What should we do?”

Leaving was the best option in Britney's eyes; she honestly couldn't see any benefit that could come from this fight, and she could care less about stupid shit like cowardice - Alizee didn't leave when she had the chance, and now she's gone (Her death was her own fault, Britney.). Though, while she believed in leaving, she was not going to leave 8th Street's obvious target behind: Lila. It was obvious from how Emily was acting that she wanted Lila (if Emily really wanted Britney dead, she would have already nuked the barrier by now).

”... We should go, but I'm not leaving Lila behind,” Britney asserted; she gave the Noble Vow a flourish; she wondered if it'd be any good in this situation. ”We need to get Vashti away from her, let's...”

The explosion of pink came from the middle of the battlefield, and before Britney could react it had completely overtaken her. She immediately stopped breathing and held her breath, thinking it was some type of biological weapon and looked around. She couldn't keep this up for long as she looked to Linqian...

---

---

---

"... You know Em's going to have a stroke if she hears about this, right?" Miranda said walking up to a metal door with her sister at her side. She was holding a comically large hoodie neatly folded in her hands, with a handsaw on top of it.

"Well, she's not going to, is she?" Jacqueline laughed as she spun a key ring around her finger. She walked up to the metal door and stuck the key in. Before she turned it, she gave Miranda a wry grin and said, "... She isn't, right?"

Miranda sighed.

"... No, she is not."

"You fed her, right?" Jacqueline asked.

"Yes," Miranda sighed. "I gave her three of my legs this time."

"Great!" Jacqueline said as she slid the door open, revealing a metal cell... with some bones that were undeniably human, but as long as the PRA didn't come sniffing around, they'd be fine. Probably. In the corner was their friend, Annabelle Heart - or the creature that she began. She was curled up in the fetal position in the corner, her hands over her face. However, when the light of the room of room struck her, she moved her hand somewhat out of the way of her eye. She grunted.

Jacqueline knelt forward, hands on her knees, and said, "Hey, Annabelle!"

"... Yes?" Annabelle groaned.

"Wanna go for a walk, buddy?" Jacqueline said with a smile, spinning the keyring around her finger. "Let's get some Dairy Queen for old times sake."

Annabelle slowly stood up to her feet, her hands still covering her face from the light. At full height, she towered over Jacqueline and Miranda, and she slowly shambled over to them. The two girls didn't even flinch, they just smiled.

"I'll... go..." Annabelle said, wiping her face with one hand.

"Yay!" Miranda said, as Jacqueline grabbed the handsaw, and stood on her tippy-toes trying to reach for Annabelle's horns.

With a grunting groan, Annabelle bent forward, and then Jacqueline grabbed onto her horn and then quickly hacked it off, before Annabelle turned her head and Jacqueline cut off the other one. Both of the horns hit the ground, and Jacqueline picked them up, putting them underneath her shoulder. She smiled.

"I'm going to get rid of these," Jacqueline began. "Get her dressed she can't go out..."

As she spoke, she glanced at Annabelle, who was completely nude... but, it was far from titillating with her inhuman features, near-skeletal physique, and chalk-white skin.

"Now, just come here," Miranda said before she looked Annabelle up and down. "... Shit, how are we going to do this?"

---

After disposing of Annabelle's horns and getting Annabelle dressed, the two girls walked her to their favorite ice cream shop, The Sea Shanty's Scoop- with each of them holding Annabelle's hands (that were covered by the hoodie they put on her). Annabelle was wearing a comically large hoodie - one that Miranda scoured the internet for, for hours before she found it. While it would have been dragging on the ground if anyone else wore it, with Annabelle, who was eight feet tall, it was only oversized. Along with some comically large sweatpants and some sandals. They definitely looked crazy. However, it was the dead of the night and everyone was so caught up in their little worlds.

They sat Annabelle down at one of the tables, and Miranda sat down next to her.

"I'll get us everything," Jacqueline said, "Annabelle, what do you want? Your favorite? Chocolate with sprinkles and fudge on top?"

Annabelle was silent.

"Chocolate with sprinkles? A little fudge?" Jacqueline repeated herself.

"... Yes," Annabelle groaned.

"You know what I want," Miranda said, and with a nod, Jacqueline had left. Miranda silently kicked her feet back and forth as Annabelle sat there, groaning.

Eventually, Jacqueline came back awkwardly holding all of their orders, and Miranda sprung out of her seat to help. Carrying all of their ice cream back to the table, they presented it in front of Annabelle with a spoon and everything... However, she just stared at it.

"Annabelle, it's your favorite!" Miranda bubbly said.

Annabelle stared at it.

"Do you need help?"

Annabelle stared at it.

"Come here..." Miranda reached over, grabbed the spoon, and scooped up a little spoonful of ice cream before sticking it into Annabelle's mouth.

Annabelle spits it out.

"... I don't want it,"

"... Um, maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Jacqueline said, as she put her face into her hands. She let out a defeated sigh. She didn't notice the footsteps approaching.

"... Hey," Jacqueline definitely noticed that and turned her head to see none other than Lynette Domínguez. She was wearing a black hoodie with some black leggings, and black Timberland boots. "Mind if I have a seat?"

"Lynette!" Miranda excitedly said. "You know we'd never say no to you."

"Yes, help yourself," Jacqueline said.

"Now, I'm sorry for ambushing you all in the woods last week," Lynette began as she sat a seat. "And I'm also sorry for using my... resources to track you two down."

"You know you have our number," Jacqueline noted.

"I was blocked again, but that's not important right now," Lynette answered as she sat down before squinting at Annabelle, "... Who is this?" She tilted her head.

Both Jacqueline and Miranda sighed.

"... It's Annabelle." They both said at the same time.

"Wait, this is Annabelle?" Lynette's jaw dropped. "What... what happened to her?"

"We got into a fight with Greenwood and she was cursed," Jacqueline answered. "We're working on helping her."

"You know my people have the resources to help her," Lynette said.

"We know," Miranda answered. "I'm sorry, but we don't trust them not to do anything to our friend."

"Fair," Lynette shrugged. "But, you know I'll help Annabelle."

"We'll let you know if we need help," Jacqueline said. "Greta is working on something for her, so we just need to see what comes from that."

"It's not like we have any other options," Miranda shrugged.

"That's good... So, let me get to the point," Lynette began. "I'm still working on my private investigation to get to the bottom of these murders, I want to ask you two some questions. You are totally free not to answer. And I wouldn't hold it against you."

"What do you want to know?" Jacqueline asked.

"Well, I wanted to discuss Ashley Stone - I know your sister had nothing to do with her murder - but Emily was harassing her for the Apparition Killer," Lynette began. "To tell you the truth, Ashley should have passed the blade to somebody else if she was going to turn her back on magic, but it was her choice. Even though everyone else did all the heavy lifting finding- oh, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?"

Lynette awkwardly laughed. "It's been ten years, I just want to know why she suddenly decided that she wanted the Apparition Killer?"

The twins sighed again.

"Should I tell her?" Miranda said.

"No," Jacqueline answered. "I'll do it."

Jacqueline shook her head before she began her explanation, "It's actually our fault. You probably don't know this, nor have you met her, but we have a little cousin named Constance."

"... Constance Reed?" Lynette raised an eyebrow.

"Yes."

"There was an amber alert for her, that I know," Lynette said, "What does she have to do with it?"

"When she went missing, I immediately used the book to find her, only to find out the worst had happened," Jacqueline sighed, hanging her head and rubbing her temples.

"I'm waiting," Lynette said.

"There was an Apparition in a cat... calls herself the Grimalkin, she... tortured Constance into being her servant," Jacqueline answered. "The only issue is that the Grimalkin also works for Dollhouse. So, we arranged a meeting with their leaders. Just us. And they told us that they'll release Constance if we get them the Apparition Killer. So... I just nudged Emily into getting it from Ashley. We probably should have just stolen it from her instead; I'm so dumb." She buried her face in her hands.

"... Does Emily know?" Lynette asked.

"No," Miranda answered.

"Why not?"

"We don't want her to start a war with Dollhouse."

Lynette's jaw dropped.

"... They are literally - LITERALLY - holding your little cousin hostage," Lynette seethed. "I don't know about you, but if that was my cousin, my brother, my sister, I'd already have Luis' head."

She let her words hang in the air before she added, "... Why are you two pussyfooting? Don't you care about your cousin? She's your cousin."

"We're afraid they'll kill Constance!" Jacqueline answered with a shout, attracting some looks and gazes, but they ignored them. "I know... I want them dead, too. But, Dollhouse... they're scary. Way stronger than us. And even if we can stand a chance against them, they'll just kill her before we get a chance to save her."

"That's fair, but..." Lynette said. "... By playing their games, you're just going to let them think they can boss you around. First, it's the Apparition Killer, then what next? They have all the cards because you let them."

"Look!" Jacqueline shouted, "I don't mean to act like Emily, but we didn't ask for your input! We're going to find the Apparition Killer, then we're going to get Constance back!"

"Fine," Lynette said, "I'm going to see what I can do about your cousin, I just think handing them the Apparition Killer is a bad idea."

"Whatever they do with the sword is their business," Miranda said. "Is there anything else we can help you with?"

"Honestly, there is," Lynette said, "But, I'm going to drop it here, okay?"

"Okay!" The Reed sisters said in unison.

"Let's... just catch up, hangout," Lynette said. "I have all night. And... yeah, let's just chill."

Afterward, the four simply chatted.

---

---

Ken was strong.

That only made things more fun for Maya. She didn’t let him move an inch towards Carol - attack met with attack, leaving her own ears ringing.

A shower of rocks shot in her face, shattering as they hit the constant static around her. They burst into millions of tiny pieces, splattering across her harmlessly, and screeching loudly in her ears. She winced, forcefully dampening the sound.

It distracted her long enough for Ken to summon a bunch of frogs… that immediately went after Carol. Whatever. It wasn’t like she could die.

Maya grinned as Ken jumped towards her again, hands clapping together all the sound waves around them got increasingly loud and painful. Her breathing grew painful as a heavy pressure pushed on her from all around, then the back. She narrowed her eyes, shield of physical sound bursting out around her and slamming into anything close enough to her.

Including the hourglass coming towards her head. The sound blast completely shattered it, tinkling glass falling into her long hair and across the ground.

“Has anyone ever told you how lame you sound?” Maya sneered, spinning around with another blast of sound. “You should-”

She cut herself off as everything went to shit near Nadine’s undead bullet sponge which… really wasn’t doing its job very well at all. Great plan, Emily. Totally worked.

“Awwww,” Maya looked up at the sky, and the burning cross blazing across it. She jumped back, putting a bit of distance between herself and Ken, and pulled a gas mask from her hip. The ugly thing was shoved over her face as pink mist spread across the battlefield.

Emily always had to go and ruin her fun, whether it was telling her not to steal a dead girl's underwear (which she did anyway) or stopping what was starting to look like a really fun fight. As much as she’d love to continue, she knew Emily would just leave her behind… and fuck that!

She wanted Dairy Queen… and to see Phoebe again. It felt like it had been hours apart.

“Too bad,” she sighed. Her accent, the inflections that made it obvious English wasn’t her first language, was clearer with her own hearing dampened. She got in close to Ken again. As he got caught by the pink mist’s hallucinations, she slipped a piece of paper (with her number on it) in one of the more obvious pockets of his vest. She patted it and smirked underneath her mask. “We can continue later, yeah?”

Her hand lingered for a moment, before she turned and ran towards and through Brianna’s portal.

---

---

Sending her summon after Sloane had been the right call.

Before the summon itself came back, one of Amara’s clones appeared. Anya let out a sigh of relief, properly standing and brushing off dirt from her soaked trousers. She smiled at the phantom, even though she doubted it felt much at all.

”Thank you,” she said, gesturing back towards the battlefield. With it with her, she could rest easy knowing it would at least sacrifice itself for her. ”Take me to my… companion, then.”

As she was about to let it escort her, Anya’s summon came bounding back towards her as if being chased by something. It jumped into her arms and dissipated in a puff of black smoke.

Immediately behind it came a rapidly thickening pink mist. It covered the entire forest in no time. Anya immediately stopped breathing, hands clenching into her thighs. What kind of abstraction was this? Was there someone in 8th Street with this kind of magic… She didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to figure it out. She raised an hand to her mouth and nose, trying to cover them with the fabric of her jacket.

It wasn’t enough to protect her when she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, and inhaling the smoke.

The forest changed subtly before her eyes. Rain stopped, the sun shone, the trees were more spaced out. She knew, somehow, that she owned this place. This land. The whole town. She was the most important and powerful person in it.

Her head tilted to the side, catching sight of Sloane standing nearby. When had she gotten so close? She was giving Anya that look again, like the drunken one at the festival - one filled with pure adoration and love. As if Anya was the best person to ever exist. And it didn't make Anya feel uncomfortable at all.

Because she was.

Smiling at her closest friend, Anya’s gaze then trailed downwards.

In front of her were various powerful (in different ways) men in her life. Ezra Vanburen, Greyson Devola, Jack Hawthorne, Drake Blackmore… the heads bowing down to her went on and on. Seeing them all at her feet was so empowering. This was how it should be.

Everyone bowing at her feet.

She raised on a heeled boot carefully, before bringing it down on the back of the nearest man kneeling at her feet. Ezra, it seemed. It didn’t matter. They were all the same to her.

Just people to be stepped on for her own success. To be used until she no longer needed them. Even the richest and arguably most powerful man in the city… No, that was her title now.

Because how could he be, beneath her feet like this?

The feeling was thrilling, and addictive. She knew at the back of her mind that this wasn’t quite real - like the dreams she visited. But oh, was it sweet. To exert her power- power she deserved- over them all, with the one person she’d chosen by her side.

Everything she’d ever desired was hers, and it made her feel more than she’d ever felt before.

---

---

Still pushing through zombies, Luca’s head swivelled around as he tried to figure out the best past out. As he did, in the corner of his eyes he saw Carol fall to the ground. The bullet hadn’t come from Edict, who appeared and started spraying afterwards. Nobody else had a gun.

But someone could make one.

Luca’s heart sank. Carol would be alive, but dying still hurt her. It was a horrible fate, to eternally die and come back. She didn’t deserve it.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He had to clear a proper path for him and Sloane, getting rid of as many zombies as he could. It was easy as their hands grasped at him only to immediately rot off. They were almost-

Luca tripped over a zombie foot that suddenly stuck out in front of him as it started dancing. He caught the zombie, collapsing on top of it, its soft, rapidly decaying flesh stopping him from breaking anything. But it still fucking hurt. Luca groaned, rolling off it and gagging as the stench of death filled his senses.

He could never get used to it.

Before he could get up, pink mist rapidly spread across them all. Luca’s eyes widened. A probably dangerous mist- shit, shit, he couldn’t hold his breath for long, he was already starting to struggle, shit-

The pink mist was sucked into his damaged lungs, quickly superimposing images in front of what was really happening.

A hand appeared in front of him to help him up. He hesitated, breathing quickening, but felt the urge to take it even with the Rot. His fingers lightly touched the much bigger hand… and the skin remained unmarred by decay. Luca’s eyes widened, shooting up to look at Jasper’s smiling face.

He beamed back, taking his hand, getting to his feet. He held up their joint hands between them, marvelling at it for a moment. He was touching something without destroying it. He was able to hold the hand of the man he liked… elation bubbled in his chest.

Carol was in the background, teasingly calling him motherfucker - she looked older, free of the hourglass. Olivia was beside her, curly hair tied back into a ponytail and soft smile on her lips. Both alive and well, free of their apparitions.

He was free of the Rot too. There was no more pain. For the first time in ten years, he was free of it. His limbs felt like his own. He could breathe easily. There wasn’t that constant burning of his insides rotting away. He wasn’t dying.

Luca jumped forward, wrapping his arms around Jasper in a proper hug. A hug without hurting him. A hug that he could have again and again and again. They could cuddle while they watched movies, in bed, they could- Luca blushed, not wanting to go down that route.

Jasper hugged him back. It was so warm.

So perfect.

Luca smiled, a smile so wide his cheeks began to hurt. Tears of joy shone in his eyes.

Softly, so quietly that only someone right next to him could hear, he whispered, ”I’m so glad. I’m not dying anymore… I didn’t want to. I’d accepted it, but I really didn’t want to. Not after I met you again. For the first time since I found out, I actually wanted to live again.”

Jasper’s arms around him tightened. “I’m glad too. If anyone deserves to live it's you, Luca. I… everyone likes you so much.”

”Really?” Luca tilted his head up, chin resting against Jasper’s (strangely) clothed chest. There was something more to that. Something… he’d always hoped for.

”Yes, really. Now that you have your whole life ahead of you- a life you can spend with someone- I have something to tell you.”

”What is it?” Luca asked, breath catching in his throat and heart rate increasing - but for once it wasn’t because of his illness.

“I painted something to show my feelings,” Jasper smiled, one arm loosening from around Luca to hold up his canvas.

It was an idyllic scene of a flowering meadow. Jasper and Luca stood next to each other in it, arms wrapped around each other. Jasper was looking at Luca with a look so soft, so warm, that was replicated by the ‘real’ Jasper holding him right now. Luca was smiling so brightly that it was represented by sunbeams shining out from him.

An angelic light bathed them both from the heavens. Roses bloomed at their feet. Their thorny, red flower adorned vines curved up and around them like a wedding altar. Beautiful white doves rested on them, their beaks opened in a beautiful song Luca could practically hear coming from the painting. A soft, fluffy cloud in the brilliant blue sky arced over them in the shape of a heart.

“Luca,” Jasper said, letting go of him, only to get down on one knee. He held up the canvas as if it was an engagement ring. With the other hand he pulled out his paintbrush, adding the final touches to the painting - a ring painted around Luca’s finger. With the signature glow of his magic, Jasper pulled it out of the canvas. Both were offered to Luca, whose eyes went wide.

“Will you be my boyfriend?”

Luca’s mind ground to a halt. Be Jasper’s boyfriend? He’d love to be Jasper’s boyfriend - even if the method was incredibly cringey, but… wait. Jasper was straight. He didn’t like Luca in that way - he only saw him as a friend. He’d never ask him out.

And he’d definitely never draw something like that.

The hallucination crumbled before Luca could say yes as he realised it wasn’t real. Illusion Jasper crumbled, disappearing along with Carol and Olivia, bringing him back to reality. He was immediately faced with someone’s forehead. His arms were wrapped around someone that was much shorter, and much less muscular, than Jasper.

It felt like a knife in his gut, shoved in and twisting, as he tried to pull back and realised what had happened. He was hugging Sloane. Everywhere his bare arms, neck and face touched was rotting away - through her clothes to her skin. His breathing grew shallower as panic captured him, completely washing away the burgeoning joy he’d felt moments ago. He felt physically ill. It was like a weight was crushing him, horror filling him as the Rot's gleeful laughter echoed in his mind.

He was hurting her. He was doing exactly what he didn’t want to do. The one thing he feared the most.

Luca tried to pull back, but he couldn’t, because Sloane was hugging him back. He pulled back as much as he could, raising his arms in the air to try and avoid touching her. Trying to avoid further hurting her.

His own flesh was peeled back and rotting in various places, dark blood dripping sluggishly down his arms. All the pain had come back- sharp stabs in his chest, harsh scrapes in his lungs, and a constant dull ache in his limbs. It was all amplified by the wounds he’d gained as the rotting quickened during the illusion. When he’d had no control. When the Rot was able to exert his influence.

But he didn’t care about his own pain. It was his normal. Dying was his normal.

All he cared about right now was trying to get away from Sloane, before the damage was irreversible.

---

---

---

Not leaving Lila behind was fine. Linqian was fine to save her bird ass- unless pink mist washed over them. Linqian bit down her lip, holding her breath and jerking her head towards Britney.

”What the fuck-”

Talking was a mistake, pink mist getting into her mouth as soon as it opened and travelling down her throat. Instantly, everything around her changed. Britney and Aryin disappeared from her vision, and the burning house and forest was replaced.

She was in a small living room - the living room of the apartment she’d lived in for years. Clothes were strewn across a worn, dark blue sofa. The clacking of a controller and muted video game sounds, punctuated by occasional static, came from the television behind her. She knew if she turned around she would see Huanyi playing whatever game he was most into now on the PS2 she’d bought him for his 16th. But it wasn’t her younger brother that took up her attention, for once.

At the small table in the corner of the room sat Jinhai, lazily typing on the laptop she scrounged together money to buy. Soft light gently highlighted his defined cheekbones, dappling his long, curly hair. Feeling her gaze he paused what he was writing, turning to her with a raised eyebrow and questioning smile.

Tears started rolling down her cheeks.

”... Ge?” she choked out.

”Huh? What’s gotten into you?” Jinhai snorted, smiling becoming more taunting. ”You never call me that, huh, Meimei?”

”Shut up,” Linqian replied in Chinese, without the normal bite to it. She couldn’t bring herself to snap at him. Because he was there, right in front of him. Like he was alive. Like he’d never… like she’d never… like that day had never happened.

The worst day of her life.

Right then, she knew this wasn’t real. Jinhai was dead. She’d seen his dead body, seen the blood staining the carpet that she could feel beneath her bare feet. She’d held his cold body and begged him to come back. He hadn’t, and he wouldn’t.

This wasn’t real.

But she didn’t care.

Linqian forcefully caught hold of the illusion before it broke. Like a protective blanket it resettled, the slight wavering subsiding. She didn’t want to leave. She refused to leave.

Because even if it wasn’t real, even if it was all a hallucination, Jinhai was here. She was back home - in her actual home, with her two brothers. The two people she loved more than anything. She didn’t want to leave them.

She didn’t want to lose him again.

”Why are you crying, Qian-er?” Jinhai asked, closing his laptop. He gave her that little concerned look he always used to when he knew something was up, but also knew she’d bristle as soon as he pushed. He always knew. Nobody knew her like Jinhai did.

Nobody would ever know her like he had. Because no one had been there like him - from the moment her life began. He was supposed to be there until it ended, too. But he’d gone first, leaving her gasping for air.

It was so cruel. A hollow feeling in her chest that kept the tears streaming down her face even as she held onto the lifeline that had been thrown to her, even knowing it would snap beneath her grasp.

He looked so real. He was as real as she was going to get. She moved forward a couple of steps and he stood, head tilted in confusion. Hesitantly, Linqian hugged him.

He felt real, too. Solid. Breathing. Heart beating. Alive.

”Qian-er?”

”I’m fine,” Linqian smiled, dropping her arms and taking a few steps back again. ”Your face is just so ugly, I had to make sure it was really you… cause fuck, how can we be related when you look like that?“

”That makes no sense,” Jinhai rolled his eyes at her, disdain crossing his eyes before disappearing again. ”We’ve got similar genes, you want to go tell mom and dad they’re ugly? Go on.”

He gestured to the shrine in the corner.

Even in this hallucination, her parents weren’t alive. Maybe… because she couldn’t remember them so well. For the past ten years it had only been the three of them. The future to her had been the three of them.

Until it wasn’t. Until it was just the two of them.

Short lived joy sputtered out, sucked in by that empty void even as she tried to cling to it. Everything was a reminder that this wasn’t real. She couldn’t bring her actual brother back. Jinhai would always be dead.

But she still didn’t care. She still didn’t want to leave this place.

It was better than the reality where she had nothing at all.

”You think they’d care? Come on, Hai-er, they’d always tell us not to come to them with our stupid arguments,” Linqian laughed lightly, shaking her head.

”But they always took my side... Obviously, since I was the better child.”

”Oh shut up. They’re not here anymore to do that,” Linqian rolled her eyes at him, even as they stung with continually shed tears. ”It’s just you and me now, and you know I can beat your ass.”

If only it was still you and me. Now it’s just me, making all the decisions alone. I don’t want to make them alone.

”Hey, there’s me too!” Huanyi piped up cheerfully. Linqian tilted her head to look at him, still playing a video game she didn’t recognise. She’d never had the time to have an interest in these things. ”I get a say in who wins arguments too!”

”You wish, Yi-er,” Linqian sneered.

”She’s right. The adults get to make those kinds of decisions.” Jinhai chuckled.

”I’m eighteen, I’m an adult!” Huanyi whined.

”We’ll treat you like an adult when you don’t need an allowance anymore.”

”... aw, come on, Ge, that isn’t how the law works. I become an adult at eighteen, allowance or not.”

”Legally, perhaps, but not in this house, didi.”

Linqian couldn’t help but smile. It was so familiar. The back and forth between the two of them, how easily Jinhai handled Huanyi without losing his temper. They were so close… and that had been taken away from Huanyi. She couldn’t replace Jinhai for him, no matter how hard she tried.

She couldn’t be there as much as she wanted to be. She never could be. Linqian didn’t regret it. If she didn’t work so hard, so often, they might not even be here. But she’d missed out so much. So many moments with the little brother she loved more than anything, so much time with Jinhai she’d always thought she could make up for…

Now it was too late.

”But I’d be taking your side! Do you really think I’d take Jie’s? She’s always-”

”Keep talking that way and see if you ever get dinner again.”

Henri pouted, holding up his hands.

”Alright, I’ll take your side, Jie! You’re my favourite, don’t worry.”

”Hey, look,” Jinhai laughed, corners of his eyes creasing in a way that lit up his handsome face. A happy look that Linqian missed so much. ”You’re everyone's favourite in this house.”

“She’s mine too.” Another voice suddenly appeared. It felt like she should recognise it, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Suddenly there was someone pressing against her back - someone roughly the same height as her, soft yet rough at the same time. Scarred arms wrapped around her waist, tattoos covering them blurry.

“Hey, babe,” the soft, strangely familiar voice whispered in her ear. She couldn’t quite place it, or the arms she’d definitely seen before. She decided to not turn around and look… in case she didn’t like what it showed her. Did it really matter, anyway? “You left dinner in the oven.”

”Oh…” Linqian said. It was something so mundane. Peaceful. Just a normal life and a normal, unknown, slightly familiar partner… with her two brothers. She didn’t want to go and turn off the oven. It wasn’t even real. And because it wasn’t real, Jinhai might disappear if she looked away from him. ”Can you get it for me? I’ll sort it in a minute.”

“Sure thing, bro,” came the slightly teasing reply, along with a light kiss to her earlobe that turned into a sharp bite. Linqian bit her lip, resisting the urge to turn around, as the warmth at her back disappeared and her mysterious lover disappeared.

Maybe it was Bianca. Bianca never called her bro… well, that was just weird anyway. Not something to dwell on.

It didn’t matter. It just added warmth to the situation. Not only were her brother’s there, alive and well, but she was with someone who seemed to care for her. Who would turn off the oven for her. Such a small, simple thing… But so impactful.

It was all that she’d ever wanted, and everything that she’d never have.

”Jinhai.”

”Yes?”

”Hai-er.”

”... Yes?”

”Ge.”

”What is it, Linqian?”

”I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea.” Linqian closed her eyes for a moment, before opening them. Jinhai was still there. He was still standing right in front of her. She smiled softly, eyes filling with sorrowful happiness. More than anything, she wanted this to be real. She wanted it so badly that it hurt.

”Every day I wake up and expect to see you there, like this. Sitting at the table, working on something I don’t understand while making judgemental comments. I never thought I’d miss it. There’s so much I regret. So much that I didn’t tell you, Ge. Like how much I love you. I love you and Yi-er more than anything. You’re everything to me. Living without you is like living without a part of myself. I don’t feel whole. Sometimes, I just feel like giving up. Every single day I wish it was me. It should have been me. And I know you aren’t real. I don’t care. I miss you, and all I want is for you to come back. Please come back.”

In reality, Linqian hardly moved as she softly spoke in her mother tongue, lips pulled up into a gentle smile and tears a river cascading down her already drenched cheeks. Anguish filled her eyes, the deep sorrow she’d held in coming so visibly to the surface like it never had before.

Still, she stayed in the hallucination, knowing that her grief could be easily seen. It didn’t matter. Staying with Jinhai, for as long as she could, was all that mattered.

Because she wasn’t sure if she could cope with him being torn away from her again.

Outside Kari’s House, Inside the Ice Fortress
_{In collaboration with: @Punished GN Interactions: Everyone in the ice fortress, Tayla @silvermist1116}

---

“... Oh, they let you back into Sycamore?!” Greta snorted, followed by a mocking laugh. “Oh, Auri must be desperate.”

“Oooooh, cool!” Phoebe laughed as she turned the lid off the potion and downed it. There was a speck of shimmering blue potion at the corner of her lip that she just casually wiped away. “You brought us some doggos to play with. Cool. Very cool.”

“Can Cynthia eat?!” She asked, hopping up and down in some grim excitement.

“Yes, come here!” Greta gestured towards Cynthia. She cocked the glowing grey potion back before chucking it at the entrance Luna made. It exploded into a thick grey smoke when it hit the ground.

“Malik! Lee! Brianna!” Greta pointed at the smoke cloud. “Open fire!”

Malik stuck his hands out and unleashed a barrage from his Starsailor spell, while Lee created the Blazing Arrow and fired a few arrows that would explode into a cloud of fire. Brianna raised a hand in the air, creating a volley of razor-sharp, triangle-shaped, light constructs and launching them into the smoke cloud.

There was the scraping sound of Amy’s iron club against the ground as she walked up next to Greta. “... Was that who I think it was?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Greta grinned as she reached into her crate and pulled out a glowing-cyan potion. “Yes, it was.”

When the smoke cleared, they’d see a curious sight. Hellhounds had moved in a wave, piling over one another to buffer the worst of the barrage. Smoke seeped from the pups’ wounds, and five despawned a second later.

Luna looked at their losses, clicked her tongue, and launched herself over the remaining hellhounds, focusing on the one who shot the stars. She came in at an angle, spinning with her white construct blades, the first one swiping at his chest. Spinning, stepping forward, the second blade slashing at his head. Her own head was on a swivel, looking for any attacks from those around her.

Bahlok watched for a moment, before she whistled, and the remaining five hellhounds went straight for the girl holding the iron club, maws eager and searching to rip her hand holding the club, and her arms and thighs.

Bahlok’s red grin widened, and she raised a hand. Another hand materialized as Bahlok pulled Bahlaas out from Smoke’s Crossing, and threw her in the direction of Greta.

“I said I didn’t want to!” Bahlaas whined, landing a ways off from Greta, hands glowing with fire. She reached out, shooting off fireballs to Greta’s shoulder, chest, and legs, trying to set her clothes on fire. Trying to burn her.

“Shut up and fight!” Bahlok snapped back, readying her own stance. Bahlok launched herself at the one who shot the flaming arrows, appendage shooting forward. She moved with the aim to smash and smother him into the ice wall, constrict his arms so he couldn’t fire off any more of those arrows. Maybe she’d constrict him enough that he’d pass out… Maybe she’d constrict him enough so he stopped moving…

Greta screamed as the fire hit her… However, Cynthia’s jaw clamped down on her leg and threw her out of the way. She turned towards Bahlaas and said, “Spirits provide Cynthia with no sustenance.” she backpedaled towards Greta, attuning herself to Bahlaas’ abstraction.

Before Luna could reach Malik, a thick wall of ice appeared and blocked the attack. Phoebe laughed, diamond dust coming off her body as she transformed into ice.

“... You need to chill out, girl,” She raised a hand, and a blast of freezing energy came out. “We could have been partying with the doggos. Now? We’re fightin’.”

The first dog that approached Amy was hit with the Iron Club, instantly dematerializing it. However, the other four latched on, and Amy exploded into fire like a torch. She held on tight as she could before she used her strength to fling them.

Bahlok’s hand launched Lee into the ice wall…

“Lee!” Brianna screamed. She raised her hands at the Apparition and fired off a kinetic beam of light.

Meanwhile, Nadine sighed, flicking her hand at the chaos. The undead minions she had already summoned shambled towards their intruders.

Luna saw the freezing energy coming straight for her. Her swords morphed into a small shield, deflecting most of the energy as she rolled to the side.

“You’re gonna regret that…”

Snapping to her feet, a hand moved to her thigh, pulling up the ruffles of her dress to grab a pistol. She pointed it at Phoebe, aimed for her left thigh, and fired point blank. The next second, she leapt over the ice barricade as her target changed, and she fired off a shot at Malik's left shoulder. Standing poised on the fine edge of the ice barricade, she could see the undead approaching, and she cursed under her breath. A sword formed in her free hand, and she dove into the fray, slicing undead here and there.

As Bahlaas watched on, fuming that the monster disturbed her attack, she noticed something. Right behind Cynthia, the telltale signs of Smoke’s Crossing could be seen. A black gloved hand shot out, a large needle in hand, the sharp tip aimed to jab Cynthia in the thigh. The smoke dispersed revealing none other than Kipnu, ten more hellhounds with him. If his poison needle was successful, Cynthia would soon find herself paralyzed.

Kipnu whistled as he retreated from Cynthia, sicking the dogs on all the undead Luna was trying to fend off.

Bahlaas pulled on Kipnu’s hand, ”Where’s the blood?”

“She’s safely hidden. Now, let’s make good on our deal, hm?”

Bahlaas nodded, staring down at Greta again, and sending a flurry of fireballs at her.

Bahlok saw the kinetic light a fraction of a second too late, focused as she was on Lee. She hissed as she was thrown back. From the ground, she saw Luna fighting off undead, and her own hellhounds thrown from a flaming torch of a human. She whistled, and the remaining four hellhounds hobbled in her direction. She pointed at Lee, and the dogs aimed to bite down on his arms and legs.

Bahlok herself unfurled a long tongue, licking her teeth as she stared at Brianna. In a flash of a second, the Eldritch Appendage shot forward, aimed to wrap and constrict Brianna up tighter than a straitjacket.

The bullet hit Phoebe, and knocked a chunk of ice off her body… but she just laughed as she raised a hand. She sucked in all the water as the wound was quickly filled. “Bringing a gun to a magic fight…?” She tilted her head, as she watched Malik cry in pain and then fell to the ground. “Lame.” She laughed as she raised a hand and began quickly dropping the temperature around Luna. Some of the zombies became more sluggish, but it reached a point where the rain had froze before it even hit the ground.

The needle hit Cynthia, and she quickly whipped around and attuned herself to Kipnu… which allowed her to fight off the poison for a bit longer than expected. “Cynthia… does not feel good…”

“Son of a bitch!” Greta hissed in anger as her crate was some distance away. “We need to bunch up!” However, the barrage of fireballs came for her… until Amy got in front of them. Club in both hands.

“... This is the best you can do, Tsukino?” Amy said in Japanese, hissing her name like an insult. “You. Your mafia. And your Apparitions are weak.”

She rushed forward at Bahlaas, the Iron Club cocked and ready to go, and when she got close, she swung it with all of her inhuman strength. Enough to send the Apparition into the ice wall.

Greta managed to get to her crate and reached for two glowing green potions. She threw one to Phoebe, who caught it. Then walked over to Cynthia...

The eldritch hand caught Brianna, but Lee was free… he created a glowing grey dagger in his hand, and with a few swipes, he created powerful, rushing, winds that sent the dogs approaching him flying.

Nadine was constantly creating undead minions, sending them shambling back over towards Luna.

Luna gritted her teeth at Phoebe, falling to a knee as the freezing temperatures made themselves known. She fired off two rounds, one at Phoebe’s shoulder, the other at her opposing hip. The third round clicked, the gun malfunctioning from the freezing temperatures. Luna took a shaky breath, unable to feel her fingertips.

She glanced as Bahlaas struck the ice wall, falling to the ground. Turning her head slowly to Amy, then to the undead overcoming her vision.

Maybe this is where she would really falter…

Before the sound of fervent stabbing caught her gaze, and she saw Kipnu standing in front of her, pressing needles into the undead and making them drop to the ground.

“Whatever they’re saying, don’t let them get in your head.” he growled out, before he shouted towards Bahlaas. “Get your ass moving, we need fire power here!”

Bahlaas let out a moan, squinting as she lifted her head off the ground. She raised a hand, and smoldering sparks filled the air, drifting towards Phoebe before growing in size, raining hellfire on the ice girl.

Bahlok saw the tables shifting on the battlefield, and hissed under her breath. With cold, calculated force, she stared directly at Brianna as she applied enough force to dislocate both her shoulders with an audible snap. Who created a dome of light around herself.

She could see the hellhounds struggling to find purchase on Lee, and dropped Brianna, eyes on her appendage spinning madly as she tried to catch Lee again.

Kipnu saw Greta about to undo his work, and he whistled. The hellhounds gathered at once, and the fifteen or so ganged up on Greta, jumping on her, jaws snapping to grab her arms and legs, trying to pull her to the ground.

Lee swapped out the dagger for a shield, and when Bahlok’s limb hit, it got reflected back at her.

“Keep shooting me,” Phoebe laughed as her wounds were fixed in an instant as she pulled from the rain storm. She walked over to Malik, “No really, keep at it. You got enough bullets.”

“Phoebe!” Malik shouted, pointing upwards. She flipped around and saw the fire raining around her. She quickly erected some ice spikes to take most of the blast. However, most of them hit her and melted her body - and forced her to transform back into her human form lest she melt to death. She was covered in severe burns… But the healing potion was still in her hand, and she created a dome of ice around herself and Malik.

“... DON’T THINK I’M DONE WITH YOU!” Amy screamed as she charged Bahlaas, club overhead. She used inhuman speeds to approach the Apparition, knocking away undead and hellhound alike. She came in with a brutal swing of her club that packed enough power to crack the thick ice wall. Then she would keep pounding at the Apparition until it was too weak to fight.

The Hellhounds mauled Greta as she screamed but Cynthia lunged forward and bit one of them in half. Her moments were sluggish but she swiped at them with her claws.

“… The potion!” Greta shouted, “D-drink- the potion!”

“As.. you.. wish,” Cynthia grabbed the glowing jar with both claws and shattered it above her. The glass carved up her claws, but the healing potion poured into her mouth. The effects of the needle were undone as Cynthia slashed at the hell hounds, dematerializing them. She bit down on one of their head’s and flung its separated body into the distance.

Meanwhile Nadine was flooding the ice fortress with undead minions, creating them far faster than they were destroyed.

Luna cursed as she watched the dome ice over, before she heard screaming. Her head whipped to the side, catching Bahlaas struggling badly under Amy’s club.

“Shit.”

To make things worse, the undead were getting too much. Luna used her constructed sword to slice through them, but it was like cutting through sand. They just kept coming, getting in the way of her coming to Bahlaas’ rescue.

With a grunt, Luna unfurled white wings, and shot over the undead, towards Amy.

“Kisama! Mō owaridesu! (You bastard, you’re finished!)” Luna yelled as she came in at an angle, aiming her sword to strike across Amy’s arm and chest.

Kipnu casually walked over to Greta, pinned as she was on the ground by the hellhounds. His mask hid a smile as he raised a needle, and attempted to jab it into her neck. Another paralyzing poison.

His eyes glanced over at Cynthia, and he whistled. The remaining hellhounds began climbing up Cynthia’s back, trying to dig their teeth into her neck, into her back, trying to weaken her. Some hellhounds surrounded Kipnu, keeping the undead at bay, snapping their jaws at Cynthia.

Bahlok heard the cry of her little sister, and near forgot about Lee, reflected as her attack was. Instead, she veered off, slashing through undead in an attempt to reach Luna and Bahlaas.

The blade slashed Amy, and she went stiff for a moment… Then she grinned as she looked over her shoulder, exploding into a cloud of fire.

“... Why did Kura have to die, while assholes like you get to walk the earth?!” Amy screamed at her in Japanese. “You should’ve ran while you had the chance!”

Using all of her monstrous strength, she swung the iron club at Luna with enough force to launch her.

Cynthia grinned… she quickly flicked all of the hellhounds off of her and lunged for Kipnu’s leg. She latched on and began using her inhuman strength to swing him around as if he were a club. Literally using him to beat the Hellhounds.

“... Hehehe,” Phoebe grinned as she transformed back into ice. “Suckers.”

She skipped over to Malik, opened the jar, and poured the contents on his crumpled body. Soon, the bullet was pushed out of his body, and the wound closed as Phoebe gave him a little kick. “C’mon, big boy,” She said. “Pick a target and let’s goooooo!”

The ice dome shattered, and Malik turned towards Bahlok. He stuck his hands out as he fired a barrage of stars at the Apparition. Meanwhile, Lee had switched back to the Blazing Arrow and cut loose as many flaming arrows at the Apparition as possible as the two double teamed her.

Stars splashed across Luna’s vision as the club hit her straight on. Weightlessness, before her world crumpled as she collided with the wall. Sliding to the ground, a moan escaped gritted teeth. Through squinted eyes, she could see Bahlaas struggling to lift herself off the ground near her. A growl as Luna glared at Amy, pulling up to a knee.

“Moshi anata ga watashitachi o misuteta koto o shittara, Kura wa haka no naka ni korogarikonde itadeshou. Anata no hontō no kazoku.... Anata ni wa meiyo ga arimasen. (Kura would be rolling in her grave if she knew you abandoned us. Your real family... You have no honour.)” She spat out between huffs, trying to get air back into her lungs.

She surveyed the battlefield. Kipnu was in dire straits, Bahlok was about to take a direct hit. Bahlaas was struggling to move.

Luna cursed under her breath, and shouted, “Lights out!”

Bahlaas’ eyes widened, and immediately, she reached out, struggling to reach Luna, to touch her…

Kipnu heard the cry, dazed as he was from the battering and extreme g-force he was under. While the world literally spun, he conjured a large vial in his hands, and threw it directly at Cynthia’s head, intending for the brittle glass to shatter, and for the contents of the poison to make contact with her skin. This one was corrosive, and would begin to eat her skin and layers of flesh after a few seconds.

He had to reach Luna at all costs…

The hellhounds were disappearing one by one…

Bahlok heard Luna’s command while she hid under her abominable arm, barraged as she was by fire and burning light. She didn’t have traditional flesh to feel the extent of the burns, but when the smoke cleared, she instead found herself collapsed on her knees, unable to move for a few seconds. She ignored her attackers, instead turning her attention to Luna. Her appendage slowly snaked through undead, reaching out to the girl across the fortress’ floor, to whisk her away…

The vial hit Cynthia and dissolved flesh… But she attuned to her abstraction to Kipnu. She then flung Kipnu at one of the Hellhounds before she began rolling around in the grass, trying to use the water to wash the acid off.

“Lee, Malik! We gotta help Greta!” Phoebe said, pointing at Greta. Suddenly, a wave of ice cold air appeared and created a pathway made out of ice straight to Greta. She created ice skates and skated over to Greta, and with a fancy twirl she kicked at one of the dogs on top of Greta.

Lee charged over with two glowing blades - slicing through undead minions - then hopped in the air landing at Greta. He kicked one, then started stabbing.

“... I didn't see a single member of “my family” at Kura’s funeral!” Amy screamed in Japanese as she knelt down and drew a special symbol into the ground by literally burning it into the ground using her flaming hand. When she stood up, she kicked the dismembered femur bone of one of Nadine’s minions into the middle of it. She quickly ran around to Bahlaas using inhuman speeds and swung her club around to launch her into the Kanji symbol.

Malik flew over to Greta’s crate and dug through it for healing potions. He grabbed one, flew over to Cynthia popped it open, and splashed it on her.

The remaining hellhounds howled, more disappearing in puffs of smoke. Now there were only a handful, barring their teeth. They focused their efforts entirely on trying to find purchase on Phoebe, teeth hoping to crack the ice.

Kipnu grunted as he crashed into one of his hellhounds, the pup whining on impact.

“Sorry, boy.” He muttered, pulling himself up, before staggering towards Luna, dropping undead in his wake. Bahlok watched an undead nearly catch Kipnu’s weary form off guard, and changed her trajectory to smash the undead across the face.

“Focus, brother!” she yelled, until she saw Bahlaas in a terrible state.

There was no avoiding it. Bahlaas shrieked, falling into the kanji symbol.

Luna watched with wide eyes, before glowering at Amy. She knew what this was. “Kono kuso yarou! (You bastard!)”

She stood shakily to her feet, bringing the pistol up in both hands. She had one bullet left, and by God she would make it hurt.

“Naze modotte konakatta nodesu ka? Ha!? Nande Kura mo fukumete zen'in no omoide o kuso ni suru no? (Why didn’t you come back? Huh!? Why are you shitting on everyone’s memory together, including Kura’s?)”

Her hand squeezed on the trigger.

“Kon'na haisha to issho ni kusaru yori wa mashida! (Anything is better than rotting with these losers!)”

The final shot rang out, aimed towards Amy’s upper rib cage, missing the heart and lungs, but still digging deep through bone and tissue. Amy gulped, but stood there. Stumbling forward a bit, bracing herself on her club. She laughed as she stood tall, holding the club in both hands. That fire around her raged, her teeth sharpening into razor-tip sharp tips. Her eyes turning black, she took a step and left behind a burning footprint.

“... You talk like your stupidity more than likely didn't get us into this mess in the first place!” Amy said in Japanese, followed by a devious laugh. “You know what? I’ll tell you why, I’ll tell you everything…”

Bahlok and Kipnu used Smoke’s Crossing to cut past the undead and yawning space, appearing behind Amy a second later. They would be disobeying Luna in this moment, but they had to try…

Bahlok’s appendage formed into a spear, intent on striking through the flames to Amy’s core, while Kipnu tried to press a paralyzing needle into her back.

“... Amy! Behind you!” Phoebe shouted, and Amy immediately turned around and countered both the attacks with her iron club. Both of her hands were pressed against the Iron club as her strength seemed to be overwhelming. She laughed again,

“You can have that useless ghost…” Amy said, before adding, “... Tsukino and I gotta talk.”

She used all of her brutal strength to shove them away.

Malik grabbed another potion and flew over to Greta.

“... That's the last one in there,” Greta grunted as she pushed herself to her feet. Give it to Brianna. She needs it more. I can... live.” Cynthia took her side.

“Cynthia wants to eat,” She said.

Greta braced herself on Cynthia and hissed in pain.

“You okay?!” Malik asked.

“Go.”

“But what abo-”

“Go!” Greta ordered, and Lee and Malik maneuvered over to Brianna while Cynthia and Phoebe stayed near Greta. The stench of rotting flesh filled the air as they acted as meat shields, as Malik bypassed them while Lee cleaved through them.

Bahlok and Kipnu pushed themselves slowly off the ground after being shoved away with inhumane strength. Glancing at the other 8th Street members regrouping and healing. Bahlok’s smile flattened into a straight line as she glanced at her brother.

“This is hopeless.”

Kipnu pulled on his gloves, eyes wholly focused on Luna as he spoke in a low tone. “We do this her way now. We just have to wait for an opportune moment.”

Bahlok hissed with rage, “What about Little Sister?! They have her!”

Kipnu paused, before he said coldly, “I’ll make you a new sister.”

“WHA-?!”

“Quiet.” Kipnu’s voice cut like a knife. His gaze returned to Luna. “I have a plan, listen closely…” And his voice dropped to a whisper.

Luna stood stunned at Amy, nearly dropping her pistol. She took that bullet straight on, and didn't even grunt in pain. People immune to pain like that were mafia material, but Amy… Amy wasn’t into that. Right?

So what happened?

Luna checked her armour, cracked as it was. She probably had one more hit before it shattered completely. But Amy probably knew that. Knew she was in a sore position, pinned.

Air escaping through her teeth, Luna re-hoslered her gun on her thigh. Her eyes landed coldly on Amy. She just had to play along for a little while longer…

“Oroka-sa? Ittai nani no koto o itteru no…? (Stupidity? The hell are you talking about…?)”

Amy took slow steps towards Luna… her club dragging on the ground. Each of her steps sounded like they belonged to a being that weighed a ton. Steam from the rain storm and fire emanated from her body.

“Oh, Luna, ten years and you’re still the same!” Amy spoke in Japanese, followed by a laugh, as she continued her unholy march. “You never stop and just think. You always let other people do the thinking for you as you just took everything at face value!”

Once Amy was within a certain range, she stopped approaching… she walked a circle around Luna, as she continued to talk, ”You told some very bad people Coven secrets and put a target on all of us!”

Her iron club ground on the soil as she continued to speak in Japanese, “You talk to me like I’m the traitor, but… I’m not dishonoring anyone’s memory! The Sycamore Tree Coven is no more! All that’s left are a bunch of disorganized losers desperately holding onto what they think it was! But, have you ever stopped to consider why I’m with 8th St…?”

Amy came to a stop, that grin widening.

”... Come on, take a guess. Prove me right.”

Getting baited into answering, Luna hated it. She ignored the shiver creep down her spine as she watched Amy complete her circling approach. There was an annoying gap in her memory with Amy, a black hole where Amy was there, then she wasn't.

So Luna followed the breadcrumbs, just like Mother taught her. Amy was abandoned, or more accurately felt abandoned.

It reminded her of her Mother. When Luna was kicked out of the Sycamore, pink eyes, soft words and comforting arms embraced her. Was it the same for Amy? Did Emily promise everything where Sycamore ultimately failed?

Luna's fists clenched, staring at that wide grin as Amy lorded over her.

Surely, Amy wasn't so complicated…

“Hoka no moto shikamoa zen'in ga koko ni iru no to onaji riyū. Emirī wa kazoku no yōna kimochi waru-sa o kanji sasemasu ne. Furui ie o yakiharau ma, tewotsunaide kureru to yakusoku shimasu ka? Sōdesu ka? (Same reason why everyone else ex-Sycamore is here. Emily gives you some sick sense of family, doesn't she? Promises you a hand to hold while you burn down your old home? Is that it?)” Luna bit out.

Amy laughed, pounding the club on the ground.

“... See, I was right about you, Inoue,” Amy spat back in Japanese. “You don’t know me. You never did, but I’ll tell you why I'm here, I’ll keep it short because I don't think your attention span is long enough…”

Amy slammed the club on the ground so hard it shook the earth. Before she spoke,

“... I’m here to get a shot at the bastard that killed my friend. Nothing more, nothing less,” Amy answered in Japanese.

“... So I dare you to tell me I’m disrespecting MY friend’s memory again, Tsukino.”

Luna bared her teeth behind her helmet. “Anata mo Urufu shinpu o otte iru to itte iru no ni, itotekini shikamoa no tame ni hidoi arashi o makiokoshite iru nodesu ne! Sore ga shikamoa to Kura ga shōchō shite ita mono subete o bujoku shite iru wakede wa nai to shitara, anata wa jibun ni uso o tsuite iru koto ni narimasu. (You tell me you’re after Father Wolf too, yet you're purposefully stirring up a shitstorm for Sycamore! If that’s not insulting everything Sycamore and Kura stood for, you’re lying to yourself.)”

Her eyes narrowed. “Omoshiroi mono o mimashita. 8-Ban machi wa tan'ni ano renzoku satsujin-han o oikakete iru to iu shuchō no tame ni ōku no bōgai kōi o okonatte iru… naze emirī wa kari no tawagoto o ijitte ita ndarou? (I saw something funny. 8th Street does a lot of sabotaging for the claim of simply being after that serial killer… Why was Emily messing with Kari’s shit, huh?}”

“I don’t know, I don’t care; I have a plan,” Amy answered in Japanese. “I don't have to explain it—or myself—to you, Inoue.”

Amy did a flourish with the club, “... Let’s dance.”

Amy charged Luna, dragging the club behind her on the ground. She swung the club at Luna with all of her strength.

Luna reeled back, but alas, her movements were growing sluggish from the prolonged battle of the ice fortress. The club clipped her shoulder, shattering the armour along her arm. Luna cursed under her breath, drawing out white swords in her hands, spinning as she slashed outward, aiming for Amy’s arms, then the second spin to slash her chest. Both hits connected but Amy didn't flinch, her boiling blood being washed away in the rain.

Luna’s eyes went wide, before they narrowed. “Bakemono… (Demon...)”

Amy screamed as she swung the club again, hitting harder than the last time.

It was a direct hit, effectively shattering Luna’s armour as she let out a grunt in pain. She reeled there, stunned momentarily before white wings unfurled, and Luna took to the air of the ice fortress, moving out of range of Amy’s club. Her hands dropped the swords, fizzling out of existence in favour of a glowing white pistol, gripped tight in both hands. Luna took aim mid-air and fired shot after shot, aimed for non-vitals. Three shots hit Amy, exploding open as it didn’t seen to affect Amy, however, she raised her club in the air as a shield as some of the other shots just bounced off. Her wounds were oozing blood but that didn’t seem to stop her.

However, Amy lept through the air at Luna, and swung the club at her again.

“... I’m going to tear your spine out through your throat, Tsukino!”

Lee and Malik managed to reach Brianna. Malik shoved the potion in her mouth, and she chugged it. Suddenly, her shoulders were fixed and mended, and Lee pointed back toward the main group, Brianna opened a portal there, and the group had formed up… wading her way through the undead was Nadine King, holding her soaked book in her hands. She shook her head as she joined the group.

“Should we help her?” Phoebe asked.

“... From the way she’s fighting, it’s personal,” Greta laughed, “I’m not trying to get in the middle of that.”

“What about those lame ghosts?” Phoebe asked. “Didn’t she seal one?”

“Eh, it doesn’t matter, Brianna. Get ready to open a portal at the ghost’s location,” Greta began. “Lee, Malik, Phoebe, when she opens it, open fire on whatever is on the other side.”

“Ooooh boy!” Phoebe laughed as she stuck her hands out in a direction. Malik did the same, as Lee created the blazing arrow. Brianna opened a glowing, spinning, portal, right in front of the Apparitions, and the three opened fire - Phoebe fired a freezing blast of ice, Malik unleashed a volley from Starsailor, and Lee let loose a few arrows that exploded on contact.

It was a direct hit. Bahlok let loose a bloodcurdling scream as stars and fire sank into her magical form. Kipnu grunted his teeth, falling to his knees. When the smoke cleared, both Apparitions were half-limp, struggling to rise from the ground.

Luna caught the attack in a brief flash before Amy filled her vision, and the club came for her. Luna’s pistol reformed into a small shield, and she hissed in pain as the club shattered it, some of the attack striking her chest. The pain and momentum was enough to down her, and Luna fell to the ground, wings fizzling out. Through squinted eyes, she waved a hand frantically at Kipnu and Baklok.

“The hell you still doing here? Get out!”

“But you-”

“Get out!”

Kipnu seemed to stare behind his mask, before he nodded towards Bahlok, and they disappeared in a puff of darkness through Smoke’s Crossing. Gone from the battlefield.

Luna groaned, her teeth gritted as she spied the tunnel’s entrance to the ice fortress. A strange pink mist was seeping into the fortress little by little, but Luna ignored it. That was her ticket out, and she had to take her chance now.

Any delay or hesitation could mean death.

Without sparing Amy a glance, the wings materialized once more on Luna’s back as she limply flew to the entrance as fast as she could muster, hoping to make her escape.

“... Get back here, coward!” Amy shouted as she gave chase… until she saw the flaming cross in the sky. Amy grit her teeth as the fire vanished, and she looked at her hip… her gas mask was utterly destroyed. Wasn’t even there anymore. Burnt to ashes somewhere in the confrontation. She slammed the club on the ground so hard that it shook the earth, then screamed at Luna, “DON’T THINK THIS IS OVER!”

The pink mist overcame her and the ice fortress…

Lun looked over her shoulder - her mistake, as she bowled directly into Tayla, who had been heading towards the ice fortress. Luna tumbled, barely catching herself, before her eyes locked on Tayla, searching her.

What was she doing here? It was dangerous.

Luna latched onto Tayla’s hand, prepared to carry her out of there on wings of light. “Come on, we gotta go-”

Before she inhaled too much of the pink mist. The hand holding Tayla’s slowly slipped, as Luna became enrapt, blind, and in another world entirely.

She was staring at the most beautiful sight. The entire Sycamore Coven - Drake, Layla, Sully, Edict, Jack, Linqian - all her dear ones, dressed in only the best dark threads, dresses and suit ties. Their hands laden with semi-automatic rifles, about to go on the heist to end all heists…

Oh shit.

Jasper quickly followed Britney’s lead and covered his mouth and ears, but made the mistake of not taking in a breath before he did so. He felt his heartbeat slowly, but surely, increase as he fought against the surging suffocation sensation in his chest. His eyes scanned around him and noticed that Aryin was busy throwing hands with an invisible enemy, and Lynn had a smile that was filled with more life than any smile he had seen on her face before. They had already inhaled whatever the mist was and Jasper was curious as to what the effects of it were. Was it a sedative, was it a drug, would it make them all easier targets? His chest lurched as he kept trying to hold in the need to breathe, his body fighting his attempt to not breathe in at every second. His heartbeat began to sound in his ears. He did not have long, something must help. He looked at his canvas and began to paint a crude mask. He noticed that 8th Street had them on them and thus was planning to drop whatever this mist was. Jasper knew he did not have long, and every detail would matter yet needed to be done quickly. Eventually, Jasper looked over to Britney and saw that she too was holding her breath. He paused his painting as he pointed down to the canvas and then flashed two fingers to indicate he was almost done with his, and once done he would make her one. He added the final bits of details and then pulled it from the page. It looked like a modern respirator, and simply slid into place and Jasper was able to strap it behind his ears moments before his fight against his body was lost and he was forced to take in a deep breath.

Nothing happened.

Jasper took a series of sharp, quick breaths as he leaned over and placed his hand on his chest. He looked down and saw that the mask had made a good seal with his face, and the yellow lux infusion he did was withstanding the corruptive influences of the rain. It would not hold long, but it should hold long enough to get a mask made for Britney. Yet a familiar voice cut across the pink battlefield. A familiar voice. A welcome voice. The voice of his crush Luca. He called for Jasper, trying to find him through the hurricane-force winds and mist. Jasper looked to Britney and she seemed like she figured out a way to avoid the mist with her abstraction, a literal field of magically enhanced flowers were simply sucking in the mist creating a pocket for Britney to breathe freely. His eyes followed the ground and saw they stretched far away to another set of plants that was pumping the pink mist back out. She was so smart and skilled, and Jasper was incredibly impressed with her resourcefulness.

”Brit, pull everyone you can with your vines back to this spot. I hear Luca out in the midst, I will grab him and bring him back! I will make enough masks for us all to get out of here,” Jasper shouted and got a nod of acknowledgment from Britney who began to pull Aryin and Linqian into the safe bubble.

Jasper took off into the midst in search of Luca. It did not take long for him to find him. Luca was standing tall as he walked through the mist. A few zombies came up to him yet they were no match for his abstraction and they were turned to dust on the wind. He had his own gas mask on, and Jasper wondered where he found one in the middle of the battle before the obvious answer hit him in the face. Carol. After Carol was dropped Luca must’ve rushed over to check on her, and had taken her mask to be able to breathe. A look of fear fell across his face. Jasper knew very well that Carol was his close friend, and if Jasper was the one that momentarily killed her, he was worried that it would ruin any chance they had at a relationship. Luca’s eyes settled on Jaspers's face and he began to stomp his way towards him. A few more zombies tried their luck only to be sent away on the wind like all others before them. Luca was strong, Luca was intimidating, and Jasper knew that an anger that he’d never seen from Luca was heading his way.

”YOU”, Luca yelled as he walked up to Jasper and jabbed a finger into his exposed chest. Jasper winced expecting the familiar rotting sensation but instead, his breath was stolen by the lack of it. Luca was touching him once again, and there was no pain to it. Was he able to control it better when his emotions were high? Jasper took a rushed breath at the thought. Maybe if Jasper made Luca’s life filled with a different emotion, happiness maybe, he could control the Rot like this every day? ”You and I need to talk after the battle….”

Jasper knew the conversation would be rough, and that he had a lot to make up for, but in this moment Jasper was once again with Luca, and touching did not hurt. Jasper quickly threw his arms around Luca and pulled him into a hug, careful not to hug him too hard to hurt the body where pain was the only feeling Luca felt. ”Okay…Okay, after the battle. We will talk. I am just so glad you’re okay.” Jasper felt Luca wrap his arms around his waist and he felt Luca put all his strength into the hug. Jasper was surprised because the hug felt strong, much stronger than he thought Luca was. Something felt different in this moment, in this hug. Jasper pushed these thoughts to the side. ”My mask won't last long, Britney has created a safe spot for us. Follow me,” Jasper reached down and grabbed Luca’s hand and his stomach erupted with the sensation of butterflies once more. Suddenly, the pain and destruction that was brought to his dead friend's home was gone. He was with the one he wanted to be with, he was able to hold hands with Luca without pain once again, and Luca felt like he was stronger and healthier than he thought he was. This day had gotten infinitely better and if Jasper did not have a mask on, everyone would see he was smiling.

A few moments later the duo found their way back to the safe spot. Britney, Aryin, and Linqian were all together now and it seemed like they were all safe and back from whatever high the mist gave them. They all saw that Jasper was holding Luca’s hand and smiled. A new realization set in. Jasper realized that he was finally truly safe to bring out that other side that he had repressed for so long, his chosen family would accept him for his more queer side. Hell, it felt like the coven just had a token straight member so he wondered why he still chose to hide that side of himself from them. He could be with Luca and be accepted without worry of his parents' wrath, and he could be happy with a man for the first time in his life. He was pulled from these thoughts by Britney asking him to make more masks. He looked down at his own and saw it was still standing strong. Jasper knew he was about to busy, and he loved it. He loved supporting the coven like this, providing them with tools to succeed and providing them with his constructs to help them win a fight. Jasper quickly pulled Luca over to a spot away from Britney, Linqian, and Aryin and began to paint.

”I don’t know how the battle will end,” Luca started as he ran his fingers across Jasper’s free palm, ”and I don’t want to wait to say something I have been meaning to say.”

Jasper’s head tilted as he looked away from the painting and to Luca’s. Jasper noticed how perfect his skin looked. It was like there was never a blemish, nor any signs that pointed to a war against acne long since fought. His smile was radiant, and his eyes filled with a life he had never seen before.

”This battle put things in perspective. I know you're straight but I have to tell you that I have had a huge crush on you for a while now and I wanted to know if you felt the same. I know it is putting you on the spot in the midst of a-,”

”YES” Jasper shouted without control, ”sorry. Yes, yes I feel the same…I feel the same,” Jasper took a deep breath as he looked over the Luca in front of him once again. There were no scars. No blood, his clothes were perfect and there was nary a sign of the rots presence. Hell, if Luca had not killed those zombies he would’ve thought that the Rot was already gone. Suddenly, the realization hit. This was not his Luca. His eyes drifted down to his mask. He knew he infused it with his yellow Lux to try and strengthen it against the rain, but what if it failed? What if.. Jasper paused the thought as he smiled. Would it be so bad if this was fake? Luca was healthy, and happy, and had told him that he had a crush on him. Would it be selfish if he chose to stay in this dream if it meant ignoring the nightmare of reality right now? Jasper pondered the question for a minute before his eyes slowly shifted to Britney, Linqian, and Aryin. They were all looking at the two and smiling, yet they were not doing much else. The rest of the coven was in danger, and those three were simply so happy for Jasper finding his happiness and strength to be himself. They were so happy that he was able to find someone as amazing as Luca. How egotistical was that?

”This isn’t real, is it Luca?”

”It could be,” Luca said as he leaned his body into Jasper’s. His fingers twirled Jasper’s chest hair as Luca smiled up at him, ”all you have to do is stay.”

Jasper smiled as he put his painting down. He used his free hand and cupped Luca’s face with his hand. How small his face looked in his hands, how cute, and how perfect this would be. Jasper leaned forward and kissed Luca on the forehead and smiled. Jasper then took a finger and booped Luca on the nose. ”No.”

In an instant, Luca faded back into the mist, and Aryin, Linqian, and Britney did the same. Instead, they were where they were just a few moments ago. Aryin now was celebrating something, both arms up in the air as she danced around and Britney was still struggling to breathe. Jasper looked down at his mouth and saw that the mask had melted a long time ago and the bottom half of his face and the top of his chest were covered in his art. Jasper looked back up at Britney and he ran over.

”Can you make plants that act as a filter for the air? Suck away the mist, it’s so intoxicating.”

---

“Aryin, what do you say to the critics who feel that you haven’t earned your spot at the top,” a reporter asked from the crowded room in front of her, and Aryin couldn’t help but chuckle. Aryin knew that they deserved to be here and that anyone who said otherwise was simply delusional. She had fought her way to an 18-0 record over her career thus far and she had done so without the use of her durability. Thanks to the marvelous gift that Stormy gave her after they solved those pesky murders all those years ago she was able to compete as Aryin, without worry of tainting her skill by using her inbuilt cheat code.

”I’d tell them to watch the tape. I’d tell my opponent to do the same, she’s weak and I look forward to knocking her ass out within the first fucking round,” Aryin finished as the reporters all broke into a shouting match asking a million questions she knew she would not answer. Her job here was done. People would want to tune in to watch Aryin back up her words in the ring, and that would mean that everyone would know that she was the real deal. That she should be paid fairly for her skill, that she should be the face of this industry, and that she should already be in the discussion for the greatest of all time.

“Are you claiming that you will knock out your opponent in the first round?”

”Oh, you’re right. Let me dumb it down for her. I will fucking knock you out in round one you weak bitch,” Aryin slammed her palm on the table to make the point extra clear.

Once again, the room erupted with conversation and Aryin leaned back in her chair. The road to this point was hard. That much she knew. What exactly was hard about it again? Aryin’s eyes looked up, around to the side, before they fell down to the ground. That was weird, she couldn’t remember any of the struggles that she endured on her way to the top of the ladder. She knew she struggled, her early career was fraught with many nights where she had to sleep for dinner. But she did not remember much more than that. She would need to double-check her posts online, and in her diary. If it was important to remember she would be able to find a way to remember, and right now what was important was being ready for her fight tomorrow. Aryin answered several questions in rapid succession, and she smiled more with each answer.

The press conference was over soon thereafter and Aryin retreated away from the cameras to her hotel room where a good night awaited her. There was nothing that got her pumped for a fight more than a handsome man in bed the night before, and she had found the perfect subject to give her that extra motivation in the fight to come.

---

Lila felt Vashti’s grasp on her wings tighten as she began to try and rip them from her back. The problem was, as Lila had realized, that the wings were attached very snugly to her back somehow. Instead of feeling like the wings were being pulled out, it felt like Vashti tugged at the entirety of her back. Something was being pulled out and Lila screamed at the pain of it. She needed to find a way to break free of her grasp. Even the two shots fired by Amara did little to push Vashti off her back. Lila knew there was only one way to free herself. She screamed in pain as claws pushed their way through her toes, longer and sharper than the ones on her hand. Lila knew she was the only one who could save herself at this moment. Her wings flashed green several times in a single second before they fully turned on and shone a consistent, vivid, and alluring.

Even through the pouring rain, the green light would be a very visible sight on the battlefield. Anyone who even looked in their general direction would become compelled to grab a feather. Lila knew, somehow, that this glow would be nearly impossible to resist, and emotional fields could only resist the allure for so long. Lila did not know how long it would take for Vashti to break, and she did not know if she had enough time before something terrible happened to her back. Lila began to kick back with her now-clawed feet, cutting and gouging wherever she could reach.

Suddenly, an explosive expansion of pink gas was spotted behind her thanks to her crows. Some form of a gas was coming her way, and she did not know what to expect with it. What she did know was Vashti had a gas mask on her, a gas mask to no doubt make her killing that much easier when everyone could not fight back, and a gas mask that Lila needed to escape this situation. Faster and faster the gas moved towards them, and faster and faster did the urgency of the situation grow. Eventually, Lila knew she had to try and get the mask from her. Lila readied a kick, used a nearby crow to line up the shot, and sent it back towards the gas mask. She grabbed it away from Vashti and pulled it to her front, trying to grab it with her hand as she took in a deep breath of the pink mist.

Lila coughed as she suddenly fell to the ground. The coughing continued for just a second before she rose to her feet, and turned around to watch as the entirety of St. Portwell burned in front of her. It was dark out, and the vivid colors of the fire shined brightly into the surrounding area. The sound of distant gunfire could be heard, and Lila could see her crow swarms above the city. Occasionally, a crow would use their abstractions sending fire, water, and lightning onto the streets below. The more they used their abstractions, the less gunfire could be heard. Lila chuckled as she looked around the area. There were several bodies on the ground and she could no longer recognize who they were after the battle. Were they members of her old coven? Did that matter?

Lila knew that after her friends were murdered one year ago today she would make the world regret it. Lila knew that after she fully embraced her power she would become a target unlike any before, and so she did something that no one expected. She struck first. The first to fall was the local PRA, she knew it would be easy to take out the rest after she turned Max. Then, she destroyed 8th street and added their strengths to her murder. And now, only Greenwood and the 317 stood between her and the rest of the world. Something was intoxicating about the power she now wielded. Everyone who was converted to a life of pure bliss as a Crow had added their abstractions to her massive arsenal. Tens of thousands of souls, tens of thousands of abstractions, and that number would grow tonight, tomorrow, and every day to come. Lila looked over to the bodies once more and wondered who they were. Were they members of her old coven? Some of them looked like members of her old coven.

An explosion in the center of the city caught her attention. It was massive, and she quickly pulled all of her crows away from the expanding shockwave. The explosion was magical, someone had used their abstraction to try and slow down her horde. It would only delay the inevitable by a few minutes. Whomever they were trying to protect would soon be brought to their knees. Lila looked up to the sky and smiled as a thousand crows began to descend on the city below in a long, tendril-like structure. She kept her eye on it as second, and then third mass descended from the night sky. A hundred thousand crows finally entered the battle. She wanted the defenders to think they had a chance, it made it much easier to turn them after their spirits were broken.

A headache suddenly appeared and Lila keeled over. Her talons gripped her skull and she nearly screamed but the bright light of the day helped coax the headache away. The Maiden must be trying to break free again. It had been so long since she put a muzzle on the bitch that she forgot what it was like when her icy talons gripped her mind. She looked up and saw that the meadow she was camping in had an unexpected visitor. It was her former coven, coming to check in on her.

“Lila, it’s been too long. You know how hard it is to track you down nowadays,” Jasper asked as he put down a cooler filled with beer.

“The future is ever in doubt, but one thing is for certain. I missed you girl,” Lynn said as ran over and hugged Lila. Lila returned it with both hands and wings.

“I missed you too,” Lila said as she spotted Luca sneaking up behind her thanks to her crows. She let him tackle hug her, his warm hug was amazing after the Rot was taken care of. The small gathering quickly grew in size as the rest of the coven, their partners, and a small army of children belonging to the various members of the coven filled the campsite. Today was a celebration for Lila. Today was the anniversary of when they subjugated The Maiden and freed Lila from her corruptive grasp. It was a long struggle to get to this point, and some days are better than others, but Lila knew that she wouldn’t have to deal with that voice in her head forever more. Still, she wished she could turn her body back to normal. Her hands, chest, and feet were still feathered and clawed and that made existing in the city pretty difficult. And the PRA made it clear that they would take her in if she so much as breathed at them wrong after what she did. It made her weekly checkup with the leader of the PRA a delicate balance for Lila.

Lila looked to the ground and saw the bodies once again as the night sky started to dim as her murder departed from St. Portwell. They were tasked with softening up the cities around them before Lila arrived. Lila knew she needed to move into the city to start the conversion of everyone and anyone still alive there. Lila’s eyes could not be pulled away from the ground this time. She was sure that these bodies were someone she knew.

---

“Honey,” a voice called to Lynn as she suddenly awoke from her nap.

“What,” Lynn said through a yawn as she pulled herself up from her desk. Her eyes caught the sight of her one year sober chip that she was given last night, and she smiled at the sight. Her body ached, and her mind was still a battleground of emotions but she knew that it was all worth it.

“You ready to head out? Jasper and Sloane are going to be expecting us soon,” the familiar voice responded.

Jasper and Sloane? Something felt off about that still. Lila swore that Jasper was into Luca, but throughout the fight to save Kari from the grasp of the monstrous entity Lynn began to see the chemistry between the two grow. And as it grew, Lynn looked to the future and saw that they actually would end up together. Order and chaos were always a precarious balancing act for a relationship, and thus far they did it with grace. Tonight was the opening night of a new art exhibit that Jasper and Sloane made together, and everyone in the coven was excited to see what new wonders they came up with together. “Yeah, yeah I am. I just dozed off writing in my journal.”

“You’re fine babe, just be down in fifteen okay?” The voice was much clearer now that Lynn was more awake. She knew it very well but the name escaped her lips.

“Of course my love,” Lynn responded back as she stretched. Today was going to be a good day. As Lynn finished her stretch she smiled as she looked down at her engagement ring. The rest of the coven did not know yet, and she wanted to keep it that way for a day or two longer. The last thing she wanted to do was upstage Jasper and Sloane on their big day. As such, she took the ring off her finger and found a chain necklace she could run through the middle. As she finished, she put it on and tucked the ring down into her sweater. Lynn got up from her seat and walked downstairs and spotted Kari putting her earrings in by looking in a mirror. “You look stunning,” Lynn nearly stuttered with her words. Kari was gorgeous, her outfit was gorgeous, and her smile was as well.

“You don’t think it’s too much,” Kari asked as she gave Lynn a quick twirl.

“No, no not at all,” Lynn responded as she walked over and kissed her. Lynn caught her reflection in the mirror and saw just how much she smiled. She was the happiest she had ever been. She was the strongest she had ever been. And she was ready for the uncertainty that her future brought her and embraced her role as the Coven’s first line of defense against possible threats. The so-called ‘Father Wolf’ had made it clear that they lacked an early warning ability as a group, and Lynn quickly developed her skills further once Kari was returned to her. As her powers grew, so too did the accuracy of the future. She had helped the coven thwart several dangerous situations simply by constantly looking forward for them. This was perfect, this life was perfect, and Lynn would not change anything about it.

But she knew it was wrong.

Her smile never faded in the mirror as she hugged Kari even tighter. There was something about this reality that felt fake to her from the moment she stepped foot into it. Her time in the possible futures over the years taught her much about seeing through the lines of a fake reality, and this one was no different.

“What’s wrong babe?” Kari asked as she tried to push herself out of the hug but Lynn held her in tight as tears began to stream down from her eyes. Lynn did not want to leave whatever this was, she wanted to stay in it forever more and live perfect life she’s wanted forever. Just her, her soon to be wife, her friends, and safety.

“Babe, talk to me,” Kari said as she leaned back and looked at Lynn.

“I wish I could,” Lila said as her tears gave way to sobbing, “but I can’t stay here.”

“Why not,” Kari asked with a sad tone, “why don’t you just talk to me?”

“Because they still need me,” Lynn said as she broke down completely. This was everything she ever wanted. And it was a lie. Lynn’s wails began to fill the house. “Because if I talk to you I’ll stay, if I tell you how I’ve been feeling finally I’d stay, and if I stay my friends will all die,” Lynn paused her crying reached a higher point, “the last time you asked me to just talk to you I told you to fuck off and I fucking left and I have regretted it for every second, why the fuck do I have to go through with this again?”

In an instant the illusion broke and Kari, the house, and the ring quickly faded from view as Lynn collapsed onto the ground below. Her wails were loud, but not everyone could hear it over the hurricane that raged around her as she fell to her side and curled herself into a ball on the muddy ground.

---

It seemed to work out pretty okay. Up until the moment the thing’s leg went boom. Stormy didn’t get roasted by the fire, but he did notice that the fucking monster was tipping over… So that was the point. Stormy had better ideas than getting flattened, so he threw out the Iron Fortress, and heard the monster bang against the surface. He could’ve leapt out of the way, but it was so huge and unruly that it might’ve crushed him anyway. Stormy couldn’t see out of the dome, so he could only use the sound of banging against the Iron Fortress to know whether or not it was still leaning over the side. Of course, he had very little to worry about here, but there was always the risk that if he dropped the spell, it would just fall down on him.

Looking at the wet ground, Stormy noticed something got in the dome with him. A strange pink smoke that was rising upwards. He didn’t have a chance to react before it was in the air. As little as it was, he still inhaled it and felt… Fine.

”Thanks.”

Stormy spun around, instinctually focusing more on the dome than the people in it. There were six of them. His friends who he kept alive all those years ago. It was all so difficult when they were kids, but Stormy always came through. He recognized the people taking shelter in the Iron Fortress. They all found their way in life, thanks to Stormy, who always came through. And now they were in the dome because… He came through.

He always came through. What kind of protector didn’t?

A smile crept over his face. ”Not a problem. Just sit tight, we’ll be out of here soon. And then the drinks are on me, alright?”

The myriad faces- not six but ten- smiled at him. They were weary from battle, but they were alive. Stormy was to thank for that. All seventeen of them were safe in his watch.

”8th Street are just bullies. Once they cool off, they won’t hurt anyone.”

All thirty of them nodded.

”I’ll never let any of you get hurt.”

The entire coven smiled on him. His Iron Fortress sheltered them all.

Every last one.

---

Jack strode across the cosmos as one did the hallways of their childhood home. All around him, the stars, nebulas and galaxies of distant realms bled together as a watercolor canvas. Every step he took landed on the foundation of the ever-shifting heavens, and rang out to echo in tune with the song of stellar motion. Mundane minds watched birds flutter through an atmosphere of oxygen, and Jack watched young planets drift through the breadth and bow of firmament. Along his path, unknowable to all but himself, the All-Verse was well and truly alive.

It is difficult to know the All-Verse if one only studied Shimmer, difficult to understand the galaxy when one only studied Earth’s solar system. Further was it difficult to understand the human race if one only studied one continent. To know the grand design of existence came with the territory of experiencing it all. Every star in every night sky, every grain of sand on shores where there was wonder everlasting to be witnessed. He wore time and the entropy of creation as a cloak, distillations of space washed away and were brought to bear as stepping stones along his journey.

The All-Verse lay before Jack, infinite as tangled yarn and yet ordered as a staircase. And utop the stairs was his destination.

Home.

He was like a god, and the All-Verse parted as such. He waved a shaded hand out before him, and the malleable clay that humans called existence became water; A cascade outwards, molding the abstract into order. Jack walked through the order, and felt the familiar caress of gravity. The swell of molecules in his throat. The friction of sunlight.

Down from infinity, and into the finite, where home lies: St. Portwell. The cosmos melted away, and he stood within a well-lit room. Walls of dark oak, rising outwards into familiar architecture. He walked through a door, and into a hallway, down a flight of stairs lit by purple candlelight, to the meeting hall. A rectangular room, with a long table, where the his guests sat.

Drake Blackmore. Anya Baksh. Kari Wilson. Sloane Faris. Kenshiro Murakin. Luca Olivera. Reza Cabrera, and so many others.

”Thank you all for coming,” Jack announced, walking one step forward, and appearing at the head of the table. Behind him, a wall illuminated itself with the symbolism of a sycamore tree.

”As you all know, today marks one year after we defeated the apparition known as Father Wolf. And so, today, we remember those who did not come as far as us. We remember the struggles and the triumphs that are unequivocally our own.”

”Today, we rejoice in honor of all we have become. Make yourselves at home.”

---

---

Vashti flinched as two bullets crunched against her back and didn’t even pierce her skin. Amara and three of her ghostly copies surrounded Vashti, one of the phantoms leveling a shotgun her way. Vashti held strong to her grasp on Lila’s wings. The connective tissue was sturdier than she thought it would be, like it was anchored to more than just a section of her spine, but Vashti was determined. The wings would make a nice Halloween costume for next year’s festival. She glared at the shotgun, honestly hoping the stupid bitch would shoot, thinking that enough force from the blast would be the extra umph she needed to clip Lila’s wings.

”GET AWAY FROM HER, RIGHT NOW!!!”

“Oh my god, bro, I get it, I had a glow up so everybody wants a piece of me now but fuck, your incel ass is as thirsty as ever,” barked Vashti. “Wait your turn-uhhhhhh…”

Vashti blinked, her attention completely transfixed by the wings that pulsed like the lights at a rave. The irresistible urge to pluck a feather free caused her to loosen her grip on Lila, but was checked by an animalistic instinct coming from deep within. Her hand trembled, divided between desire and dangersense. She could just pluck a feather now, couldn’t she? No no no, she felt it, an old but familiar sensation, one she hadn’t felt since she had regained, or maybe it actually should just be gained, control: influence. Something else was trying to influence her. Control her. Cage her. She couldn’t allow that. She wouldn’t.

Her hands released the wings and moved to snap Lila’s neck but was instead caught by surprise as Lila clawed kick slashed against her legs. She scrambled to get back on the offensive, swiping slashes of her own at Lila’s back that fell short as a wave of pink mist expanded across the field. Vashti glanced up to the sky, yelling in anger as she saw Emily’s stupid signal, not understanding why they were backing off. They were winning. They had Sycamore on the ropes. This was the time to bathe in their blood and wear their skulls like crowns. Emily was so weak. So shortsighted. So fucking stupid. Maybe the mist would provide enough cover to let an accident befall their idiotic, fearful leader.

Vashti smiled, her eye twitching, as she reached down to grab her gas mask and patted her thigh instead. Just as a wave of pink engulfed her she saw Lila struggling with her mask. The rage faded from her face, replaced by a look of pure bliss as the storm overhand crescendo into a thunderous finale like it was the artilleryman invited out on stage to perform the finale of the 1812 Overture. She sliced, kicked, licked, arched her back, ripped, tore, broke, and whispered sweet nothings at whatever was in her way—Lila, Amara, phantoms, zombies, illusions—as she partook in her half of a violent phantasmagoria.

Then, suddenly, a portal opened up and her jaws snapped down on a Dilly Bar shoved into her mouth by George as he grabbed her with his large, meaty mitts, the temporary shock from the cold sweet the only thing stopping Vashti from turning the giant of a man into a meat ribbon. She was pulled through Brianna’s portal and disappeared, the storm vanishing with her. Elsewhere, a group of Dairy Queen employees scattered and ducked for cover as a sudden and violent wind chucked a picnic bench through the lobby window.

---

---

No, no, nononononono!

Sully had experienced several moments in his life where time had come to a crawl, the inevitable end stretching out before him, no action existing that could divert the course, powerless to do anything but watch. Bright stadium lights flooded the fields and cheers poured from the stands as he felt the interception slip from his grasp. Bright headlights appeared from around the dark corner on a slick back road, the horn blaring as he jerked the wheel as metal crunched on metal. Bright light flashing from the barrel of a gun as he started to dive to protect the kid, the shots ringing out through the storm, turning his head to see the bullets impact against the kid. Only the kid kept standing and the slow motion crawl stopped as Sully splatted in the mud.

“What the fuuuuu…” whispered Sully as he looked up at Clancy.

The kid should have been dead. The triggerman might’ve been hired by Walt or one of the Warners to take out the competition and had gotten a little too trigger happy given the headshot he had landed on the America’s third favorite t-shirt duck, “Marty Mallard”, but the crossbow expert had been going for the kill. Sully grimaced in pain just by looking at the bolt sticking in the kids face, his hands over his head and his knees pulling up to make himself a smaller target as more gunshots rang out. The kid was iron, unflinching. Sully would’ve almost been impressed if he wasn’t still internally panicking from watching two adults try to kill a kid, a panic that spiked when another kid got picked off by a sniper and dropped to the ground.

“Oh good it’s only Carol. Hey kid,” said Sully, his voice still in a low hush. He wiped the mud off the rim of the Chalice with the one clean part of his shirt. “You hurt? You look like you should oh my GOD!”

The kid wasn’t just a kid. Of course the kid wasn’t just a kid. Sully hadn’t just seen it in horror movies, he’d experienced it before the last go around—he still refused to go to toy stores after that last time. Why were the kids never just kids? They were always also ghosts or gods or demons or middle-aged Eastern European women with a rare genetic disease. At the very least Sully could confidently say that his wits were about him: the kid, well, the shadowy demon nightmare thing, had been the same “kid” he’d seen shot the other week. So he hadn’t been hallucinating, although he wished he was as he watched the kid start shredding into the man with the gun, more shots ringing out from elsewhere, before suddenly he was yeeted across the yard as the announcer yelled, “TOUCHDOWN!”

“TOUCHDOWN! TOUCHDOWN! TOUCHDOWN! NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN, SULLIVAN MCPHERSON, HAS WON THE SUPERBOWL FOR THE ATLANTA FALCONS! THE FANS ARE RUSHING THE FIELD! OH MY GOD! SULLIVAN MCPHERSON HAS MADE HISTORY!”

Flashes of lightning became the flashes of camera, the mud a podium, the twig poking him in the face a microphone. Sully stood covered in grime, the Chalice held as the MVP trophy tucked under his arm, nodding his head along to the questions of an imagined interviewer, uttering canned responses, loudly declaring to a mob of dancing zombies, “I’m going to Fantasy Land!”

He blinked and the stands fell away like dominoes, colossal redwoods standing in their place, the cheers of the crowd replaced by the calls of birds as he sat in a folding chair in front of a lake and watched the rising sun. The Chalice became a cold can of refreshing lager, foam splashing up onto his shirt as a hand playfully slapped him on the back of the head.

“Little early for that, don’tcha think?” said Ashley, snatching a can from the nearly empty cooler before using it as a seat. She jerked her hand towards an older man nodding off in a chair, a can of beer still loosely gripped in his hand as he snored. “You guys seriously drink all night?”

“No. We also talked,” said Sully.

“Oh, the McPherson men finally solve all of the world’s problems?”

“Yeah,” said Sully. He looked at his dad. It was funny. He couldn’t remember a single thing about what they had talked about. Really, it wasn’t the conversation that really mattered anyway. The thing that was truly important was the time they spent together. Sully smiled, choosing to believe what the mist told him—that they still had plenty of time left—as he took a sip from his beer. It tasted funny, almost like metal, and left his mouth feeling dry. “Something like that.”

---

---

Sloane gritted her teeth as undead nails slashed across her forearm and jerked her shoulder sharply to avoid being grappled by one of the zombies behind her. Her knife was stuck between the ribs of one of the bodies, frantically wiggling up and down as she channeled lux into her tarot card to yank it free so in one final act of desperation she could turn it into an Object of Obsession and distract the horde. It wasn’t working. Besides, enchanting something else meant turning the spell off on the jacket, and Anya might still be in swinging range of the monster. Even if she could cast the spell, she wasn’t sure she would go through with it.

Between being separated by the storm and struggling in fights of their own Sloane accepted that nobody was coming to her rescue. Really, said the once tiny voice inside of her that sounded awfully like her mother and had started to become louder and louder until it was like the wail of a banshee, it was to be expected. They didn’t really want her in their little group. She had only been saved by Amara because she’d been in the same room as Lynn. Hands grabbed at her shirt and hair as she kicked and shoved the zombies back in a futile effort to buy herself a few more seconds. From the corner of her eye she saw one of the zombies lunge for her faster than she imagined possible, its hand grabbing for her throat. She didn’t scream at the oncoming death, refusing to give it the satisfaction as she turned to face it.

She felt her skin begin to sizzle, too engulfed in the moment to realize the implication, as her pointless bravery broke. Sloane threw her hands up in front of her as she closed her eyes, the noise coming out of her mouth not a defiant yell at the face of death but a quiet, desperate whimper, one final plea, as she braced for the pain. It came, but not in the form of ripping and tearing and biting. Rather, it was just that sizzle on her skin growing in intensity as if the rain had become acidic. Breathing heavily, she opened her eyes as she put her hands to her chest. She felt some kind of sludge slip between her fingers as she saw Luca smiling at her, the decaying flesh of the zombies slopping off of his body.

”I'll clear us a path…”

Sloane followed behind Luca, somewhat dazed by how she was alive, somewhat uncertain if she actually was, a ‘thank you’ trembling on her lips but never fully making it past. Luca carved a path through the zombies, their flesh and muscles melting off them and becoming a bubbling black pudding of decay that swirled with the mud. Sloane stepped carefully, trying to avoid the gore as best as she could, scared to get any closer to Luca but terrified to fall behind. The battlefield had gone from a brawl to a live reenactment of the grotesque art of Hieronymus Bosch, portraying a literal hell on earth for the modern generation with dancing Thriller zombies, burning crosses, and the creeping pink fog of chemical warfare. Sloane moved a hand to her mouth but was unable to cover as she violently gagged at the dark, bloody strings of flesh still webbed between her fingers.

And then she blinked and saw that she was looking at a painting inside of a small shed that she both simultaneously knew that she had never seen before and also knew that it was hers, no, their studio. The burning house became a burning stick of incense, the sickening decay a sweet scent of lavender, the blood and viscera coating her splashes of paint on a white smock, the storm a bit of white noise caused by the trickling of a small, tabletop water fountain. Dozens of paintings lined the wall, some of them hers, most of them not. Her eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. She grabbed a fine paintbrush and dabbed it across the corner of the painting, removing her signature by blending it to become a part of the painting, leaving the piece of art anonymous. Satisfied, she put the brush down as she felt his presence behind her.

"I’m so glad. I’m not dying anymore… I didn’t want to. I’d accepted it, but I really didn’t want to. Not after I met you again. For the first time since I found out, I actually wanted to live again,” Sloane heard him say, his voice strange at first. Perhaps he was coming down with a cold?

“That’s a funny way to say I love you.”

“Really?”

He pulled her into a hug. The words were confusing, but she understood the sentiment. She had felt that way before—taking on the burden of protecting the whole city, refusing to cooperate with others due to simply being a control freak, a compulsion to collect and to hoard power for the sake of hoarding power. She had been dying, too, killing herself with stress, hating what she was doing, blaming others for her faults, and slowly becoming a hypocrite. Ironically, it was hypocrisy that would ultimately save her life, allowing her to stop worrying so much about what others were doing and thinking and focusing instead on slicing out a little happiness for herself. But really, he had been the one person honest enough to give her the harsh truth: she was acting like an addict. Severance was her form of going cold turkey.

“Sorry, I meant to say stupid. By the way, I have something to tell you.”

She wasn’t special, she wasn’t important, and that was completely okay. Yet even knowing that, he still treated her like she was—he was obsessed. Sloane acquiesced. Okay, perhaps she was too. She hugged him back. She felt like she was melting in his arms, the warmth of his love rushing over her. It hurt, actually, having someone who really cared for her, because it made her realize how much of her life she had truly been without that feeling. It really hurt. It really, really hurt. For the longest time she had pushed and nudged any away because the loneliness had been so normal that it had felt right—her legs felt weak, her heart was about to burst, uncontrollable tears of pain formed in her eyes as she desperately grabbed on to him—but now she was so happy that she could die.

“What is it?”

“I love you too, Jasper,” said Sloane softly, bloody tears and black mascara running down her cheeks as she stared lovingly at Luca through glassy eyes. The skin sloughed off of her fingers as she caressed Luca’s cheek. As Luca moved to try and avoid touching her any further by lifting his arms, her mind saw Jasper do a strange, little dance, the mist contextualizing it to make sense, telling her that it was just one of his eccentricities that drew her closer to him.

She gave a girlish giggle, her skin darkening and festering it continued to rot. She moved in to give “Jasper” a kiss, coughing a mist of black blood on Luca’s face instead as she briefly choked. Her legs buckled as she fell to her knees, desperately grabbing at Luca to try and remain upright as she coughed and another cascade of dark blood poured over her cracking lips. The strength started to rapidly escape from her body as it began to succumb to the Rot, vital organs beginning to shut down as she pawed at Luca like a lost puppy.

“I’m so sorry honey, I got paint on you,” she said, still in the middle of a giggling fit that gurgled on her own blood. She attempted to hold up her hand, imagining the loose flap of skin as a towel, and slumped forward into Luca’s legs instead, consciousness fading, “Let me…let me…help you clean up…”

@Punished GNGeorge@AtomicEmperorEdict@FernStoneLuca@BlizzStormy@AtrophySloane
No Man's Land, aka Kari Wilson's (Wrecked) Yard

---

Clancy felt his fingers tear through the man's abdomen, leaving a few inches of small intestine exposed to the elements. He could smell it. Blood, meat, death. A gut wound was a nasty way to go, and he could see the panic setting into the man's eyss as his gaze turned downwards.

Before Clancy could make an end of it, there was a distant pop. A round punched through his sleeve and burst, tearing open his arm from wrist to elbow. A second later, he felt another round puncture through his back, and then-

Pop.

A hole ruptured through both sides of his midsection, back and belly both torn outwards into gaping wounds with a black void where blood and viscera should've been. The axe slipped from his fingers as he pivoted, looking for the shooter, ignoring the bolts that bedded into his flank like feathers, experiencing a certain hyperawareness, as though the world had turned its gaze on him.

Clancy didn't see the big man charging him, but he felt the weight of a boot slamming into him like a freight train, and he arced across the sodden yard like a ragdoll, into the range of the green sun.

For a single moment, that burning green light seared at him mid-air, worse than the real fire that had torn through the upper floor of the cabin, an agony which only ended once he skidded in the ground, tumbling into a deep, waterlogged crater formed by the fighting. Immersed in water, raging, he lashed out as what felt like a dozen arms tugged at his limbs, threatening to drag him to the dark depths beneath the earth.

Cold viscera squished between his finger tips, brittle bones caved under his feet. A head, blindly pulled from the mouldering neck which anchored it, worthless meat that served no purpose but to be crushed. More came at him, a dozen silent foes clamouring for whatever they could blindly grasp. He rolled and wrestled with bodies that held no warmth, that broke upon him like waves on a castle, useless flesh that tasted like mud as he kicked, smashed, gnawed his way through an agitated swarm of animate corpses that had piled into the gap.

He raged in the darkness.

---

Clancy finally emerged from the flooded crater, surrounded by the formerly reanimated carcasses of the finally dead, torn apart in a moment of instinct and rage.

8th Street were gone, or leaving. The others seemed in shock and awe, idly flailing about as a pink fog rolled over them like a noxious veil. It dispersed over him as he passed through, barely lingering in his peripheral vision.

For a moment, he caught the outline of two interlocked figures. One masculine, the other feminine and a little shorter.

They looked familiar.

Judy,, the name came forth unbidden, followed by another.

Frank?

"No."

They were hugging. That in itself was a little hard to believe.

Clancy blinked, and the silhouettes remained. But it wasn't either sibling. Not his big brother, or his sister. It was Sloane and Luca, and he was still in no man's land, surrounded by a landscape littered with mudholes and broken bodies. And he could see Sloane was in Lucas's arms, even as the skinny latino boy flailed away, trying to break away from her.

She was dying. The smell of rot emanating from the two with a potenacy beyond the formerly animate dead around him was telling enough. She was being eaten away fron the inside.

He looked half a corpse himself, a tattered child in charred rags, pockmarked with deep gouges in the flesh that should've killed the strongest men, a mortal abdominal wound that punched through his body, a dark emptiness where blood and innards should've been, more of the pink fog uselessly swirling at his feet as the storm scattered it far and wide.

It was now or never. Chase down 8th Street before they got away, and let her die.

His eyes harboured a feral expression, pale skin flecked with mud and viscera that clearly didn't belong to him. Ashley wouldn't want this. One foot lifted from the mud and traipsed forward, followed by the other.

Idiots or not. Assholes or not.

He didn't want to watch her die.

Clancy trudged through the sodden yard, pacing towards them. Sloane was barely on her feet at this point, half-slumped into the boy's legs, clutching at his calves..Kneeling over her, palms clasping around her wrists with an uncharacteristic gentleness, he felt it now, the corrosive presence, the Rot eating away at whatever it could.

If she was still conscious, she might've felt the cold iron grip prying her away. For.him, the Rot found another target. Patches of his damaged form further receded like burning paper, a dark, angular shadow outlining wherever flesh melted away. That feral expression in his gaze scowled back st the thing that hid within Luca.

It wouldn't find sustenance, not with him. There was no meal for this Rot, he'd denied it that. The feral child pulled the girl free, arms looped under her shoulders, fully cogniscient that she was still in a bad way, her flesh and innards equally eroded by the poison that infected the boy.

And the others were still stationary, drowning in fantasies of their own.

"What are you looking at?!" Clancy growled, an inhuman, guttural resonance overlapping his voice, "Help her!"