[IC] Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

[Lord Wraith]

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_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.081: Move

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_{Interaction(s): Gil Galahad - @Roman, Haven Barnes - @Skai}

Previously: Hysteria

The three pairs of defiant eyes elicited a raised eyebrow beneath the horned brow of the Chernobog. He took a step forward and was immediately met with a flurry of punches and kicks as the Gils made their attempt. Unflinching, the Chernobog continued towards Haven before a kick to his groan managed to get a twitch of annoyance from the looming figure and brought him to a halt. He slowly looked between the shell game of clones before deciding his opening move.

“Pity, I wish there were more of you.” He uttered, the disappointment evident before he moved into action. Grabbing a hold of the first Gil, the Chernobog’s large hand wrapped around and ankle and hoisted the man into the air. The sudden jerk ripping his hip out of its socket before the first clone was smashed into the other. The sound of flesh and bone simultaneously breaking echoed through the frozen walls of students whilst spraying them in a warm crimson mist that emanated steam against the icy surface.

Another swing of the first Gil, this time towards the third left standing before he was scooped into the air and sent cantering into the rafters before collapsing in a heap atop the balcony.

Wrapping a hand around both legs of the Gil he held and another around his neck, the Chernobog tossed his arms hapzardly back, ripping the man in half and spraying Haven with the clone's innards.

“Do you have any more insects to throw at me or are we quite done with this game?” The Chernobog asked, “Amma, Ammaranthe, it matters not, Tiamat consumes all.”

“Bigger than you.” A voice broke through the chaos and suffering as the flickering lights illuminated a head adorned in fiery hair. Stepping forward a blade formed around her hand and quickly cut the train from the floor length dress she had been wearing. Tearing a slit in the side, she kicked her heels to the side, a swirling form of liquid metal wrapping itself her opposite hand.

“Pardon?” The gargoyle asked with a sneer.

“Bigger than you, I have felled bigger than you.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“I assumed you would, which is why I wanted your attention on me and not Lucille Calder.”

“No!” The Chernobog roared, turning to pounce on Haven only to be blocked by a purple shield of energy.

“Together!” Alyssa yelled, darting around the shield as Jim came in beside Haven.

“I’ve got Tyler, but I need you to follow me.” He ordered.

“Can you do that?”

[Melissa]

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_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.082: Death Of A Bachelor

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_{Interaction(s): @Lord Wraith - Lorcán Roth}

Previously: Dancing In The Flames

It didn’t take long for Lorcán and Aurora to trade the quiet stillness of the Mess Hall for the melodic crashing waves on the shoreline, the latter teleporting the pair in an instant to their shared favorite place.

As soon as she felt the solid tile flooring underneath her dissolve into cool grains of sand, the redhead reached down and slipped off her shoes before they could sink too far downwards, sighing contently as her toes dug into the beach. Free from the restrictive confines of her heels, she let her discarded footwear hang from her fingertips, her other hand still grasping onto the boy by her side as she began to walk along the water, being careful that the skirt of her dress didn’t get caught in the incoming tide.

“I came out here alone a few nights this past week, both when you were in the infirmary and after everything happened.” Aurora revealed, recounting the evenings she had spent sitting on the shore with her thoughts during the witching hour. Next to them, the ocean seemed to glow in the moonlight, shades of white and silver dancing along the surface. “It was weird. Lonely, really. It didn’t feel the same without you.”

“When I was in the infirmary-” Lorcán looked out towards the sea, his eyes following the horizon before a silvery reflection on the water's surface caused his eyes to dart to the North. Glowing antlers saluted him and as quickly as he had noticed the white stag, it was gone again.

Lorcán quickly blinked, shaking his head with a small smile before continuing his thought.

“When I was unconscious, it was you, you were the one watching over me, guiding me through. My thoughts dwelt almost entirely on you.” He explained, before suddenly stopping. His eyes lit up as he noticed a structure in the distance.

“Looks like someone was like planning to continue the dance out here.” He exclaimed, suddenly releasing Aurora’s hand before darting forward. It was a simple setup, a temporary floor between four posts with strings of lights connecting them. Lorcán quickly located the power to the decorative display and watched it illuminate the dark beach.

Noting the Bluetooth speaker nearby, it only took him a few seconds to pair the device with his phone before he held his hand toward Aurora again.

“You did promise to save me a dance.”

A small smile formed on Aurora’s lips as Lorcán spoke, and yet, in combination with her radiant joy she also found herself in disbelief. Through all those days and nights in the infirmary that she sat by his side, he had been thinking of her? Of all the people in his life who he found important, especially his family, she was the one who he cited guiding him through. It was difficult for her to wrap her head around that she held such a prominent place in his heart and mind. Then again, she held that same space for him.

But before she could comment, she followed his gaze and then his path to the structure he spotted not too far from the water’s edge. The lights glowed warmly as they were lit, the same warmth that the redhead felt blooming in her chest, a stark contrast against the cool tones of the night sky and sand. It was becoming a picture perfect evening, especially considering how differently it could have gone given the way the night had started.

“I did, didn’t I,” Aurora playfully recounted, taking his outstretched hand and moving closer. She let her other hand settle on his shoulder, looking up at him with bright blue eyes. “Well it’s a good thing then that I never break a promise.”

Lorcán took hold of her hand and playfully spun Aurora around as the music began to play. He had been sure to select one of her favourites, but still something with a solid enough beat that he could move his feet to it. Playing along with music was one thing, but Lorcán wasn’t exactly known for poise or grace.

“I don’t see how there could possibly be anywhere else I’d want to be right now than here with you, Aurora.” Lorcán smiled, her name feeling almost foreign on his lips. Could he still call her ‘Lady Dude’? Did he need to think of a new nickname? Was actually being romantically involved always going to lead to these moments of overthinking every small action?

Staring in her eyes, Lorcán let go of any doubts as he re-centred himself in the moment, determined to enjoy the now and worry about tomorrow when it came. With his phone on silent, they were free of any distractions or disturbances as the romantic melody spilled out over the empty beach. The twinkling lights above their heads were accented by the moon that reflected off the peaceful crashing waves.

It was a perfect moment and there was nothing that could ruin it.

The redhead agreed, there was nowhere else she’d rather be. She’d dreamed of a moment like this, sharing a tender experience in the setting that they had grown to call their own. Beach aside, she’d said it herself back in the infirmary - the only place she ever wanted to be was where he was.

But hearing her given name as opposed to the nickname she had grown to cherish felt different. The thing was though, things were different now. With both of their feelings out in the open, communicated and sealed with a kiss, this was now a new chapter in their friendship - their relationship.

Was that what this was now? A relationship?

She thought so, at least, that the confession of their love and shared feelings meant that they were now likely together in that manner. But after everything that had happened between them which could have precluded this from even occurring in the first place, she knew better than to assume. The familiar nerves she had felt before quickly made themselves known again, and so Aurora approached the subject gently, deciding that from here on out there would be no more secrets, no more holding things close to her chest.

“Lorcán,” She hesitated, but continued, “I know we still have a lot to figure out, but,” Her hand moved from his shoulder to cup the back of his neck, letting the pads of her fingers glide into his hair. “What happens next? Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know,” He replied, shivers running down his spine as Aurora played with his hair. He could feel more than just the hairs on his arms standing on edge as the pleasure-filled tingles ran through his body.

“But I do know we do it together,” Lorcán added with a smile, “I want to be with you, to know you fully and wholly, and I think you want that with me,” He explained, “I see no reason why this isn’t more. I told you, I wanted it to be more, and I want to continue to explore that and life with you.”

He took hold of her hand, kissing the back of it lightly before locking his ember-like eyes with Aurora’s shimmering sapphires.

“What I’m trying to say is, Aurora Mitchell, I want to be your boyfriend.”

Aurora's heart skipped a beat, her lips curling into a smile, blood rushing to her cheeks and staining them rose.

I totally don’t see us as static either, we’re still evolving.

Together, just as they always had, but more than before. No more lingering doubts, no more dancing around what they both wanted. And the way he looked at her—like she was the only thing that mattered—made it feel like the most natural thing in the world.

"Boyfriend," she repeated softly, as if testing the word on her tongue. It felt strange, but wonderfully so; a page turned, a new chapter. “I’d like that,” she whispered, her voice barely above a breath, her thumb brushing lightly against the nape of his neck, her touch gentle. “I’d like that a lot.”

Without thinking twice, the action in itself instinctual, she leaned forward and closed the gap between them. Her lips pressed softly against Lorcán’s, the kiss languid, filled not with urgency but a promise of something lasting. She could feel the steady beat of his heart, strong and sure, and his embrace felt like the safest place in the world.

“I guess that makes me your girlfriend,” She teased gently, the familiar lightness returning to her tone.

“I was hoping so,” Lorcán replied with a giddy grin, “Otherwise this would be real awkward,”

But another thought quickly followed, one that Aurora felt was important to address now while the rest that flurried through her mind they could answer later. “Though, let’s keep this between us for now. I don’t want to tell the rest of the team just yet, if that’s okay. I know they mean well, but sometimes they can be a little too nosy for their own good.” Aurora smirked, “This is still so new, and I think you and I need to get the hang of things first.”

Lorcán nodded enthusiastically.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, I’ve watched how some of them run into relationships and if anything, it has only ever like shown me what I don’t want.” He replied, “I don’t ever want anything to ever separate us again.”

He placed his lips on her forehead, nuzzling her head under his chin before wrapping his arms around her and staring out at the peaceful ocean behind them.

Tonight had been perfect, and it was only just the beginning.

[Qia]

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_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.083: In the Eye of the Beast

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_{Interaction(s): Amma @Rockette, Cass @Lord Wraith}

Previously: A Cat and Bird Game & The Catbird Seat

Harper's grip on Cass’s arm had been automatic, a reflex pulled from something unspoken between them since she’d slipped into that red dress—the one that now felt too big, too bold for her. The second his arm tore free, her breath snagged, the raw charge rolling off him hitting her like a live wire—dangerous, electric, and wild. For a heartbeat, she was stuck there, eyes locked on his coiled frame as he spun, fists up, ready to throw punches she knew weren’t meant for her. But it didn’t matter. The static still buzzed under her skin, a reminder of the strange boy’s earlier words: she was always on edge, always bracing for the next hit, whether it came or not.

That was how she lived—armour up, senses hawklike, waiting for the next threat, real or imagined. It had always worked, kept her safe, but now, with Cass standing before her like this, it all felt painfully inadequate. She should’ve seen this coming, should’ve read the signs clearer, but his anger caught her just the same. His rage wasn’t about her, but now she was trapped in the storm of it, drowning in its eye as he struggled to rein himself back in. She hadn’t meant to provoke him, hadn’t wanted to be part of this...but here she was, right in the center of his unravelling.

Just like that stranger had warned her she might be.

When his fists unclenched and the heat of his power faded, so did the thrum in her chest. Her eyes dropped to the jacket in her hands, a quick tug pulling it from her grasp as Cass reclaimed it, his only words being a clear-cut warning. He was pulling away, retreating behind those thick walls she’d seen him put up before- when they’d talked in the infirmary, when she’d tried to let him know she was there for him with whatever was going on with Lorcán. The temptation to break through those walls now, to say something that would reach him, was overwhelming.

But this time… she couldn’t even try.

She was simply too exhausted. The constant push and pull of trying to be everything for everyone was draining her dry. Why had she let herself become so wrapped up in it? Trying to be needed, to be useful—what had it even amounted to? When had she let herself become this pathetic?

“I didn’t mean to…” The words came out hoarse, barely scraping past the lump in her throat. She didn’t know what else to say, didn’t have the strength to force out an apology that didn’t feel right. The sound appeared to echo—thud—loud and jarring, but it wasn’t from her she realized then.

Cass went still, his eyes snapping upward as the noise repeated, louder this time. Harper’s gaze followed his, a fresh wave of tension curling through her spine, thick and suffocating. Whatever had been simmering between them vanished, replaced by something far worse. This time, the threat wasn’t an emotion or a misunderstanding. This time, it was real.

Fear. Cold and undeniable.

The air in the room shifted just before a bone-chilling roar reverberated through the building. The floor trembled under Harper’s feet, as though the very structure of the A.R.C. was buckling under the weight of something monstrous. Her breath skipped as the ceiling gave way, shrapnel raining down around her, scattering across the dance floor. Chaos erupted. A massive, winged creature descended into the room, its leathery wings casting shadows over the panicked crowd. Harper’s eyes widened, her pulse hammering in her ears as she took in its horned brow, razor-sharp claws, and the predatory way it moved despite its immense size.

The temperature dropped in an instant, frost crawling up the walls, forming an icy barrier that sealed everyone inside. The terror around her was almost suffocating, the panic spreading like wildfire as screams filled the air.

And then—silence.

Harper’s gaze locked onto the creature’s glowing red eyes as they slid past her, focusing on Haven and Amma. The words it spoke—"mothers"—made no sense, but the calm menace behind them sent a shiver down her spine. It didn’t care who stood in its way; it was here for them, and nothing was going to stop it.

They were going to die if they intervened.

Cass moved first.

The roar that tore from his throat made Harper flinch, but she barely had time to process it before he launched himself at the creature, energy crackling violently in his fists. The explosion that followed was blinding, and Harper instinctively threw her arms up, shielding her face as the blast rattled her senses. When the dust settled, her heart sank. Cass—her Cass—was caught, the creature’s massive hand wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground with ease.

No.

Her feet refused to move, panic freezing her in place as she stared at Cass, helpless in the creature’s grasp. He wasn’t supposed to be the one caught, the one overpowered—he was the fighter, the one who always got back up. But now he dangled there, and that strong but vulnerable organ inside her squeezed painfully as Torres stepped forward, trying to negotiate.

Her attempt was just as short-lived.

When Torres fell, struck down in an instant, blood splattering across the floor, something inside Harper snapped.

The creature wasn’t bluffing.

It wasn’t here to threaten—it was here to take.

Before her mind could catch up, her body was already reacting. Her enhanced vision kicked in, a piercing sting flaring behind her eyes. Pain surged through her temples, threatening to shut her down, but the rush of adrenaline racing through her veins numbed it, dulling its sharpness just enough. She winced, a quick intake of breath as the world around her shifted into something more distinct, more intense. There was no time to dwell on the discomfort—her body was already reacting before her thoughts could form.

Colours around her snapped into clarity, the world suddenly more vivid and hyper-focused than before. The creature’s leather-like wings shimmered under what little light poured in from above. But it was the trail of blood smeared across the floor that caught her eye, bright red against the pale tiles. She could see the raw fear etched into the faces of the students nearby, each expression laid bare to her in a brutal instant. Her breath hitched in her throat, but she forced herself to push past the pain, to embrace the rush of sensory overload that was now her reality.

She saw everything.

Harper’s eyes snapped to the creature first, her vision narrowing, searching desperately for something—anything—she could use to gain the upper hand. She scanned its hulking form, looking for a weakness, some opening to exploit, but there was nothing. No vulnerable spot, no crack she could strike, no advantage to be found. Her frustration increased at that realization, a tight knot forming in her chest as she realized just how powerless she was in this moment.

She watched as Rory went to Amma and Gil, the three of them exchanging words with each other. Meanwhile, Haven’s wings barely moved, twitching slightly with each tense breath, her hazel eyes locked onto the hulking gargoyle before them. Every fibre of Haven’s being screamed readiness—poised to act, waiting for the signal from Rory. Harper knew this was all part of Rory’s plan; it had to be. Yet, a gnawing sense of unease crawled below her skin, stirring something deep inside her, something innate to her.

Her gut instinct screamed at her to run to Haven, to protect her, the only thing stopping her being the striking familiarity of the scene before her. Something about Rory and Amma’s stance, when she looked again, told her all she needed to know—their movements, the way Rory’s body angled protectively toward Haven, the crackling energy surrounding Amma. They would protect her, just like before. Harper had to trust it.

Trust them.

But trust evaporated the moment the Chernobog moved, its deep, rumbling voice shaking the very air around them. The beast’s wings thundered, sending gusts of freezing wind tearing through the room. She didn’t even have time to react before Rory was struck, his body locking into place as ice crept up his form. Panic surged like a flood through her veins, but her limbs wouldn’t move. She was trapped in that split-second between realizing the danger and being helpless to stop it. The sickening crunch of bone, followed by Rory’s anguished scream, shattered the air, his leg crumpling unnaturally under him, the jagged white of bone piercing through his skin. Harper’s stomach twisted, bile rising in her throat at the sight.

Her mind screamed to move, to do something, but all she could feel was the cold grip of fear—and something darker, something she couldn’t place. This wasn’t just about Rory anymore; Harper’s eyes snapped to Amma, whose entire body seemed to hum with a dangerous energy. The Chernobog wasn’t just attacking them physically; it was pulling at something within Amma, coaxing it out, tempting her. Harper saw it in the revenhead’s eyes even from where she stood.

The predator waiting in hiding

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And then…the memory of a soft confession.

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_{“Maybe I am... lost.”}

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_{“Maybe I'm still ... trapped in the dark.”}

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_{“All I know is that I’m… trying.”}

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“I want to try.”

Harper had heard it in Amma's voice-the weight of everything she carried—and it had stayed with her. That pain, that doubt, that flicker of something beneath the surface yearning to break free. It wasn’t about power or revenge; it was about loss, about holding on when everything else seemed to slip away. The memory twisted painfully in Harper's chest. Amma had been so sure, so resolute, even as she admitted she might be lost.

But now, standing in the thick of things with the Chernobog taunting her, Harper could see it—the same vulnerability, the same struggle.

Gil’s voice rang out, bold and defiant, as he stepped between Amma and the monster, declaring that she wasn’t Tiamat. She was Ammaranthe. A powerful truth known only to him it seemed, for Harper had never heard the name before, Haven’s voice mimicking this very sentiment.

But Harper couldn’t do it. She couldn’t call her that. Not "Ammaranthe."

That wasn’t the person standing before them, the one battling both the monster and the darkness inside herself. To Harper, she was still Amma—the girl who had confided her doubts, her fears, the one who had admitted she might be lost, and Harper had felt that loss like it was her own. Amma was trying so hard, fighting against something none of them fully understood, and Harper wasn’t about to abandon her now by embracing a name that made her feel more distant.

Amma wasn’t Tiamat. She wasn’t some ancient destroyer meant to bring ruin.

She was just a woman- no, a girl- still trying to find herself.

“Amma!” Harper's voice broke through the noise, raw and urgent. Her heart raced, not from fear, but from the desperation to reach her before the creature—or worse, her own doubt—pulled her under. She couldn’t let it happen, not to Amma. Not to the girl who was still trying, still clinging to the sliver of herself that hadn’t given in. Harper had to believe that the person she was starting to know was still in there, buried beneath everything that had been thrust upon her.

“Don’t let it control you!” Harper's voice grew stronger, steadier. “You’re not who it says you are!” She knew what it felt like to be suffocated by expectation, by the roles others wanted you to play. But Amma was more than this, more than some ancient name or prophecy.

“You said you were trying. I believed you then. I still believe you.”

There’s little explanation for what happens next; mere seconds sheared and spun away into eternity, the plummeting fall of the woeful thing standing there, lost within the tides of limbo, a state of never being there and in-between, a half-in and half-out phase of something terrible, lost, and lonely.

Something that thrived off of pain.

It all happens too fast; it’s too much, too soon, and too little to be done to stop it. The summoning call of a name last to the dregs of despair, the trumpet of fate that shattered through woeful eyes of blue that flickered in the most delicate touches of silver before tears fell, carving through gold and black, smeared down and down and down. Trails of sorrow that curled over lips and teeth and smarted against flesh quivering with fear –

And rage.

Amma Cahors - no. Not even Ammaranthe. It is neither that slowly turns; the final call of a name slid through the sluggish pull of lashes, blinks that struggle to peel back as seconds flit on by with every shuddering breath she takes, every nerve is peeled open and heaving, every bone cracking and splintering as agony writhes through her.

And she smiles.

She rushes forward as a primal thing, no sound to mark her strike, no voice to terrorize the woeful that plead and beg and defend, nothing save the tears that stream down and down and the trembling in her hands as she lashes out and seizes Harper’s throat, a shift of hesitation that is felt through the length of her arm as she bares her teeth, weeps, and at her back do terrible coils of red rise, as great winged apparitions ran through with a vicious black that bleeds in rot. She cries, she shakes, she holds Harper there and stares into her eyes, each pupil mere slivers in a sea of glowing blue that glimmers with nothing but the most terrifying of agonies known to man. She squeezes, her hand forming a vice as she leans and whispers:

“That is not my name.”

Harper’s breath hitched, sharp and ragged, as Amma’s hand closed around her throat, the pressure immediate and suffocating. It was too tight, far too tight. Her fingers shot up automatically to Amma’s wrist, nails digging into the skin, but the strength there was unyielding, like iron beneath her grip. The world around her shrank, the edges of her vision fraying into black as the pounding of her pulse filled her ears, drowning out any other sound. It was as though the very air had been stolen from her lungs, and all she could do was fight for it.

She couldn’t breathe.

The vise-like grip crushed her airway, panic swelling within her chest like a tidal wave, crashing and relentless. Yet through the terror of the situation, Amma’s eyes cut through—glowing, agonized, pleading, and enraged all at once. Harper could see the torment there, something ancient and raw, something she couldn't fully understand but needed to reach.

_{“Y–you’re… n-not…”}Harper’s voice cracked, the sound barely a breath as her throat convulsed beneath the crushing hold. She tried again, fighting to form the words that refused to come, the pressure choking them back down into silence. Her body screamed for air, every instinct demanding she claw her way free, but something deeper urged her to keep trying, to speak.

Every breath was a battle.

_{“I-I b-believe… y-you…”}The words barely escaped, each syllable trembling with the effort to stay conscious. Tears blurred her vision, stinging as oxygen dwindled.

Her grip on Amma’s wrist slackened, her fingers numb, her limbs weakening by the second, but still, she clung on. Harper’s gaze stayed locked on Amma’s face, her lips trembling as they parted once more, fighting to make one last connection.

_{“…p-please…”}

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[Roman]

L U C I L L E C A L D E R
L U C I L L E C A L D E R

_{Location: Augmented Reality Center - P.R.C.U. Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.084: Trophy Kill

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_{Interaction(s): Alyssa, @Lord Wraith}

Alyssa was somewhere in the crowd when it started; Luce felt only familiar, almost nostalgic surges of fear and adrenaline rushing through her as the beast arrived and swiftly began clawing its way through the few foolish enough to stand against it. Luce knew, almost immediately, that she was also foolish enough to stand against it, and just hoped Alyssa would be there to back her up as usual. She hurriedly studied the creature; despite its fangs and claws, its stone-like skin, the powerful set of wings and tail to match, this thing was far too big - and, more to the point as it demonstrated its clear command over language - too smart to be an actual gargoyle. No, what she quickly realized as it exchanged words and blows with Torres and Blackjack, was that this thing before them had, at one point, been Robert Arkwright. She cursed inwardly. Robert had been a noble and intelligent man, well-respected despite his appearance. How many more would be twisted, corrupted, forced against once-brethren?

"'Lyssa!" She yelled, hoping her cry could be heard over the general pandemonium the ARC was quickly descending into. "Alyssa! Sound off!"
From across what used to be the dance-floor behind some overturned tables came the reply and a freckled hand thrown into the air.
"Over here!"

Luce was across in a flash, ducking and tumbling around the beast as she collapsed to her friend's side, the pair of them braced against the meager cover Alyssa had managed to secure.
"Don't suppose you brought any weapons with you to this dance?" Luce said, words breaking through ragged panting as her suped-up endocrine system continued to flush her body with adrenaline. Her hands shook and her eyes were wild and you could see her breath practically fogging in the air, thick and hot and feral.

"Lucille Calder, you know I did not!" Alyssa replied. "Usually I am weapon enough!"
Luce peeked over the top edge of the table as Rory and Gil made separate but equally ill-fated stands. She held herself back from crying out when Rory's leg snapped, but the maiming inflicted upon Gil and his clones made even Luce's hardened stomach turn somersaults in her belly.
"Fuck! Fuck!" Was all Luce could manage, her brain oscillating between panic-response catatonic and power-fueled savagery.

“Pardon the intrusion, ladies, but this might be of some help,” A familiar drawl interrupted as the pair found none other than the Chancellor sliding in beside them, holding his signature weapon out towards Luce. ”I’ll get to Tyler and Barnes, you two are used to fighting this sort of thing aren’t y’all?”
“That is a matter of perspective.” Alyssa replied. “At first when I heard the wing beats, I assumed it was a wyvern. We are used to fighting wyrms and wyverns - do you perhaps have one of those you might require the assistance of some honorary Jäger to dispatch?” She asked, her voice full of humourless mirth.
“‘Fraid not, ladies. Can’t ask y’all to put your lives in danger, but I’m afraid our boy ate the wrong Wheaties and he’s going to continue to wipe the floor with whelps who’ve never seen combat outside of a controlled environment. Comms are cooked; got no way to call in the cavalry 'til I make it to the next building over.”
“No alarms from the grid?” Alyssa asked with surprise.
“H.E.L.P. is so depleted these days, it’s unlikely there’s anyone to even respond to it. Torres’ phone though - it has a button to call in the big guns. If one of you can get it and unlock it, we might yet live.” Jim added before Alyssa slowly nodded. She looked to Luce, sharing a knowing look before motioning to her clutch.

She may not have brought weapons, but she wasn’t unprepared.

”It’s not my life I’m worried about!” Luce hissed, accepting Jim’s gun and feeling the cold weight of the sizeable revolver in her hands. She flicked open the cylinder and gave it a quick spin, assuring herself of the gun’s good condition before flicking the bullets back into place. Six shots. She’d have to make them count.
”Just make sure they splint it all properly when they’re re-aligning everything.” She said to Jim. ”And have the good morphine ready.”
She gave Alyssa’s hand a squeeze, returning her gaze before disappearing around the edge of the table.

Watching as Luce disappeared, Alyssa cracked her neck before standing. If ever there was a ‘David and Goliath’ moment in her life, it was now. The creature was quite literally calling out taunts against the army of students, and with Luce ready, it was time for Alyssa to do her part.

“Do you have any more insects to throw at me or are we quite done with this game?”
“Bigger than you.” She replied defiantly before walking forward beneath the flickering lights that illuminated her head and its fiery adornments, stepping forth while summoning her bio-metal to form into a blade around her hand. With an expert twist of her wrist, Alyssa quickly cut the train from the floor-length dress she had been wearing; tearing a slit in the side, she kicked her heels to the side, a swirling form of liquid metal wrapping itself in her opposite hand.

“Pardon?” The gargoyle asked with a sneer.
“Bigger than you. I have felled bigger than you.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“I assumed you would - which is why I wanted your attention on me, and not Lucille Calder.”

“No!” The Chernobog roared, turning to pounce on Haven only to be blocked by a purple shield of energy.
“Together!” Alyssa yelled, darting around the shield. She lunged with her blade, catching the Chernobog off-guard before turning, as the mercury-like metal instinctively formed a shield that caught an incoming claw. A retaliation threatened to draw blood as Alyssa rolled between its legs, aiming for where the Achilles tendon ought to be; but she neglected to account for the Chernobog’s tail, which now slammed down in front of her, prompting her to tumble deftly to the side before a powerful flap of its leathery wings sent her reeling away. Her powers protected her, retracting her blade before covering her body in a metallic shell as her nails extended and regained grip against the icy floor.

Luce meanwhile used Alyssa’s distraction to bolt for Torres’ crumpled form, desperately seeking the phone to call in some heavy-hitters. With Chernobog scrambling after her partner she had a clear run from her position to where Teresa lay, wounded and wheezing against the wall, and after a few faltering steps she took it, weaving through the fleeing crowd, keeping one eye on her target and the other on Chernobog and Alyssa’s dancing figures. Every time a claw clashed against the redhead’s metal or she tumbled through a tail-swipe, Luce’s heart skipped a beat, terrified for her friend but horror-stricken more by what it might mean if they failed.

Luce flinched as she watched the jagged tail slam down mere inches away from Alyssa; she felt the back-draft of the gust from the wings and Alyssa skidded away, scrambling on the frosted floor to gain purchase once more and return to her assault. But she was slow - tired, on compromised footing, and the beast was too big and so, so frighteningly fast. Luce saw it happening before Alyssa did and nothing in the world could have stopped her taking her next course of action, movement so instinctual and automatic Luce barely registered she’d even done it before the claw meant for Alyssa instead slammed into her, raking across her torso and sending Luce flying across the hall. She hit the wall hard, wood splintering from the impact and brick crumbling; there were a few long seconds as the dust billowed out and obscured whatever injury had been inflicted on the girl.

Gunshots rang out from the crater. Two, three, four, great bursts of light and sound as the muzzle-flash repeated itself. Luce stepped forward, grimacing but upright. Her right arm, initially wielding the pistol, was bent back unnaturally far at the elbow, her ulna burst forth from the wrist and now she fired the revolver with her left instead; the fingers there were sporting their own splinters of wood and fragments of bone poking out, yet squeezed that trigger again and again all the same. The gash from his claws came down diagonally across her torso, and if you looked closely you could see her heart, exposed and rent open, but still beating weakly; her liver was picking up the rest of the slack. She was shaky on her bruised and scratched but still-intact legs, practically vibrating from the adrenaline crashing through her veins, and she pulled raggedy, spittled breaths through a hole in her throat. Her vocal cords were traumatised from the blow, but hell if that meant Luce couldn’t yell at Chernobog at the top of her over-clocked lungs, making a sound like she was underwater.

”Why…can’t you just…fucking leave us alone?!”

[Rockette]

Do you think they'll just simply let you go.
The world outside of this perfect little bubble is cruel and it is dark and it is afraid. Afraid of you. Afraid of me.
They lie in wait to take everything you hold dear. And they will.

They always do.

But no matter what, this world will never accept you. They won't forget.
They haven't forgotten. I doubt they will ever forgive.

Many years ago, in the darkest of pits of a netherworld embedded with agony and despair, where no light could reach, and the symphony of the lost and forsaken reigned true, a little girl was left alone, lost and bound, and chained and broken. She no longer cried or screamed or begged; at barely thirteen, she had been peeled apart over and over, sinew and flesh and bone maimed and scarred, wounds so deep they festered as conceptual cesspools wrought with her hate. The depraved that were sheared of their humanity and left as mere tools, as a means to an end, weapons forged under the machinations of immortality and eternal renown of a man who challenged the might of the universe on the whims of madness and horror – thickly drenched in blood, the shedding of innocence found in the hateful eyes of blue that glared through tears and anguish and swore to destroy everything in her path.

She cursed them that day when the needles pierced her skin, when phosphorescent hate took hold of her very heart and pumped it full of sin forged of wrath, the burning, the pain, the glowing fire that wrent through every nerve and summoned the creature within that wailed and roared with the sorrow of loss; for all the wrong done unto her for many years to come. He took her name out of spite the next day. He breathed life anew through flayed bones and blood, marking her as the mother, the creator, the one Made for All, the epitaph of a bestial goddess that took the form of a dragon, a great winged serpent that made the world as it was and would later be fated to destroy it.

On her nape, the first marks to lay, a brand that would forever go unnoticed, even years later, as she stood as the harbinger of ruin, lain with black and red and silver, marked with scars and horrid creatures and eerily beautiful moths adorned with the face of death. A mask reminiscent of a sorrowful beauty, the most devastating with bared teeth and feral smiles as the devourer for all the world to reap and sow.

And though vengeance she swore, there was no denying the acceptance of the price that she had paid, the choices made for all the power in the world to find those in life known as mother and father, keeper and creator, the laments of God and love and hope that she was bitterly denied because the world saw her as she was and forged chaos through her soul of souls when she was born. The unification of all sundered under the might of the sun the day the Earth stood still.

There in the dark she had laid, a cell within a cell, the end to a long hallway strewn with corpses and flickering light that fell in tandem with a shattering heart, every plink of glass and stone as she swore then and there never to yield herself to anyone ever again. She took that weighted fear and sharpened the edges to brutal efficiency; marked her broken soul and spirit with it, carved the name taken from her there, left to wonder, lost and forgotten for many years to come until someone she knew naught yet would receive it and speak it aloud to rebuild her want of love anew. To be known as Beloved, taken from the place of the in-between as the creature, the beast, that would sooner tear apart the very fabrications of reality so that she might never know this pain again - held within a cage of bone cracked and splintered, beholden to the crown that would impale the brow of a raven-haired child with scarred palms held high as a sacrificial lamb.

In the dark, a hand had forged through, a simple offering to the child marred with scars, a beautiful smile that bloomed and held her there. A girl who, too, suffered under the blades and cruelty of life, skin marked and pocketed, likened to chips in mortar and healed over in patches of black. Eyes of a swaying meadow that held hope even in the shadows of their pain, haunted and yet brimming with silver tears as she whispered that she was okay, that she would be alright, and that this would not be her end.

She gave her name that day, her hand then too, as the first person to reach forth and hold her hand as a scared girl rather than a being to be tamed. Palm to palm, ashes to ashes.

Hey, what’s your name?
Tiamat.
No, the one they took from you.

Ammar –

No, someone had said, denied her truth, and whispered into the shadows unbound:
…Ummu-Hubur.

She gave her life that day, too, as the first person she ever killed.
Dust to dust.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.085: tiamat.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s):&}

Previously: taste of blood.

Please.

Amma Cahors held Harper Baxter on high, scarred palm against her throat, cinched tight, and trembled with the might of light undone. Her eyes pleaded with the girl in her grasp as tears continued to fall unchecked, smeared and wet and carved betwixt blacks and golds that ran down her face and fell onto the terrifying manifest of her powers that fell around them. Crackling energy within a sphere of thirty-three feet as the world held breath on the awakening monster that carved through flesh and spilled torrents of chaos into the void on a demented throne carved from the chasm of the deep where shadows malformed and brewed, where Amma’s true heart remained forever lost to the tides of fate. A heart maimed and faded, her name lain there for so many years, taken from her, never meant to be her own.

And then he said it: he protected and defended her. He put himself before her as no one had ever done before, reaching within the dark and yanking her forward into the light of hope to be as she was, as she could be: just a girl, a human, instead, to love and be loved in return. To mend, instead of sunder. How he knew, she didn’t know. Within the eclipsing shadow of her rage and depravity, there thrived a whisper of light, as if a holy gleam had broken through the darkness, a shimmering veil of amber-yellow that lingered as a wisp of yearning for the truth hidden deep and yonder obsidian walls that she threw herself against. No one had been there to save her then, no one to reach into the pit of black that frothed and churned as the sea, no one to pull her free from the chanting ruin that had sent her entire body ablaze with sheer agony and memory of all that she had done.

For all that she had yet to do.

None had ever fought for Amma Cahors; none had fought for Ammaranthe, who lingered as a child before the shimmering glass of a window in that church that shined darling twilight upon her – waiting for the one to speak her name. For the one that would step forward in defiance of the world and those that would take her back down into the dark, for the one that would name her friend and know her deepest fears as their own, for the one that would pray to the good that had withered and died long ago and remained as a kernel of lingering secrecy that none could see. To the one who denied she was a monster, to the one who would look upon her and see the beauty of her soul rather than the ugliness it carried through this life.

What did they see? Who?

She sobbed his name and yet laughed around the stinging bite of nails into her wrist, so minuscule and insignificant compared to the slivers marked into her back that suddenly burned.

Please.

She throws Harper away from her and throws herself back, too; she stumbles and gasps and struggles to breathe around the terrible weight settled in her ribs; she swears she can hear and feel her bones breaking, every rung jerked forward and cleaving down her front where the scar on her chest writhes with whipping crimson coils that spill shadows of a putrid rot pulled from the depths of a hellish world on the tides of this prophetic summons. She fists trembling hands through her hair and sinks her palms against her eyes that continuously weep where her lips peel wide in a horrid screech of all-consuming fury. She claws against the voices that peel through her head on the cries of her past. For every life she had taken under the moniker of Tiamat, the confines and locks on more of her memories threatened to burst forth on rusted hinges where they had been cruelly contained, eyes of many colors that bleed and blame her with bitter distrust and hate.

She steps back again, once, twice, slipping over ice and blood until she falls to her knees, the skirts of her dress spread around her as torrents of energy cleave through the world and decay around her body; the sound they make is an obscure droning that drums a funeral tole for the hopelessness witnessed here as Amma struggles against the manifestation of true hate and pain.

She peers through her splayed fingers, eyes cast on high, every tear spilling over as a build-up of the many years that she had been denied, for every facet of life taken from her, the injustice of time so hell-bent on marking her as different and misunderstood. She takes in great gulps of air, panic sluicing away through her veins as fire and ice, knowing she cannot stop it, knowing that her defiance and will would last for only so long. Her hands trembled, her body shook, and her back arched on a sickening crack as every single scar she bore began to glow before her powers slowly turned inward and struck; every pale line snapped open, skin peeled back, every wound and horrible thing she had endured suddenly experienced twice over.

Amma screamed. Her wails of agony pierced through the terrible violence, another gargling screech as she realized it was Gil’s body tossed so viciously, the savagery of his clones destroyed, or was it his actual remains she kneeled in, the sickening warmth staining the paleness of her skin, her own blood seeping down and down, lined over black ink as her scars continued to flay themselves open on whips of scarlet destruction. Her screams turned vicious and horrid, such primal sounds of the human heart that shattered with every beat, the kind that punches up from one's stomach and rips through their chest, the hopeless thought of loss and death that she carried, puncturing through her lungs on every scream torn from the pit of her soul.

Gunshots, metal, bone, and blood all amalgamated into a terrible ringing sound as her powers continued to expel around her. It was too much; it hurt. Everything hurt. And she just wanted it to stop. Amma wrapped her arms around herself, cocooned within the screeching sphere of crimson energy that sparked, sputtered, and roared, decaying lines of black and silver that splintered out from her form bent over, cleaving through everything in its path. Fissures broke through the ice wherever her powers touched, random shoots and tendrils of scarlet launching away from her and landing where they willed themselves to go, hissing and screeching with the overwhelming surge of ruin as within the swarming barrier of light and darkness Amma, Ammaranthe and Tiamat waged war.

[spicykvnt]

A small town outside of Edinburgh, a coffee shop. It was one of those rare summer afternoons in Scotland, the kind that seemed more a gift than a season. The sky above stretched wide, a pale and endless blue, the sun hanging low and casting its golden light over everything. It bathed the scene in an ember glow, soft as silk.

Two women sat outside at a small table, bathing in the glorious midsummer light. Cleo was the younger of the two, and she sat with her thoughts; wrestling with words that never quite seemed to fit. Across from her, Eilidh Vass, her mentor, radiated a calm that Cleo often envied. Waves of brown hair framed Eilidh's face and her eyes were soft but sharp, like someone who had long since learned to listen to what wasn’t being said, to see what couldn't be seen.

“I think I’m getting better at it, thinking about the feelings and stuff…” she said, with a shy expression.

Eilidh smiled at her. “I know you are, you’re doing exceptionally well,” she affirmed, her voice warm and sincere. Patient and knowing.

Cleo smiled back, knowing that Eilidh couldn’t see it, yet she would see her entirely anyway. The woman had a mastery of her psionic gifts. Cleo, however, was still finding the ropes and her feet all at the same time. God she felt stupid even in the way she spoke… “Feelings and stuff”, she thought to herself, and Eilidh smirked from the other side of the table.

“You’re being hard on yourself again,” she remarked. Her senses keen. Little went undetected by her. She effortlessly slipped into Cleo’s mind like a whisper on the wind, no thought too quiet, no emotion too subtle.

Cleo shrugged, retreating to her mug of tea, letting her eyes trace their surroundings as she took a sip of the warm, honeyed liquid. A beautiful scene. A castle stood on the horizon, its ancient stones weathered and steadfast, a reminder of the past lingering in the present. It was like sitting in a postcard painting, untouched by modernity and were it not for the sudden sound of a car, or phone ringing that drew her back to the present - Cleo could have happily hidden away in the past.

Eilidh took a slow sip from her own cup, her gaze soft but attentive, always attuned to the subtle shifts in Cleo’s mood. “You’ve made incredible progress,” she said. “I’m almost to a point I can’t help you anymore,” there was some regret in her words. She’d grown fond of her student, afterall.

Cleo nodded, trying to accept Eilidh’s words - she trusted her more than just about anyone in her life. “I just…” she sighed, placing down her cup so she couldn’t retreat behind it - wanting to confront her confession. “The other day, I couldn’t… I couldn’t visualise a feeling. It was, heavy… Strong, I thought I was going to lose control,” she explained.

Eilidh didn’t flinch. Her eyes held Cleo’s in a way that was always grounding, as if her gaze alone could steady the storm. “It’ll happen,” she said, her voice calm as calm. “You’re a psionic, Cleo. Everything reacts to you, and you react to it.” She paused, letting her words settle like stones dropped into water. “I taught you those visualisations to guide you, to help you recognise the shape of your power.” She exhaled, smiling in Cleo’s direction. “Just remember that you’re not bound by them. Emotions aren’t… Something to be controlled. Sometimes, you just need to let it flow, they need to be felt.”

The weight of Eilidh’s words lingered in the space between them, a truth Cleo wasn’t sure she was ready to fully grasp. But as the moment stretched, she felt something shift within her. “You’re right,” she said, her voice quiet but certain, as if she were tasting the truth for the first time.

Eilidh’s grin grew, playful but proud. “I know I am,” she said with a light chuckle. “Now,” she added, lifting her cup, “there’s not a problem in this world that a cup of tea can’t help with. Drink up, wee one.”

Cleo lifted her cup once more, the warmth of it seeping into her palms. The sun dipped lower know, painting the sky in a wonderful hue of lavender and orange and pink. A slow and dying light of the day, melting to shadow. For now, the tea was enough. The sun, the hills, Eilidh’s presence… These were enough. And in that quiet, fleeting moment, Cleo felt the edges of her doubt soften, just a little.

---

_{Location: Formal Homecoming - A.R.C., Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.086: Soliloquy

---

_{Interaction(s): --}

Previously: Happiness is a butterfly

This was not Edinburgh. This was not a quiet and calm cafe set aside a castle. This was not the time for tea and whimsy.

The ARC had fallen to chaos, and so quickly. The night had turned against them all.

Fear filled the air, thick and bitter like sulfur, clinging to Cleo's throat. Burning, turning every breath to ash. It tasted like scorched earth, like burnt toast, dry and acrid, with each gulp scraping sharp and jagged inside her chest. She had felt fear before, but nothing like this. It was to her as palpable as the ice now caging the building, cutting them off from any escape.

A creature had appeared from the roof, tall and statuesque - bringing calamity in its wake, its shadow flooding the hall before the form had even touched ground. The Chernobog, it called itself, in a voice so deep in its declaration that it rippled the very air and in turn snuffed it out. Echoing like a death knell across a once safe and joyous space. Ribbons of red streaked the walls and pooled at the feet of those who had been too brave or perhaps too foolish to stand in its way.

The perimeter of the ARC was now folded up into walls of ice, students trapped inside - Cleo couldn’t sense them there, the chill enveloped her as she stood at its center, frozen not just by the cold, but by the crushing weight of her inability to sense the others. Manny, Lucas. She couldn’t feel them through it all. Her heart drummed in her chest, their names on repeat the only rhythm she could find in the madness.

But there, beside her, someone still stood—Molly, the Pink Lady. Without thinking, Cleo’s hand reached for hers, pulling her close, shielding her as the next wave of violence seemed to crash down. “Stay behind me,” she managed, surprised at the strength in her own voice. She didn’t feel strong. Not now. Not with the Chernobog towering in the distance, tearing through the night with it’s evil intent and mythic scourge.

Even as it all seemed to grow into a crescendo, a new epicentre of danger formed. A woman, she saw her, drop to her knees. Around her, power gathered, thick and suffocating like storm clouds rolling in, like a swell about to burst. Cleo could feel it, the grief and the rage, a pit of loss so deep it had no bottom, pulling everything into its gravity.

The Chernobog was occupied. Cleo moved - knowing what she had to do. She just moved. She just moved. She just moved, unthinking, only feeling. She didn’t know this woman, she had heard the name “Amma” said, and “Amaranthe” too. Cleo just moved. She just felt. She just moved. Her palm shimmered with a wave of psionic energy that formed itself as a bubble - the size of a soccer ball. They floated, graceful and harmless, fragile against the immense darkness swirling around Amma. She sent them forward, watching as they flickered and disappeared, swallowed whole by the storm like ripples on an ocean too vast to calm.

She thought of Eilidh then. The lessons, the hours spent practicing control. These bubbles were only a tool to recognise, not to control. She had to try something else. She had to break through.

Dropping to the floor, Cleo placed her palms flat against the cold ground. She just moved. She just moved. She just felt. She felt the vibration, faint, but there. Pulsing through the floor, away from where she crouched. It took everything to reach that stillness inside her own mind, to quiet the storm within her long enough to feel. Let it flow. Eilidh's voice echoed in her mind again.

She reached out, deeper, through the floor, through the cold, through the chaos. The energy was there, coating her like an aura, and in the storm that surrounded Amma, she could feel the girl within. A child. Small, broken, drowning in shadows. But there was something else—something beneath the darkness, quiet as a whisper. A melody.

Cleo pressed toward it, her own calm swelling, and as she did, she heard it more clearly. The melody was soft and stirring, woven from love. Fragile but constant, flickering through the darkness. It had always been there, waiting to be found. She pressed harder, pushing back beyond rage, beyond grief. She just moved. She just felt. She pushed, letting the melody grow louder yet in Amma’s heart.

It had to be enough.

[Skai]

---

_{Location: Senior Dance, ARC Center - PRCU}

Dance Monkey: #4.087 Dive For You

---

_{Interaction(s): Jim O’Neil, Chernobog @Lord Wraith}

Previously: A Cuckoo in the Nest

Haven trembled where she knelt on the blood soaked floor of the ARC center, staring at the pool of blood and entrails before her. Her baby hairs, once delicately curled, were now sticky and flattened against her brows and cheekbones. The tawny feathers adorning her back and wings weighed heavier than they had ever felt, soaked in scarlet blood.

Her heart felt even heavier. Heavy with the blood of Gil, heavy with the snapped bones of her lover, the bruised necks of Cassander and her sister, the soul torn asunder across the room now waging war with her many selves, Lucille Calder’s heart which continued to beat– She knew it was still beating, she saw it pumping the blood into her former teammate’s body. Even the shredded form of the woman who had plagued her nightmares since the trial added to the load.

Jim O’Neil knelt next to her now promising a path of escape. His vibrant power shielded her from the monster’s blood soaked talons, from a future of suffering, from being re-made into Daedalus’s creation. The Chancellor promised that Rory was safe now. That if she could only will her body to follow him, she would allow Luce and Alyssa Townsend to hold the beast back until she was out of his grasp.

Was it worth the risk to their lives, too?

Was her life worth more pain and suffering?

The anger that fueled her ceaseless will to defy the cruel and twisted fate that was placed upon Haven burnt bright for one moment…

…until it too was weighed down and snuffed out by the despair in her heart.

She turned her head to look at O’Neil, imagining the ways the monster would tear him apart in front of her as she looked between his steady eyes.

“Get the others out.” She began, her voice strong but shaking with the weight of her decision. “Rory’s going to die if he doesn’t get somewhere safe.”

She was already slipping her feet out of her heels, her hands pressing into the blood of a friend as she pushed herself to her feet and looked through the purple shield at the fight happening for her sake. Her voice was softer now as she spoke again. “Tell him I’m sorry. I have to stop this before someone else gets hurt.”

Before her trembling legs could fail her, Haven slipped out of Jim’s reach and past his shield into the fray. She held her wings and chin high despite the utter defeat she felt in her soul.

“Take me and end this.” The tear running a line through the blood on her cheek betrayed her fear. “Please, no more suffering.”

Because she wasn’t sure if her heart could take anymore. She wasn’t sure if she could continue living, knowing that she could have prevented this if she’d just given in when the monster first extended its hand towards her. If she hadn’t let her closest friends act for her.

Somewhere within her fractured resolve, a smoking ember still hoped that this would provide an opening for someone to end the monster while it was distracted.

[Qia]

^{_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.088: Alone

^{_{___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): Haven @Skai}

Previously: In the Eye of the Beast

Harper's breath rasped in uneven, shallow gasps as she slammed into the blood-soaked floor, her body flung like a lifeless doll by the force of Amma’s blow. Every ounce of air she had left in her lungs was knocked out of her, leaving a terrible, hollow ache in its place. Her throat burned, raw and bruised, each attempt to draw in oxygen feeling like shards of glass scraping down her windpipe. She coughed weakly, her hand flying instinctively to her neck as if she could massage away the pain,calm the frantic drumming of her pulse that pounded like war drums beneath her skin. But the panic was there, clawing at the edges of her mind, and no amount of soothing could quiet its relentless beat.

Everything around her blurred, reality dissolving into distorted shapes and muffled noises, like sinking into a cold, crushing abyss where the light could no longer reach. Amma’s screech tore through the fog, sharp and visceral, reverberating in her skull until her teeth ached from the intensity of it. The brunette’s vision wavered, catching the sight of dark, scarlet tendrils unfurling from Amma’s chest like something twisted and ancient, summoned from a place where nightmares were born. The very air around her thickened, heavy with the other girl’s anguish, carrying the scent of death, decay, and something far worse—a sense of hopelessness that suffocated everything in its path. Harper gagged on it, bile rising in her throat as her body trembled against the floor, too weak to move, too dazed to think clearly.

The phantom touch of Amma’s fingers still lingered on her skin. The memory of that crushing pressure, of being so close to the end, gripped her like a vice. Harper couldn't shake the feeling that oblivion had almost claimed her, that she’d been seconds away from slipping into nothingness. She felt like she was drowning in it now, her mind still trapped in the terror of those moments, unable to claw her way out. Her body shook violently, the adrenaline fading only to leave behind the sickening, unshakable truth that she had come terrifyingly close to death.

She blinked against the tears that stung her eyes, her vision swimming as she focused on Amma once more. Her teammate—her friend?—had collapsed in on herself, clawing at her own skin as if she could tear away the madness that had consumed her. The rawness of it, the rage, the torment—it clung to Amma like a dark shroud, suffocating her, pulling her under with every agonized scream. Harper wanted to speak, to say something, to reach through the darkness and pull Amma back, but her throat was too raw, her voice too broken, and her mind too fractured.

And beneath all that desire, that fierce need to help, was a single thought that chilled Harper to the bone: she didn’t want to die.

Her fingers curled into the blood-soaked ground, muscles shaking from the effort of just staying conscious. She couldn’t stand yet, not when her lungs felt like they were still burning from the inside out, every breath a shallow gasp. But even through her pain, Harper’s eyes caught movement, something small and desperate —Haven.

The sight of her sister, drenched in blood, with wings weighed down by the nightmare they had been dragged into, sent a surge of panic through Harper’s chest. Her vision flickered, her enhanced sight flashing in and out, amplifying every detail—the tremor of Haven’s hands, the slump of her shoulders, the way her feathers sagged under the load of her own despair.

Harper’s heart lurched, fear stabbing through her as she watched Haven move toward the towering creature, her every step filled with a false bravery that Harper could see through in an instant. She knew that look, knew what Haven was feeling—the crushing hopelessness, the urge to end the nightmare, even at the cost of herself. But it was more than that.

Beneath the brave facade, Haven was afraid. She was terrified, and that fear pierced through Harper’s own pain, spurring her forward even when her body screamed at her to stop.

Harper gritted her teeth, forcing herself to push up from the ground, her muscles quivering as pain radiated through every fibre of her being. Each breath was a fresh wave of agony, the bruises on her throat flaring with sharp, fiery pulses, but she couldn't let that stop her. She wouldn’t stop—no, she couldn’t. Her body betrayed her with every shaky step forward, her hand trembling as she stretched it out toward Haven, desperate to steady herself, desperate to reach her sister. She couldn’t let Haven do this—couldn’t watch her walk into destruction the way so many others had.

It couldn’t be like them.

The memories crashed over her, relentless and suffocating, the faces of those she’d lost flashing before her eyes, their absence still a raw wound she hadn’t allowed to heal.

She wasn’t sure she could survive it again. She would rather die herself.

She would rather die.

_{“L-Little Dove,”} her voice came out in a broken rasp, barely more than a breath. It hurt to speak, her throat burning with each syllable, but she needed to reach Haven. She needed her to hear, to know she wasn’t alone.

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I don't want to be alone.

[Lord Wraith]

^{________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.089: Down to Hell

^{_{____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): Amma Cahors - @Rockette, Luce Calder - @Roman, Haven Barnes - @Skai}

Previously: Move

”Why…can’t you just…fucking leave us alone?!”

Luce’s desperate defiance was lost on the emotionless monster currently leering over her. It neither possessed sympathy nor empathy. All humanity that its host had once possessed was stripped away entirely leaving only a weapon. Though it lacked the subtlety of its predecessor, the Chernobog was seemingly unstoppable.

“Leave you alone?” The Chernobog replied, almost indignant, “You opted to engage me, I didn’t instigate this bloodshed.” Raising a bloodied claw to its mouth, the creature’s long forked tongue flicked out, either side thirsty licking its finger before satisfying smacking its lips at Luce’s taste.

“I would dare say, this has been fun though.”

“Then why let the fun end?” A blinding explosion caused the Chernobog to shield its eyes, staggering backwards as Cassander rejoined the fray, moving between himself and Luce. The Chernobog roared in retaliation, moving to finish Cassander once and for all before a voice stopped it dead in its tracks.

“Take me and end this.” Haven cried, a tear running a line through the blood on her cheek. “Please, no more suffering.”

“Mother,” The Chernobog replied, kneeling to embrace Haven. Its arms wrapped around her like a pair of anacondas before it moved its massive hands to either side of her face and lifted her tear-filled eyes to face its own.

“It’s too late for that now.” He replied. His hands suddenly fell to Haven’s shoulders, reaching past and taking hold of her wings. A pair of sickening snaps echoed through the tense room. Haven dropped to the floor, her dress quickly turning from green to rust-stained as the Chernobog stood over her, a bloody, tattered wing clutched in either hand. Several feathers fluttered to the floor, sticking to the thick crimson spill beside Haven.

“Father only needs your blood.”

Sobs echoed all around the Chernobog as it stood before the massacre it had unleashed. Those not encased in ice were left maimed and beaten. The stench of blood and piss filled a room that previously had smelled like sex and candy.

“Robert,” Jim roared, appealing to the man instead of the beast, “Robert I need you to stop this.”

“There is no Robert left,” The shell of a man spat, “Only Chernobog. You couldn’t save Robert, anymore than you could save any of those who left. Those who never made it home.” A throaty chuckle followed the sinister tone.

“She cried for him, you know? Her lover, her last breath, barely a whimper by the end as Father took the last of her life,” The beast taunted, “‘Andrew!’ It was for ‘Andrew’, ‘Andrew, save me,’.” Each word was emphasized by a mist from the mutant’s cold breath escaping his mouth as if to drive the point home exactly who he was talking about.

“And then without another word, she was gone, soon to be forgotten. Just like you, just like our little Dove.”

Horror and guilt suddenly plagued the winded redhead as she moved a hand to wipe the sweat and blood from her brow. Alyssa hadn’t felt this powerless in a long time as she rested on her blade. She had been too slow to save Luce, too slow to save Haven. She couldn’t afford to hesitate any longer. Locking eyes with Luce, she looked for her approval, but with the pain, Luce’s eyes were fighting to simply stay open.

Her hand moved to the clutch, palmed the smooth stone etched with the Enochian character ‘van’. A parting gift from Ellara, a desperate ploy if they ever needed such. If the Chernobog was near invulnerable to conventional harm, then it was time to send it somewhere unconventional.

“Go to Sheol,”

With a flick of her wrist, Alyssa hurled the disk like stone through the air, the object sticking the Chernobog, transferring the rune to the beast. Pushing herself, Alyssa scrambled to Haven’s fallen form, tackling the girl out of the way as the Chernobog began to glow.

A sphere of energy burst forth from the rune before a vacuum began to consume the creature.

“No!” The Chernobog roared. The scraping of its claws against the floor assaulted the ears of those nearby as it struggled against the inevitable. Its eyes darted to Amma, and in one last desperate move, a hand wrapped around the young woman’s ankle, dragging her off of her feet and along with him.

It wasn’t enough, no matter the melody that hummed away within her heart, no matter the shimmering whisper of golden light that cracked and splintered through obsidian walls, the name spoken from the most profound void of self – it wasn’t enough. Amma screamed and sobbed as final tendrils of her power lifted and spun away from her trembling figure, as some whisked away and found themselves lingering as tendrils of warmth to the rest of her teammates, the last remaining pieces of Ammaranthe as she was and could ever be.

And then they were gone.

Silence fell over the room, just as suddenly as the Chernobog had crashed through the room, it had vanished into the vacuum created by Alyssa. But the damage had been done, and lives had been lost.

Today, Daedalus had won.

[webboysurf]

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_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.090: Anything but Blood

^{_{____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): Haven @Skai}

Previously: Aren't You Supposed to Burn if You're a Star?

Rory didn't remember falling. He didnt quite remember anything that was happening. Dancing, music... a date. Then a monster. Right. Monster. Plan. Amma. But it was so hard to think with all the screaming. Someone was screaming. Someone was hurt. The roof was torn up. He was cold. Everything was cold. No, something was hot. His leg. Who the hell was screaming?

Rory shifted his arms and back, trying to prop himself up to survey his surroundings. As he looked down at the warmth, it was hard to register what he was looking at. Those couldn't be his legs. Legs didn't bend like that.

He tried to move his legs. He watched his muscles attempt to contract. Pain shot through him like a freight train, so much that his chest seized and he couldn't make a sound.

The screaming stopped.

He was the one screaming.

Rory's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he fell onto his back, more pain shooting up his spine. He had difficulty processing the complex signals running through his nervous system. He didn't notice the red tendrils licking the ground around him. He didn't notice the steam and dust coming from the melted ice and rotted debris around him.

Blood pumped through his ears, dulling most of the noise. Rory rolled his head to the side, his tear-filled eyes only able to make out faint impressions of shapes. Red hair, a sword. Monster. Fighting. Purple. Wings. Gunshots. Dragon. Red. Reaper. Frost. Wings. Wings. Wings.

Breath caught in his throat as a small shift in weight sent streaks of pain through him. When his breath returned, a shrill cry of pain erupted from his lips.

Haven was standing. What was she doing? She was speaking. What was she saying? Why was she... there was so much blood. The assortment of body parts were nearly unrecognizable. Nearly. As Rory blinked away tears, he had an idea of who it was. He only hoped it was a copy, but it seemed too real for that.

He didn't have time to dwell on much, as his eyes clocked quick movement. Haven. She was moving towards the monster. He couldn't quite hear her words, but he knew what she was saying. Rory reached an arm out in her direction.

"No.... Haven..."

Rory tried to shift his weight around, only to yelp before involuntarily stopping. He could feel his mind growing fuzzy, his vision seeming to grow dimmer. He didn't have much left in the tank. He raised his voice. It was the most he could manage. He could only hope those beautiful ears caught them.

"I need you." Tears continued streaming down his cheeks, snot bubbling out of his nose. "I can't lose you. Not again."

And then, in an instant, he broke. Gripped wings. Blood. Her blood. Haven crumpled to the ground. The wings were still in its hands. Rory reached a hand out, only to feel more pain and for the world to swim around him. His hands scrambled along the ground, searching for purchase to pull himself in Haven's direction.

But he didn't even stay conscious long enough to see the monster and the dragon disappear.

[Festive]

---

_{Location: Senior Dance, ARC Center - PRCU}

Dance Monkey #4.091: Emergency

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_{Interaction(s): Cleo Boyd @spicykvnt}

Previously: Turn it off

One does not fear the wave until they feel the water hit.

Immanuel’s hands held a tight grip upon the porcelain before him, he felt the weight of the world sink his head beneath the water once again as it had reached its maximum. The music could not have been louder as it drowned out the thoughts in his brain and the rest of the planet at large. But there, within the consistent cacophony of all that exists bombarding his ears, there was something different. A noise that defied the expected nature one would expect from within a dance such as the one he endured in the present. One in which despite his experience he could not zero in on, a noise which encompassed what one would imagine from the likes of a bird but to a magnitude he could tell was much larger than the avian body.

He tried to push the noise away, to drown it out with the rest of the world, maybe the drinks had finally started to intoxicate his mind. Immanuel looked into the mirror once more, and with but a final pat down of his clothes and single buttoning upon his jacket, the man made his way back upon the dance floor. Once again taking in the force of the noise many human bodies can produce as he slithered his way back through the boisterous crowd of partygoers. Although the forefront of his mind was plagued with ever-present exhaustion the party burdened upon his psyche, the back far reaches of his consciousness could not drop the noise he heard while bunkered within the bathroom. It seemed to follow him, even as he made his way onto the fringes of the dance floor it was there, the initial low flapping of wings grew as what he could only interpret as it approaching the A.R.C. from whatever far bounds it took off from. It was too loud to match the likeness of anything he had heard in his time, and as those wings reached their peak above the A.R.C., Immanuel could only wonder, what the hell is that nois–

Before but a thought was given the freedom to fully form, his world had been shaken leaving his legs to stumble as a noise likened to a thunderous clap of lightning struck the building in which he stood. This time he was not the only one to be affected by such a noise, the deafening music had come to a stop along with the loud voices of the senior class as every eye was directed toward the noise. Immanuel's own eyes pinpointed the source as he watched as if the claws of a demon had ripped the metal walls of the building he occupied. His ears heard the pitiful cries of the steel wall screeching and squealing beneath the thing's grasp, this hiss of live wires severed and snapping of electrical currents going off followed in its wake. ”What the fuck!” The words dropped from his mouth almost instinctually in but a whisper. The fleeting moment of silence in the crowd was short-lived bliss as the screams of abject terror filled every facet of his mind and every corner of the A.R.C.

Cleo. Lucas. Fuck!

Immanuel planted his feet firmly upon the ground, his eyes bore witness to whatever satan spawn climbed noisily through the hole it created upon the bounds of the A.R.C. He watched as the thing blew its crackling breath upon the exits he yearned to approach. Although noise from the speakers that blew music but mere moments ago brought him to his knees, the shouting and screaming from all those he had previously witnessed having one of the best nights in their waking lives was a new beast that ravaged his ears.

Why must have God forsaken them?

Immanuel clenched the fist he held at his side into a ball, his cochlear hairs irritated at the sound of grinding enamel upon enamel as teeth grit at his redirection of focus. Immanuel’s mind had shifted away from only hearing in a radius around him to that of seeking the voice of those none other than his teammates. His mind searched and waded through the sea of screeching that passed into his ears for but a hint of their voices. Immanuel’s mind scoured for the loud candor Cleo wore every day, he searched for her benign cadence against the overpowering majority as he forced his way through the crowd, elbowing and shoving his way through the rushing mass of students in a vain attempt to find them using his eyes as well. Immanuel felt the ever-familiar threat upon his mind on the horizon as once again he tried his best to zero in on his teammates' voices. His ears filtered through dozens of shouting voices for that of Lucas’s rough, often confused-sounding cadence. Although his search stood as mighty in its effort the results it provided were less than of use to him.

The terror that filled his ears was too loud and to similar to search for them within. Although he could pick their voices out from betwixt the screams, he could not tell the difference between the bellows. He couldn’t seem to find a solid stream of thought as he pushed his way through to the table in which they had sat, finding naught but a scene surrounded by felled chairs and spilled cups. Immanuel stood trapped in the rushing wave of students attempting to travel away from the thing as he tried to push his way back into the eye of the storm. Immanuel was not going to leave a single one of them behind, even if it meant he had to push near that thing. While his eyes possessed the fortune of God to not lay witness to horrors spurred from the creature born of the womb of a devil, his ears were once again not afforded such a luxury. Utterances spouted from the maw of the creature were akin to esoteric shouts against his mind, as his body pushed against the flow of terrified students. The squelching sound of blood squirting free and the elastic snap of each muscle fiber tearing and snapping off a shattered bone only made his efforts into the crowd harsher and harsher in his advancement. With trembling hands, he made his way through the students, the effort to continue his ultimately futile advance propped up by the fact Lucas and Cleo could be among the ones trapped in the back. His footing while once strong in his stride slightly faltered as he heard the utter massacre ahead. Sound of bone crushing and collapsing beneath the skin, the muscle being ripped from muscle, the fibers snapping lose in exposed stumps where body parts once lay, the ripping of skin tearing as that monster eviscerated the people before it, the mortality beckoning sound of a heart beating out its last drum, and synapses snapping out their last thought as one’s life enters the great unknown marred his ears in a gutter symphony to an audience of but one.

Somewhere within the A.R.C. gunshots rang out, and the echo cast right into his ears as Immanuel felt a tremble in his knees. The same ears rang with a ferocity not yet seen, but yet he pushed on. His head burned with the pain like a bullet had hit him instead of what he assumed it had been aimed at. A fiery cast of embers seared his mind like a youngster had lit off a firework within it. And yet he grit his teeth and continued. Immanuel continued even through the exasperated scream that made his ears ring just a bit louder, he could feel the pain in the scream, and although he did not possess a set of powers like Cleo the sorrow still rang loud in the lamentation of the woman. But finally, even through the shilling sound of screeches ringing throughout the A.R.C., the brutality of whatever the thing was slaying his fellow man, and the ringing that plagued his ears. He caught it. Through the static he caught but a glimpse of Cleo’s voice seeping through the noise. It was low and lasted for but a second in the continuum of time, yet in that moment he caught the grasp that he was trudging in the right direction.

With a newfound pump of adrenaline right into his body, Immanuel pushed his body through the running mass. His hands shoved those preventing his advance in the direction in which they were going before he finally emerged from the mass on the other side. The sight before his eye was one he wished to burn from his memory, the butchery both his senses had experienced left a knot in his stomach more gut-wrenching than any other he had felt. His eyes were cursed with the sight of bloodshed and carnage left in the wake of the thing before him, and before the Gods had the chance to take his soul as well that night the creature was absorbed into a hole that burst forth behind it as well as a girl it had gripped onto in it’s exit.

Immanuel fully took in the scene of abject chaos before noticing that of Cleo off to the side of where he stood. In but a moment he ran to her side and crouched down right beside her, embracing Cleo into a hug as the adrenaline only slightly subsiding from his body now that he knew she was safe, but as for Lucas his mind still ran rampant searching for the boy as he looked around the scene. ”Oh God, Cleo, are you alright?” His words stumbled if only for but a second as he still attempted to portray the facade of strength he wore, the same facade that stopped Immanuel from giving the sign when he had felt overwhelmed before the bathroom, the same one that kept them exactly within this mess. ”Have you seen Lucas? I haven’t seen him… I didn’t hear him…” Immanuel released her from the embrace, stopping his slightly trembling hands. The words from his mouth were but a bit faster than his normal speech, a bit louder than how he usually was.

And as the whole room seemed to be laden with a cover of silence for the rest, the world had never stopped singing within his ears.

[Nemaisare]

---

_{Location: Formal Homecoming - A.R.C., Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.092: See No Evil

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_{Interaction(s): Cleo Boyd @spicykvnt}

Previously: Hawkward Memory

Hail? It started light, the way storms so often did, broken propellers and frozen drones eerily reminiscent of the little balls of ice bouncing, sharp and hard, off his skin when he looked up, frowning at a ceiling he couldn’t actually see. Hail was a rarer memory here than it had been back home, and not something you’d expect on a clear night without much wind.

But Lucas wasn’t the only one looking up when something heavier hit the roof. Wasn’t the only one dropping things and covering their ears when hail became thunder vibrating his bones. Wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe as that something forced its way inside, shoulders rounding into a hunched back bending under the weight tearing him wide into shapes he wasn’t meant to hold. Falling fast fragments of thought never finished with the roof pierced, punctured, and torn rending him out of every when into counting the seconds behind each impact of now now now. He staggered into a table and clung to its four-legged stability when the screams started before finding his breath and scrambling underneath it, pressing his face into his knees, curling up against the threat of scattering into pieces across the floor.

His ears were ringing. His head echoed, but fingers played across his back and smoothed fabric across flat wood. Plates slid between friends and glasses played Russian roulette between hands putting them down, picking them up, and coming back empty to lay warm weight into his shoulder as someone leaned in to look at the feathers.

He tried to stay there, holding his breath, terrified of everything just beyond the periphery where cloth curled over the edge obscuring a view he didn’t want to see, but someone jostled the table. Shaking that fragile security out of place in the moment and dropping him back to fast breaths and fear and he couldn’t look, couldn’t move, didn’t want to hear it, but broken glass sprayed light and dark reflections across the back of his eyelids, painting a hole in the sky and the shape that filled it, wings so wide they blocked the light.

It was inside.

There was no muffled quiet beyond his ears. Only shouts. Cracks. Cut-off screams. More thunder rolling through him. The floor shook as he slowly pulled his hands free from squishing his head back together, lowering them past his knees and down, hesitating, bracing before he set them, flat, fingers spread and fell past the dust and hair and seeping chill pressing into his palms, sinking into a thousand streams of instrumental chaos, chords and cacophony, strings and songs and sliding start and stop perfection dragging him deeper beneath the shouts and calls and shrieks and voices in sync in rambling in rivalry in play in panic in the solid shuddering support of bodies in action and inaction settling him between the cracks of every parcelled inch spread out under this disaster. And slowly, determinedly, he waded back up, through the slip and slide flatline rush of everything rearranged to perfection, flat floor raised one step, two step, three, then more, through the parade of industry setting down each weight four by four by four of chairs and tables on even ground and bursts of volume raised or lowered and splashes of light. The slow murmur of preparation building into the excited crescendo of lights on, music blasting, and feet on the floor until everything froze, a glass dropped, the illusion shattered.

He followed the outward ripple of surging, tumbling feet to a line of cold so deep it had to be ice. Found the weight of words as heavy as the one uttering them into a sudden still quiet that flickered in and out of reach with each explosive attempt to deny the demands. Lucas couldn’t see what was happening, but he felt it in every tense shift of steps forward or back, the low murmurs and the claws dragging across his skin, the movement of the crowd, the crumpling of warm bodies pooling blood over his fingers, the short shrieks and broken sobs and the knees digging into his spine. There were voices he knew and some he didn’t, words and names and sudden cracks in his head that made his breath hitch in and fall out on a whimper, but he didn’t stop chasing the next second as well as he could.

He knew these sensations. People were fighting.
People were dying. He knew those, too.

He couldn’t look. Didn’t want to watch, but he needed to know. Needed to listen through the disaster if he couldn’t do anything else. Until he found one pair of hands that didn’t whisk away as he reached for them, pressed flat on the edge of a scream where poison-bright worms of light writhed into the empty spaces of his mind, devouring the echoes of that long wail and his thoughts with them before he pulled back. The hands alone he might not have recognised, but the power, he did. A sparkling mist of light and feeling narrowed into focus. He’d felt that before. And he hummed as he finally found something he could do. His hands could not reach hers; he couldn’t pull her down to join him safe beneath the floor, but she was trying to do something, trying to reach something, and that Lucas could help with. So, he did. With an odd, incongruent glee that wrapped around her. Found.

He sank into older memories of quiet where it was easier to move. Where it was easier to focus. To reach inside and out. Where nothing pushed back when they moved forward until they were in the eye of the storm surrounding the figure she wanted to reach. He felt her grasp solidify as his own frayed under that renewed barrage of erasure, lights prickling in the back of his mind, broken screams still ringing in his ears as red and silver flashed behind his eyelids. It felt like forever before he pushed through and past and time moved on as the storm lifted and so did she, her feet whisked away with the same rush of wind that dragged at the giant and Lucas winced more at the claws gouging long furrows through him than he did at the final roar of a beast denied.

He waited then, holding his breath in the sudden quiet as the wind vanished, as the screaming faded, as cool air slowly wafted into the empty space, seeking the warmth of those hands, feeling the bodies pressed together, listening to the gasps and choked sobs and broken exclamations hoping to hear the voice that was missing. His fingers curling hard against the floor until he found them, small against the whole, still where he’d felt them last, and Manny’s voice, too.

“Lucas, yeah, okay. I’m here.” He breathed the words… Rocking into his relief, one hand and then the other lifting to muffle the world again. He was safe. She was safe. They were safe, right? It was finished? The screaming wouldn’t stop.

[spicykvnt]

---

_{Location: Formal Homecoming - A.R.C., Pacific Royal Campus}

Dance Monkey #4.093: I Know the End

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_{Interaction(s): Manny Blaylock @Festive & Lucas Bray @Nemaisare--}

Previously: Soliloquy

The force of emotions hit Cleo like a kick in the chest. A murder of crows that burst forth from the tempest, each one carrying a shard of torment—hopelessness, grief, anger, rage, despair. Despite the song that wove itself through the storm of emotion, threading hope; it could not mask the presence that was about to be felt.

A darkness. Cleo could feel it pulling her in, its gravity stronger than anything she'd ever known. A storm of emotional transference that carved through her psionic energy and gave an unwanted glimpse of a place where even chaos dared not dwell. It was still. It was quiet. And it was endless. Death's cold grip, opening the door. It pulled her further, stretching her connection to the breaking point. She reached out, trying to hold on, manipulating the energy as best she could against the current, but it was too much. She was severed from Amma—violently, cleanly, and too suddenly to stop it.

Her chest heaved with the shock of it and she was back in the ARC, the floor beneath her knees, but her mind still swam in the ink black darkness of what had been felt. Cleo froze, her entire being trembling with the weight of it. The connection had slipped, had broken, and now everything bled into her at once—Amma’s grief, her rage, the darkness, and then the screaming silence. It rushed through Cleo. She could still feel it, a yawning chasm with an indescribable hunger.

And then—nothing.

Suddenly, arms wrapped around her; strong, pulling her away from it all. Manny. His presence was an anchor. She clung to him and her bloodied and gloved hands gripped at his jacket. Her touch cloying, as if she feared he would disappear and in his absence the terror would come back.

Manny’s steady voice was a lifeline, his concern pulling her away from the brink, into the here and now. Cleo nodded, shook her head, then nodded again. Uncertain. Her thoughts still caught somewhere between the horror she had touched and her friend holding her. She pulled away, slowly, her hands moving to her chest; rubbing over her heart, trying to calm the frantic rhythm, trying to ground herself. Over and over, her hand moved in the shape of their signal. Over and over and over.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice small, lost. She looked up at him - and then to Lucas. Her pupils were wide, swallowing the colour of her eyes, reflecting back the same emptiness she had just herself seen. She didn’t even know who she was apologising to. To Manny? To Lucas? To Amma? To herself?

“I really did try…”

[Lord Wraith]

If the scene following the Trial looked bad, then Jim was out of adjectives to describe the scene unfolding in the A.R.C. As the ice was thawed, the death toll rose and those with life threatening injuries grew to numbers that exceeded the facilities available on the campus grounds. Of the nearly hundred members of the graduating class, thirty percent were deceased and nearly all of the remaining seventy were injured in some capacity.

Not even during Hyperion’s reign of terror had P.R.C.U. seen such devastation. It was all Jim could do to keep moving, helping with the injured and keeping the living from going catatonic looking at the dead. Perhaps that’s why Jim didn’t realize that Torres had drawn her last breath in his arm. Perhaps that’s why Jim didn’t realize the sun was coming up when a hand was placed on his shoulder.

He certainly didn’t realize the handcuffs were on his wrists until he was escorted into the helicopter landed in the middle of campus, watching as his world grew smaller and smaller before it was gone.

^{_{__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

Kneeling beside a small gravestone, Miguel Ramos kissed the rose in his hand and placed it at the foot of the tomb stone. His head hung low, a whispered prayer coming from between his lips before he stood and stepped away.

“I’m sorry,” He stated, “I couldn’t be there,” His voice cracked.

“I didn’t save her.”

^{________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Pacific Royal Collegiate & University - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean}

Dance Monkey #4.094: What I've Done

^{_{____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: Down to Hell

“Effective immediately, Pacific Royal Collegiate & University along with its facilities are closed.” The voice boomed over the gathered student body. What used to fill the stadium had severely diminished in the last few months, and the senior class that was set to graduate this year further so following the Chernobog’s attack.

Immediately following the attack, Jim O’Neil had been removed from his position as Chancellor, with the Director of H.E.L.P., Winter Caspian momentarily stepping in to assume the role for the last week before the Alexandria Foundation had petitioned for P.R.C.U.'s immediate closure. Those in power were more than happy to help, especially the effort’s spearhead who was none other than Senator Garcia de León still mourning the loss of his daughter.

“Students will of course be offered a position at the Alexandria Foundation, and arrangements will be made to transport their belongings at their earliest convenience. Students who decline this offer will be responsible for finding their own arrangements. “ The speaker continued, his voice void of empathy, his body language clearly disgusted even having stepped foot on these ‘cursed’ grounds.

“I suggest you all decide quickly, this campus is now seized by the Canadian Government and a notice of seven days has been issued to residents to clear out. After this time, any lingering students will be seen as trespassing and will be subject to enforcement by local authorities.”

A murmur moved through the student body, anger rose in the din of voices before the speaker continued.

“Former Chancellor James O’Neil has been found guilty on numerous accounts of criminal neglect in his operation of this school and will be facing imprisonment due to lives lost under his command. A formal investigation has been launched into the senior staff as well, and there is an ongoing class action lawsuit launched by the parents of students who lost their lives during the event known as the ahem,” He paused, clearing his throat with a subtle roll of his eyes.

“The ‘Chernobog Attack.’” Allowing the words a moment to sink in, he turned his page over and continued to read. “These factors have left the government with no choice but to intervene in what has now been dubbed a misguided social experiment. The Alexandria Foundation has also been denied control of the campus and its land due to being unable to produce a deed. With the deed signed by Dr. Jonas Lehrer absent, Dundas Islands and its subsidiaries revert back to the possession of the Canadian Government.”

“And what about the Alumni village and the homes there?” Aiden Roth’s voice could be heard above the angry voices.

“The Alumni Village will be evaluated for property and real estate value, taxes and land holder fees will be assessed and assigned to those who reside there. It will be absorbed as part of British Columbia and subjected to both provincial and municipal laws.”

“This is our home.”

“You can’t make us leave!”

“These students should be safe to finish their education here.”

“If these students were ‘safe’, none of this would be happening.” The speaker replied, slamming his hands down on the pedestal to bring about order to the assembly. “The issue is that Pacific Royal Collegiate & University is the largest gathering of Hyperhumans in the world in a known and static location. It draws attention of the worst kind to the young and vulnerable.”

“Yeah and the Alexandria Foundation doesn’t have that problem,” Another yelled sarcastically.

“The Alexandria Foundation has made promising improvements to their security and management in the past year that has the full support-”

“Bribed!”

“Full unbiased support of this council.” The speaker added. “There are consequences, and unfortunately this soil has seen a lot of spilled blood. It is the opinion of the council that even one named death should have been enough to close this school, now I am looking at a list that exceeds a single page, with more unconfirmed.” He shook his head.

“Change is difficult to accept, but this is for the better. The world is improving, you do not need the safety of this island.”

At that comment, the crowd exploded. Security swarmed to the representative as they escorted him from the stadium and left the student body to unpack the news.

^{_{__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

Upon returning to their dorms, students would quickly find notices to vacate the premises. Eviction was plastered all over their dorms. A sense of utter hopelessness filled what was lift of the dwindling student body while recruiters from the Foundation set up stations in every hallway, tempting passersby to the rival school.

“Find your identity today with the Alexandria Foundation’s Institute!” They called, displaying the Institute's flotilla style school. Pictures of the Foundation Force were interspersed as ‘inspiration’ and examples of the school’s elite alumni.

“You could be the next Hyperman or Miragal!” The video cheerfully exclaimed.

“Let's hope you’re not the next Triton,” A murmur replied drawing a sharp glance from the recruiter. Hushed agreement filled the hallway as students came and went, some immediately leaving, returning to homes they had waiting, while others paced back and forth on cell phones, before reluctantly signing for the Foundation with nowhere else left to go.

And slowly, P.R.C.U. became a ghost town.

^{_{__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

“Y’all sure keep strange company,” Jim proclaimed as the door opened to reveal Summer Carlyle first followed by none other than Yoshi Nakamura. The interrogation room was small, further emphasized by the pounding wall of sea outside the glass looking out into the depths of the Atlantic.

“Miss Carlyle has her uses.” Nakamura replied before motioning towards her handcuffs, “But I assure you she is still very much a prisoner here.”

The black eye covering one half of Jim’s face throbbing as blood from his split lip pooled against his lower teeth.

“I take it this is the hard way then?” He replied.

“Unfortunately so,” Nakamura responded before taking a seat beside Summer.

“Now where is the deed to Pacific Royal Collegiate and University?”

“Go to hell.”

“Miss Carlyle?” Nakamure asked as Summer’s eyes began to glow, “Proceed.”

Even Jim’s resolve was not enough to stop the scream that followed.

^{_{__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

In the Northern Forest beneath a pile of leaves laid a body undiscovered by neither the Hunter nor the concerned family. The student had wandered too far, mistaken for having left the island and so one came further looking for them. A discarded mask and shredded black robes lay on the ground beside her, a bag spilled open to reveal a student card before the body suddenly jerked upright. Limbs previously caught in rigour mortis snapped and popped as new life poured through the empty vessel.

Blackened eyes looked around the dark woods as she shielded her new face from sunlight before standing. The smells, the sounds, the sights, the vessel was weak and required sustenance, or else it would burn out too quickly.

Rolling their head, several cracks could be heard from the neck of their new body, before they looked around eagerly licking their canines, a single utterance escaping from between pursed lips.

“I wonder if mundanes are still just as delicious.”

[Lord Wraith]

^{________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.001: Before You Go

^{_{____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: What I've Done

The week had flown by and what was left of both Blackjack and Eclipse sat gathered on the beach, watching the ebb and flow of the tide while the flickering flames of the campfire danced about in the darkness. This was the end of their time at Pacific Royal and the mood was heavy, Drinks and snacks alike sat untouched as each member of the group stared at their feet, counting the grains of sand that laid between them.

Just a month ago, Blackjack had been a full team of twelve. But now, even with the last three members of Eclipse joining them they were only eleven. Pallyx had been revealed to be an imposter, Calliope was dead, Mei was gone and no one had seen or heard from Katja since the dance.

Worst of all, Amma had been dragged into the abyss, gone, presumably dead or worse, going down with whatever the hell it was that had attacked them. They had no answers, they had no resolutions. This Daedalus wasn’t caught and instead it had been Jim who had been taken away in cuffs.

A decision laid before each of them, go home or go to the Foundation’s Institute. It wasn’t a decision to be made lightly but also it wasn’t a decision that was easy to make for those among them who didn’t have a home to return to. No matter, they couldn’t stay on the Island, not without being able to afford a house within the Alumni Village.

For sale signs had already been posted in front of the homes of those who couldn’t find work, while mainlanders had already been visiting hoping for cheap real-estate on the ‘island of freaks’. The campus had already begun to be blocked off, with temporary fences erected along the main pathways while the A.R.C. sat in the same dilapidated condition that the Chernobog left it in.

After tonight the dorms would be sealed and in the morning the ferry would leave one last time. It was sobering and depressing and the heavy mood hung like a weight over the group. A stifled sob echoed out over the beach while gloomy music played gently in the background, barely audible above the waves.

Tear filled eyes desperately searched one another waiting for someone to be the first to break the trepid silence.

[Rockette]

_{Location: Pacific Royal Collegiate & University - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean.}

Human #5.002: her remains.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): &}

Previously: &

When Scylla Fluerane had returned to the Gulo Dorms after an unsuccessful convincing of her peers to attend The Foundation with her (for where else could a bastard child such as she return to when all record had been shorn and torn and lent to fire by her father), she had been met with objection and garish yellow tape spun and crisscrossed over the grounds, a smattering of security personal in place that had effectively turned her and many others away, their belongings scattered and haphazardly obtained with a pending investigation over obliterated windows and the entryway shattered from what she could glimpse by pressing inward, struggling, pleading to at least walk through the halls one last time. Six years on the island that she called home destroyed and left for naught, oppression felt in tangible waves as she clutched a flier betwixt her trembling fists and fought against the encroaching loneliness that threatened to take her under.

How did she do it? She pondered, that hated blue-eyed woman who once looked upon Scylla and scoffed, laughed, and tore into her friends when they attempted to befriend her with hateful words curled into French notations. The waspish woman that laughed bitterly into the encroaching dawn when she had been introduced to the dorm, something feral and edged in brutality that garbed her as unworthy to don the Wolverine of their house, that shield undeserving for her graces when she had strutted about the campus in mocking ochre embellishments against those tattoos and scars. That same woman assigned to such an infamous team that the campus was often swept up with, various inquiries regarding what exactly happened left unspoken, and prying eyes and proposed theories hushed or ignored. Scylla wondered how someone so involved could be so alone; every morning and evening met with silence in the last year she had attended, and every passing month more profound until the day she first saw her with such a sad smile.

Stories circulated, and implications sired among them, the transfer student, the looming Foundation heralded on lithesome shoulders and sheared through eyes that Scylla could still feel from when she last spoke to her, their weight so keenly felt, after the trials when she simply asked her if she was okay. (Ryan had designated her to assist in gathering some of her belongings, and had also been tasked with gathering sentiments for families who lost a beloved child in the most recent attack) The haunted look, the despair that feathered around her as horrid shadows of malcontent. Such madness loomed behind blue eyes as a glowing hellfire of demented retribution: she had heard the stories, everyone had in some shape or form of grandeur, but she had seen the truth lain bare that day and the following days with whispers abound. Uttered occurrences of her involvement with her teammates, descension from the most critically acclaimed blackening of her name that some cursed:

I heard she slept with Lorcán Roth and Gil Galahad.
I heard she stepped out right before the Trials late at night; who’s to say she wasn’t a part of that too?
I heard she attacked the hospital staff, and they had to chain her to the bed.
I heard she attacked some of her own teammates!
I heard that the gargoyle came for her and –

Chernobog!

Good riddance! Ever since she came here, everything has gone wrong!

I heard she stole –

I heard she killed –

They say that –

They say she was dragged into Hell.

-Maybe that’s where she belongs.

The rumors and stories had been vicious, but Scylla had seen her on the dancefloor, the way she danced so carefree, wild- so unbothered, and just as she was in that moment: a girl who was simply enjoying life as it was given and taken under moonlight. She had seen her in the arms of Gil (and who didn’t notice him! A celebrity in their midst.), and though she had left early, trapped with some others in caves of frigid ice mere seconds later - she rubbed against the still healing cuts and bruises on her arms - she had seen and felt the crimson waves of wrath and ruin.

She had heard the screams.

No one deserved such a fate.

In the final afternoon that she would spend on the island, Scylla and a few others had been permitted to look through the Gulo Dorms one last time to gather possessions that may have been left behind, and what greeted them was an eerily carved path of destruction through the commons and then above, a clear and designated path of something that reached the third floor, and there she stood with a gasp, palm against the heated breath that she fought to control as she looked upon the remains of Amma Cahors' dorm, eyes rounded out in shock.

The door had been left as nothing but splinters and massive spires of wood lain as spikes littering the carpeted floor. A scrawling of various slurs and profanity had been marked into the walls, scrawled in ink both black and red, lines gouged into the paint to lay blame as a memorial of a cursed wrong and death. People needed someone to blame, and what better method than that girl who walked through life as the harbinger of rage and darkness, as an in-between creature of this woeful life adorned with her agony of fate undone? Scylla fought around the terrible shudder that worked through her nerves; the gruesome defilement of her room was an omen to be sure.

The world is never fair for the different, for the misunderstood. For simply being not-as-we-should.

“That’s fucked,” someone whispered, voice lowered as if afraid to speak aloud, the yawning pit of the shadows that lurked yonder torn and smashed remains seeming to writhe despite the filtering of sunlight through shades torn askew.

“Why would they do such a thing?” Scylla breathed, arms folded around her middle as she stood in the ruined doorway. “She’s dead; can she not rest in peace?”

“People are scared, Scy. Sometimes, it’s easier to take it out on… Well. It’s just easier.”

“They never found a body,” someone else muttered, and Scylla shuddered at the mere though of it. Maybe she was really dragged off to Hell with that thing?

“It doesn’t matter,” Stephen Anderson proclaimed, a Gulo senior who found the sentiment in wandering these halls one last time a balm to the uncertainty of the future ahead. “This is still our House, and someone, many probably, broke in and decided to do something so hateful.”

“It’s not really our House any –”

“Then leave!” Stephen snapped, “Enough is going on here that I doubt anyone would notice you gone anyway.”

“Steph, I didn’t mean–”

Scylla allowed their arguing to fade off, stepping into the destroyed room on whispered steps; the immediate entry suddenly hushed and stilled, as if stepping into Amma Cahors' old room was detached from the reality in which they floundered. Everything within had been shattered or toppled over: drawers ripped open, bedding torn and shredded, a vase of dead flowers thrown and cracked into glittering splinters. All of her possessions had been taken, nothing left in memory of the raven-haired woman and the walls here too defiled and marked, crude illustrations of what appeared as a scaled beast on one side, blackened lines viciously drawn on the other, pools of red left to stain the carpet, still wet and gleaming under the hazed rays of the sun. She shook with the wrongness of it all, the barbarism, the –

Something shifted in the darkest corner.

A writhing and coiling swatch of darkness, of shadows, something black that festered and oozed as a void of nothingness that all manner of light could not penetrate nor touch as it lay there winking in and out of existence, to and fro, as if struggling to remain as it was with sobbing wet edges that bled into reality.

“Scy –”

“Do you see that?”

“What -” Stephen came up beside her, stilling at the pulsating mass, shuddering under the weight of the unseen, a sickly sound of boiling manifest, a squelch of liquid matter that writhed and rose, a gaping maw of a fiendish appetite that yawned forth and suddenly wailed with its appetence. A screeching horror that sounded like the symphony of the lost and the forsaken, eerily reminiscent of the screaming they had heard just a few nights before. Scylla immediately fell to her knees, palms held against the assault on her very senses, ears ringing, bleeding, torn asunder as the shattering cries continued, tumbling over one after the other as a cacophony of deafening hate and ruin. It sluiced forward, crawled, webs of ink peeling forth on membrane-like creation that thinned and snapped and bled, and Scylla looked upon it with desperate fear until hands grasped her shoulders and hauled her back, every inch gained only so much and paling in comparison for the thing that writhed and tried to reach her, inches away from her sneaker-clad foot as she scrambled back and back and back, palms slid and slick with red as she slipped and fell, once, twice.

And then there, a wink of gold, a spark of crimson, something small left alone and forgotten just underneath a shattered bed.

“Scylla!”

She lunged for it, clutching it preciously within her grasp before she scrambled back and ran. The alienated knell of decay and rot was hot and heavy on her heels as they rushed outside the dorms, the world eerily silent and beholden to what they had just witnessed that failed to follow them out into the sun, unable to form it into words or reason as Scylla held out her trembling hand. Her palm cradled around twisted bronze and golds, a malformed design, an all-seeing globe, and the precious red jewel set there.

The only possession known to remain of Amma Cahors–her mother’s ring.

[Festive]

---

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.003: Hard Times

---

_{Interaction(s): Nil}

Previously: Emergency

The pen saddled midst the creases of his digits waned ‘neath forced vested onto it as Immanuel scratched in a script but nearly only he could see as legible in the leather bound book before him. The book was one where years traveling in the possession filled trash bags from hell-hole to hell-hole and under the stress of writing upon non-solid surfaces had shown prominently upon distressed leather. Streaks of discolored patches lined across the binding of the notebook akin to scars across one's skin, and cracks ripped across the spine where haphazardly covered with a strip of tape through Immanuel’s hasty repairs in the past. The thick pages laced with the memories of bygone days, pages parted with the plastic squares of photos from days past, and the old crumpled papers of forlorn poems wrought with the remnants of a distrust enveloped soul of a self that partially remained in the man who sat today upon the shores of the island.

Not a word had been spoken, not a thought had been whispered from the lips upon his face as his eyes stood in a trance with the words of slightly smudged ink upon the old pages. From the moment the Eclipse made their appearance upon dreary shores for but their last hours upon the island, Immanuel had sought the lonely solace he had placed into the book from its years in his possession. Past the unsteadiness and the scribble of signs barely registered as handwriting was all that his mind had stored behind the lock-down he had equipped in the depths of his consciousness. The words flew freely from ball-point as if they were spoken from his own lips. A literary manifestation of all those thoughts he had held from all but himself, the feelings he had shut out the others from watching him go through. The pages within such a book abound the tears many a foster parents had shut down with being an action unbefitting of a man.

As his pen slid across the page so did that of his thought slide from the fringes of his mind, even as his ears stood blasted with the force of the fire crackling before him, soft grinding of the sand beneath the shifting bodies of all those around, and even choked cries of the remaining populace, the sounds of the week prior had never left his mind. Upon the forefront of all that was thought by the mind of Immanuel Blaylock was the ever-constant reminder of the poor soul whose body was ripped asunder by the likes of the monster that had been but the fine straw that brought the school to ruin. Through all the noise his mind harped upon and that threatened his mind liken to a predator on the prowl, was that of the tearing of flesh. Was that of one’s tendons being stretched to the maximum and snapped like a rubber band between one's parting fingers. Was that of the squirting of blood sputtering out of veins once hidden beneath the safe haven of skin. Was that the squishing and splattering of viscera upon the floor. Although all these sounds plagued and ravaged his mind like no other sound that he had recognized entered his ear, the unforgettable sound of the heart's droning drum beating out its final symphony of life, the fadeout of what one was and would ever be in but a single moment. But a sound left a brand upon his brain matter, hot and fresh despite the time that had flown by in but a blink.

Upon the new page he had flipped to after filling the previous one with his rambling stream of thought, all Immanuel could jot down for the week of his life lost to catatonia and auto-pilot was, I should’ve used the symbol earlier. Past the words that assaulted his mind flashed the wide-eyed face of Cleo, whose hands had shaken widely as she signed the symbol across her chest as a desperate sign to leave. The loss in her quiet tone, heard above all others as she stood before her in that moment, spread across his mind and tightened the knot he had held within his gut. The image of that of Lucas’s flashed from the archives of his memory, the look upon his compatriots' face was on that, in a much similar vein to that of Cleo’s, was stuck to him. He could only imagine the newfound memories attached to such a place that Lucas had replayed out within the expanse of his mind all over again. Immanuel was supposed to be the one who led them through this final school year, the one that kept the three together through the tribulations of each other member dropping out like flies. But in the end, all that Immanuel caused for the two he considered his closest friends and final groupmates, was a night which shall never leave their minds for as long as they continue to walk upon this plane of existence.

Before the words within his mind had the chance to fully form a sentence upon the paper, the cheap plastic pen held finally snapped in beneath the pressure he forced upon it. With a crack, the pen lay upon the sand surface beside him three distinct pieces which he scooped within an empty pocket laden on the side of the bookback sat beside him. From the nether regions of his pants pocket, Immanuel revealed a set of string photos from the photo booth a week prior. The plastic was crumpled and folded in its structure but the joy upon their faces still stood evident through the marring. Immanuel dropped the strip within the page of the notebook in which his writing was ended before shutting the book and rebinding the locking strap for its last time upon Dundas Island.

As he stuffed the book away within the space of his back, Immanuel turned back those he had spent his time at what once was this school alongside. People of memory he shan't forget. And in but a whisper he uttered,

”I think… I think I miss my home.”

[Zoldyck]

^{________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.004: Promises Made

^{_{____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s):}

Previously: Abyss

There was a break in the clouds, as strong winds carried them away from the island and towards the mainland. A seagull brazenly flew against the wind, struggling with each beat of its wings against the power of mother nature. It had been doing this for a while now, peering down into the ocean to spot any possible prize waiting to be claimed. A security drone, set on an automated patrol path, nearly collided with the animal. The drone paid no mind to the gull, which evaded the bothersome machine at the last possible moment before turning its attention back to its hunt.

Observing the bird like that, one would almost be jealous of it. How simple its life must be. No need to worry about terrorists, conflicting loyalties or homicidal freaks. The only thing on your mind being base needs. And, apparently, the occasional mechanized interloper.

Gazing up at the struggling animal was Katja. She stood waist deep in the water, immovable like a wave breaker as the waves crashed into her. She had been standing here for what could have been hours or only a handful of minutes, she honestly didn’t know. Nor did she care. Nor did it alarm her that her clothes were drenched by the sea water, possibly ruined forever. It was because she wore her school uniform. It’s not like she was going to need it anymore anyway.

She had bandages wrapped around her fists, stained red from wounds incurred earlier in the day. Over time they had absorbed the salty sea water, resulting in an ever present burning sensation in her hands. Katja tried focusing on that pain, trying to find some distraction, any distraction from the turmoil that was waging inside her.

If only she had been there, Katja thought.

It would have been different if she had been there.

Katja had been in bed when she got the news. She had been feeling sick for a while. Whether it was due to an actual illness or her mental state she did not dare to say. Though if she had to wager, it was probably the latter. The whole business with Haven had left her rattled. She was sure some, like Harper or Rory, were going to want to ask questions about how she had known Haven’s location. To be fair, it had been a guess, she had nothing to do with Haven’s kidnapping. But that she knew of a former Children of Hyperion hideout would have raised red flags for even the most dense individual.

So, with her constant worrying about not just being exposed, but rejected by those she cherished the most, Katja chose self isolation. And honestly, she wasn’t looking forward to the dance regardless, so it worked out as a nice excuse.

That was until news of the attack reached her.

All of the self pity, the doubt and the concerns melted away like snow before the sun. Instead she felt like she had to get out there to see if everyone was alright, if she could lend a hand. But more news started to trickle in before she had even been able to get dressed. Dark tidings of chaos and carnage. Many of her class had seemingly lost their lives, but one name was repeated in particular. The name of one of the most gossiped about students in all of PRCU. The one they feared. The one they scorned. The one they envied.

The one she had befriended. The one she still felt for.

Amma.

Everything after that was a blur to her. The only things she managed to recall was because her dorm served as a constant reminder. She must have fallen into an uncontrollable rage as she had torn down everything in her own room. Her fellow roommates had quickly evacuated the dorm, trying to avoid any potential harm.

The only clear memory Katja still had was of her staring at herself in the mirror. She recalled exactly how she looked. Her hair was a tangled mess, tears were streaming down her face, her breathing irregular and heavy. What she saw in that reflection disgusted her. There, looking back at her, stood a weakling. One who supposedly prided herself on her strength and her sense of camaraderie. What a pitiful sight she was now. What Katja was looking at was nothing more than a coward. A coward and a liar. She could not bear the sight of herself, feeling her rage surge back again. And before she knew it she punched the mirror. Once. Twice. Thrice. Cutting open her fists on the razor sharp shards that were left. All to get rid of the sickening image.

If only she had been stronger. If only she had been there.

Katja was brought back to the present by the pricking feeling of tears welling up in the corner of her eyes. This had been happening a lot lately, a feeling that had felt alien to her only mere weeks before. Now, she was becoming used to it far too quickly for her liking. Even so, she did not fight it. If anyone considered it a sign of weakness, then so be it, she had already proven herself to be a weakling. But if there ever was a time to let the tears flow, now was the time. For Amma.

A sad smile formed on the large girl’s lips as she recalled that first day back after summer break. It was on this very beach that Amma had been the first of Blackjack that Katja reunited with. A soft chuckle escaped her lips as she recalled the bearhug she gave the raven haired girl. She remembered being enamored by that awesome power of hers and how much it stung to be hit by those tendrils of raw destructive power the day after. The irony wasn’t lost on Katja that Amma seemed to constantly be the reason for tears to stream down her cheeks, as she laughed a soft, mirthless laugh.

Katja lowered her eyes, looking out into the horizon. Another wave hit the girl, unyielding to the force of nature. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Amma back in the gardens around the medical ward. She embraced herself, placing her hands down on those very shoulders Amma had permanently marked.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep to my end of the deal, Am.”

She spoke in a soft, hushed voice. The sound only barely carried over the waves of the turbulent Pacific Ocean. She kept her eyes fixed on that far off horizon. Its vastness stretched on, seemingly endless. As if it were the edge of the world.

“Wherever you are, I’ll make it up to you.” She spoke louder now, no longer a faint shaky voice but one filled with determination. Katja lowered her arms, the waves gently touching her injured hands again. She turned around, breaking her gaze over the horizon only at the last moment before making her way back up the beach.

“I’ll make sure you won’t be lonely for long.” She continued, seemingly to herself as her feet walked on dry land once more. Her kilt, drenched in the ocean’s water, clung to her legs as it dripped profusely. Katja barely noticed it. If anything, it’d mask the tiny droplets that fell from up higher. Those that had been streaming down her cheeks for a while now.

A light in the corner of her eye then caught her attention. A campfire blazed fiercely at almost the exact same spot as it did at the start of the year. And surrounding it were faces that Katja had been avoiding for far too long. Fate was here to seemingly force her hand. Enough running. Enough cowardice. It was time to rejoin Blackjack, whatever that might entail down the line.

But as Katja set her first tentative steps towards that familiar flame, she looked up to the sky one more time and uttered her final promise to her departed friend.

“We’ll meet each other in the afterlife soon, Am. And whether it’s HELP, the Foundation or God Himself, I’ll drag all those bastards responsible down with me!”

[Skai]

_{Two days after the Senior Dance... Infirmary, PRCU}

---

Something was missing, and Haven couldn’t remember what it was.

A steady beeping greeted her as the blanket of a deep slumber began to slip off of her. She felt the scratchy pillow beneath her face, the stiff gown against her skin, and the blanket that covered her back. No warm, firm body next to her. No scent of cucumber and cologne. She heard the gentle breathing of someone nearby, but it wasn’t Rory’s deep draws and soft snores. She didn’t recognize it.

Her throat was dry, almost raw against the stale air she inhaled. Her muscles felt burdened by exhaustion where she laid on her stomach. The pressure at the middle of her back had her brows furrowing together. She’d used her wings too much last night. The liquor had been a self-prescribed painkiller for her healing joints.

Shifting her body onto her side was an effort itself. She winced at the pain in her wing as she tucked it into her back to avoid crushing it beneath her. It felt like the joints had been dislocated all over again.

It was a slow and steady climb for her hands to slip out from under the pillow and rub her heavy eyelids. She sighed as she managed to peel them open, finding the figure at the chair beside the bed blurry and unfocused until she managed a single, slow blink. The sight of the figure before her cleared, revealing Harper with full lashes panned low where she sat slumped in the chair.

Sister.

What was she doing by Haven’s bedside? What had happened at the dance to put her in the infirmary again? Where was Rory?

The confusion in Haven’s expression slowly became more evident as her eyes scanned the dozing brunette. She noticed the dark bruises peeking out of a sweater on Harper’s neck. She saw the subtle sign of worry etched into the dark brows. It was strange that Harper was sitting where Rory should have been.

She listened to their shared heartbeats as she tried to remember. Distracted only for a moment as she realized how the rhythm of their hearts beat in sync.

Sister…

_{“L-Little Dove.”}

Her memories began crashing into her like birds into a glass pane.

"I need you."

The beeping of the monitor began to increase in tempo. She felt a weight settle onto her chest, pressing inwards, crushing her heart and lungs until she couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Mother.”

She heard the crack of Rory’s legs as they shattered and bent the wrong direction. She heard Amma’s shrieking fill the space with sizzling arcs of scarlet and black and silver. She remembered the sound of a body being torn apart above her. The horror she felt when she couldn’t determine if it was a clone or the real Gil.

Her heart rate reached a crescendo. Alarms blared from behind her that made her flinch and cover her ringing ears.

Only then did she feel the pressure of the blanket against her bare back. The place where feathers would have kissed her skin and kept it warm. The space where her wings should have been. Where they had graced her form ever since she was young. She still felt them, but they weren’t really there, were they?

A wave of misery and loss then consumed her as she relived the agony of her last conscious moment. The terror she felt as the monster held her in its arms. As it cradled her face like something precious before it inflicted the worst cruelty she had ever known upon her. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over.

It took her wings.

Clamped down on them with enough strength to fracture her bones, pulled them in opposite directions, luxated her joints, ripped flesh and cartilage and sinew, and took a piece of her soul with them. She had felt all of it all at once.

It took her wings. It took herwings.Ittookherwings. Her wings. Her wings. Her wings.

Broken. Destroyed.

She sat up in the bed hyperventilating. Disbelief crossed her features as she tore the wires and IV from her arms and chest in a frenzy and twisted her arms behind her back to feel them. They were still there in her heart and mind, and yet her fingertips brushed against smooth skin until they met the nubs that remained and the patch of feathers between them. The place where a gaping wound should have been was now covered in new, healed flesh. Tiny pin feathers already dotted them like new growth in a forest that had burned to the ground.

Gone.

A sorrowful wail filled the room then, leaking into the halls and scaring the other residents. Haven pulled her knees to her chest, her arms wrapping around them tightly. Anything to comfort her grief. She buried her face into the stiff blanket over them to block out the world, and began to mourn her beautiful wings for all that they meant to her...

...and for what little she was without them.

…

She stood in a long, narrow hallway, the walls suffocating her with dense, choking smoke that stung her eyes. Every blink sent wet, slick tears burning down her cheeks, relentless and hot. She tried to wipe them away, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, but it was useless. The more she tried, the more they poured, like a faucet that couldn’t be turned off. They carved down her neck, soaking into her collar, and she could feel the wetness pooling around her bare feet, like she was sinking into it.

Drip.

The sound was too loud in the thick silence, the only noise in a world that felt like it had shrunk to just this hallway. It stretched on forever, its oppressive quiet broken only by the squeak of her feet against the slick floorboards. Ahead, there was nothing but smoke and that faint glow of orange light spilling from beneath a door at the far end. It danced through the fog, beckoning her forward like a promise of escape, but something about it felt wrong—too bright, too unreachable. Still, she moved toward it, each step slow, dragging, her legs heavy as though the air itself resisted her.

Her breaths came in shallow, laboured gasps, the smoke filling her lungs like fire. Each inhale burned, her chest tightening with every second as the air thinned, constricting her throat, making it harder to breathe. She squinted through the blur, straining to make out the walls that lined the hallway, but all she saw were vague shapes lost in the murky gray. Picture frames hung along the walls—she knew they were important, memories maybe—but the details were lost, swallowed by the smoke. They were just dark patches now, filled with expressionless faces she couldn’t recognize.

The heat grew more intense the closer she got to the door. It wasn’t just hot—it was suffocating. The air thickened, pressing down on her from all sides. The liquid streaming from her eyes also slowed, becoming heavier, dragging down her cheeks with sluggish finality as it dripped off her chin and onto her chest.

Drop.

She reached out, her hand shaking somewhat as she brushed against the wall for support, but it was slick—wet with something that sent a shudder through her. She jerked her hand back, nausea twisting in her stomach, bile rising in her throat. She didn’t need to look. She knew what it was. She didn’t want to confirm it.

Just get to the door. Just get to the door.

Her steps faltered as the air became too clotted to pull into her lungs. Each movement felt like dragging herself through quicksand, her legs weak and trembling. The hallway seemed to stretch with every stride, the door at the end always just out of reach. By the time she got to it, her throat burned, her breath shallow and ragged, and the tears were unstoppable now, her vision little more than blurry shapes and flickering shadows. Desperate, she reached out, her fingers fumbling for the doorknob.

The instant her palm touched it, pain shot through her like lightning.

She gasped, yanking her hand back as if it had been scalded. The doorknob radiated heat, the door itself searing like an oven left on for too long. Her skin throbbed, but she pressed her hand against it again, forcing herself to turn the knob. It wouldn’t move. It was locked.

No, that’s what she told herself. Locked. Or maybe… maybe she wasn’t trying hard enough. What if the door wasn’t locked at all? What if she just didn’t have the strength to open it? Panic welled in her chest, icy fear flooding her veins. What if it wasn’t the door? What if it wasn’t the door?

Her throat constricted. She clawed at it, hands tearing at her own skin as invisible fingers wrapped around her windpipe. Her nails scraped at the hot wood of the door, then back to her neck, trying desperately to free herself. Her lungs screamed, each breath a painful gasp that never quite filled her, the smoke pressing in on all sides, swallowing her whole.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breathe.

The world collapsed around her, swirling into a whirlpool of heat and suffocating smoke, and Harper screamed—a raw, desperate sound torn from the deepest part of her soul.

And then she woke with a start.

The scream echoed around her, closer, more distinct. A wailing so harsh, so painful to her ears that her hands instinctively reached out until her fingers brushed against something warm. She wrapped her arms around its form, feeling the tremors in her sister’s body as she sobbed. She pressed her cheek against Haven’s hair, her world still a blur with the dream fading into nothing.

Haven didn’t even flinch. She hardly felt the touch of another through the overwhelming loss that wracked her body and soul. Not until she felt the weight of her sister’s head against hers. That small gesture of comfort, like a silent way of telling her that she wasn’t alone, kept her from falling apart. It wasn’t Rory; it wasn’t home. Yet it felt like a place where Haven could seek shelter when she was far from him.

Any doubts Haven may have had about Harper’s feelings towards her blew away with the wind. She felt wanted. She felt loved. It was the family she could have had, what she deserved all along, and now that family was here to help her with her pain.

So the floodgates opened wide, and Haven leaned into the embrace. Her head turned to bury itself in Harper’s shoulder. Her hands clutched the arm across her chest and pulled it closer to her. She felt the other wrap tighter against her back, and her sobs grew louder as she thought about how it would have felt to be held like this with her wings still attached.

“My wings.” The pitiful words spilled out of her in a whine. “My wings.”

Harper couldn’t find the words to respond to Haven’s lament, no matter how hard she tried. It felt like the guilt had lodged itself in her throat, a burden she hadn’t been able to shake since the moment the Chernobog tore Haven’s wings away. She swallowed, her throat burning with the effort, and winced as the pain flared up, a searing ache spreading down into her chest. Amma’s hands had left their mark on her during the dance, the bruises still fresh and tender. But she’d waved off any offers of help, as if by ignoring the injury, she could pretend the pain didn’t exist.

There had been worse wounds, anyway—ones that had demanded more attention than a bruised throat or the blindness that came and went with her fractured emotions. She’d grown used to the unpredictability of the latter over time, accepting it as another part of her that was broken and in need of fixing. But Haven’s loss… that was different. It wasn’t something time could heal, at least not in a short amount of it, nor was it something Harper could simply adapt to.

_{“I’m sorry,”} she whispered, her voice barely audible as it scraped against the rawness in her throat. The words felt pitiful, as fragile as they sounded, but what else could she offer? She couldn’t bring Haven’s wings back, couldn’t rewind time and stop the Chernobog from taking what was treasured. All Harper had was the empty comfort of her presence, her arms wrapped around Haven like she could somehow protect her from any more pain.

It wasn’t enough. And she hated herself for that.

The apology was heard clearly, yet it didn't ease Haven's sorrow. She could only cry, and cry, and think about the last time she'd been able to fly over the island. The last time she'd touched a cloud. The view of Glacier National Park from above, and how colorful and serene it had been to soar over it's mountains during her summer break. She'd never see the world from her own unique point of view ever again.

Regret sat in her stomach like an anvil for things she hadn't done while she had them. Like how she'd never feel another's touch against her feathers again--

“Where’s Rory?” Haven suddenly gasped out as a moment of panic made her body tense in Harper’s arms. She would have thrown herself out of the bed, if she didn't feel so weak. “Is he-? Is he okay?”

_{“He’s... stable. Recovering, from what I’ve heard,”} Harper replied tenderly, trying to ease Haven’s fears without feeding her panic with a reassuring tone.

The tension melted out of Haven's body with the words. Stable... recovering... at least she didn't lose him too. She wanted to know what happened with the monster, if she needed to mourn any other losses-- Gil, Luce, Alyssa, Torres, Amma, or any of the students that had been crushed by debris or frozen in ice-- but it was too much. There were too many questions, and she didn't think her heart could hold any more space for the grief that would come with the answers. It sent her into a fresh fit of weeping. A miserable feeling spreading through her body and taking hold of her just like the Chernobog had.

For a long moment, silence settled between them, broken only by the sound of Haven’s sobs. The cries that had once been loud and heart-wrenching softened, dwindling into quiet sniffles against Harper’s shoulder. Harper could feel the dampness of Haven’s tears soaking through her shirt, the warmth of her sister’s body pressed so closely against her own. It was then, in the quiet aftermath of Haven’s grief, that she let herself speak the words she’d been choking down since she’d taken up temporary residence beside her sister’s bed.

_{”I... should’ve done more. And before you say there was nothing I could’ve done…don’t.”} It didn’t matter that the Chernobog had been near unstoppable. It wasn’t enough for her. Because, once again, she’d survived while those she cared for had suffered...or worse.

Harper’s words only made the aching in Haven’s chest worsen. She swallowed against her own sore throat, and drew a shaky breath before her soft words filled the silence.

“I’m glad you didn’t... It would have hurt you, too.” It was an oversimplification of everything Haven wanted to admit. Like how she knew the monster would have shattered or shredded Harper’s body and made her watch as it happened. How she’d seen Harper trying to separate the Amma they knew apart from her other selves. The image of Amma’s pale, inked hand wrapped around Harper’s throat was burned into Haven’s mind amidst the chaos of the dance. Even how much more miserable she would feel if she didn’t have Harper here to comfort her in her grief.

“Harps,” she whispered, “I know you’re my sister.”

---

_{Location: PRCU? - Dundas Island}

Human: #5.005 Mourning Dove

---

_{Interaction(s): Blackjack & Eclipse}

Previously: Dive For You

There was so much Haven could say to her teammates, her friends, her found family, and those of Eclipse that had been fated to join them had the school not been shut down.

She could tell them that she was grateful they’d gathered on the beach one last time. One more night to spend together until their flock would part ways in the morning. She could tell Gil how relieved she was to see him here, breathing through the misery, and how much it hurt that Amma wasn’t. She could let them know the plans that had been made for herself and Rory; how the couple agreed to take the leap of faith into the unknown together.

She should ask the others about their plans, how they’d come to that decision, or why they chose to go that way. She should let them know that she would try to stay in contact as much as possible, despite the fact that neither herself nor Rory had a working phone. She didn’t know when she’d find the money or time to get another for herself.

She had many questions, as always, but she also had so many apologies to say to them for the risk to their lives that the words formed into a lump in her throat.

So, she didn’t say anything at all.

She sat there by the fire with her eyes on the flames, on the waves lapping at the shore, or on the colors on the horizon as the sun dipped below it. She watched the seagull enjoying its hunt, how it maneuvered around the drone with grace, until its gift of flight made her sick to her stomach with envy and grief.

Her eyes moved back to the fire, blinking back the tears that she no longer had the energy to shed. She rested her head on Rory’s arm where it sat on the armrest of his wheelchair. It had been so strange to walk down to the beach with the others while Aurora ported him there. Strange that he hadn’t been walking beside her. Strange and awful that she’d been walking instead of flying.

One would think that her feet would hurt by now, for all of the walking that she’d done in the last week.

The nubs that remained on her back hurt, though. She wasn’t sure if it was an aftershock of what she’d been through, or just a symptom of her trauma. She could still feel her wings, as if they were still shifting behind her and tucking themselves in to avoid dragging in the sand. Yet she couldn’t feel the warmth of the fire on her feathers. She couldn’t feel the breeze coming off of the Pacific ruffling them. Her wings were ghosts upon her back, still heavy with the weight of the blood that had been shed at the dance.

One of Eclipse was the first to speak up, but something along the beach behind her caught her attention before his words had any effect on the group. She felt fear crawling up her spine with each heavy footstep taken on the sand, until they paused and the voice that followed calmed her racing heart.

Katja?

She was glad to know that their missing teammate was okay, but an uneasy feeling still spread over her. Rory had told her about his suspicions… and Haven had reason to believe he was right. She’d remembered how Hyperion had hit a soft spot within Katja all those years ago. Hyperion had hit a soft spot within herself, even, but she’d been wise to ignore the call of a world in which hyperhuman’s played dirty to get what they wanted.

She just didn’t know how she would feel if Katja had known about what awaited them in the trials. She wanted to believe that Katja didn’t have a clue. That it had been as much a betrayal to the blonde as it was for the rest of them. So many questions, and yet the weight of her grief had kept her from seeking Katja out herself in the past week.

Her head lifted from Rory’s arm as the footsteps drew nearer. She turned it to look up at him, a hint of apprehension shining in her hazel eyes as she whispered to him.

“Katja’s coming this way.”

[Qia]

^{Two days after the Senior Dance... Infirmary, PRCU}

Harper's heart stopped for a moment, the delicate sound of Haven’s voice slipping into the silence like a quiet confession. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, as if any sudden shift might break the fragile thread of the moment. Her arms tensed ever so slightly around Haven, though she kept her face still. Her eyes stayed fixed on the far wall she knew to be in front of her, as if the full load of Haven's revelation hadn’t just landed in the room like a physical thing that she wouldn’t be able to see clearly even if she tried.

But she felt it just the same, and along with it came one burning question: How? How had Haven figured it out? Harper had barely allowed herself to process the truth since discovering it, let alone expected Haven to come to the same conclusion through some unknown means.

So…how had she done it?

For a fleeting, disorienting second, Harper considered the impossible—wondered if Haven had sensed it, as if some invisible bond had suddenly snapped into place between them. Harper had always felt an odd pull toward the girl wrapped in her arms, an instinctive protectiveness that ran deeper than she had ever wanted to admit. It was easier to chalk it up to their time together at PRCU that first year, to the sense of familiarity that had grown over months of being on the same team, in the same house—mere coincidences. But now, in the wake of Haven’s whispered admission, the truth clawed its way to the surface, refusing to be ignored any longer.

Haven had his eyes, without the secrets Harper’s father had hidden behind their hazel depths. She had the wings too, but without the fears surrounding them that Harper had carried alone for so long (Or so she’d thought, at least).

Harper swallowed against the dryness in her throat, the ache from her bruises flaring up again as if to remind her of all the ways she’d failed to speak when it mattered and in the right way. The admission sat there between them, uninhibited and real, yet she felt a strange, almost guilty sense of relief at not being the one to tear Haven’s world apart. A selfish part of her—one she despised—was almost glad it hadn’t been her voice to deliver the truth. Because what would she have said? How could she have looked into Haven’s eyes and told her that the one family she could have had was hers?

It would have been worse coming from me.

She tightened her hold around Haven, her hand smoothing over her sister’s back in a slow, tentative rhythm. _{“I didn’t want… I didn’t want to hurt you.”} Her fingers curled against the fabric of Haven’s shirt, and she took another breath, forcing herself to loosen her grip. _{“I just wanted to protect you.”}

“I know… I’m not mad.”

Maybe she’d been angry with Harper before for keeping it a secret. Angry with her for how Haven had to find out from Sierra, with her sharp tongue and cruel games, instead of gently being given the news. Angry because she wondered how long Harper knew it, and if she was ever going to tell her if Sierra hadn’t interfered.

“Sierra told me at the dance… before-” She choked on the lump in her throat, taking a shaky and pitiful breath to keep herself from going into another fit of sobs.

The motions of Harper’s hand against her back was the reason why she wasn’t mad. The loving touch was both comforting and a painful reminder that her wings were gone. So did that anger really matter, now? Did anything really matter anymore?

“I-I’m mad at him. For all of it. How could he turn his back on my mom like that? Did he even know? I just don’t understand.” Because it did matter. All of it. And it hurt. It hurt as much as losing her wings.

Harper wasn’t surprised—not really. The moment Haven said Sierra’s name, something inside her clicked into place, like the final piece of a puzzle she hadn’t wanted to solve. Of course, it had been Sierra. Her sister had always known how to take control, how to weave herself into situations in ways that left others off-balance. It was Sierra’s nature to stir the pot, especially when it meant getting under Harper’s skin, whether she deserved whatever came to her or not.

But maybe, deep down, Harper had known that this would happen, that the truth would come out, not from her lips but through Sierra's twisted delivery. She hadn’t tried very hard to hide it, had she? Leaving the journal where anyone could find it if they looked... had that been intentional on her part? She wasn’t sure anymore. And it wasn’t what mattered right now, anyway.

_{“I think… Dad did want to take you,”} Harper murmured, her voice fragile, as if she was trying to assemble pieces of a story that had never quite fit together. _{“But… you weren’t there anymore.”}

Back then, she’d thought the only thing that had been left behind was a stuffed rabbit, worn and loved. But that hadn’t been all. She’d been wrong—so wrong.

_{“As for your mother…I don’t know. I really don’t know.”} If there was anything more to learn about Haven’s mother, Sierra might know, Harper figured. The brunette, however, had stopped herself from reading further, too afraid of what she'd find, unwilling to face more truths once her worst suspicions had been confirmed.

_{“He’d drawn you a few times, you know?”} Harper’s lips curled into a small, sad smile as she rested her chin against Haven’s hair. She shook her head, the faintest trace of disbelief tugging at her. _{“I thought, for the longest time, it was me in those sketches…but it was you.”}

A subtle line etched itself between Haven’s brows as she listened. Somehow the admission comforted her, easing some of the weight she felt on her chest. He’d looked for her even if she was a child lost to the system. He’d drawn her, either by visiting one of the orphanages she’d been in or by searching for photos of her. She’d been on his mind. Somehow watching over her even if he’d been too late or too scared to take her into his arms.

“What was he like?”

Harper felt a lump form in her throat at Haven’s inquiry. What was he like? How could she begin to answer that, when even her own understanding of their father was messy, wrapped in layers of conflicting emotions? She hesitated, her hand pausing mid-motion on Haven’s back. Memories stirred, uninvited and tangled—his voice, always so stern; his hands, strong yet surprisingly warm when he ruffled her hair and called her that pet name she hadn’t heard in years. He had been so many things to her—strict, focused, determined—but more than anything, he'd been hers. And perhaps, with the right words, he could be Haven’s as well now, despite no longer being here.

So, Harper began with what she knew for certain. That their father had been complicated, a quiet person, much like herself, but not in a gentle way. It was more like he was always thinking, always somewhere else. Yet, despite that, there were moments-glimpses-where he was more than just the soldier. That he wasn’t perfect as she’d once naively believed as a child. That he’d made…mistakes. Sometimes big ones. But he always tried, in his own way, to show how much he loved them, his family, including Haven. She wanted to believe that the man who had drawn Haven in his quiet moments had loved her, even if he'd never been able to show it in the way she deserved.

_{"He used to sketch a lot when we were younger,”} Harper said after a pause. _{"It was how he... disconnected, I think. From everything. From us, from his work."} She shook her head again, her fingers tracing idle patterns on Haven’s back. _{“It was one of those drawings that made me realize who you were, actually. Along with…something he may have left behind as an apology…maybe."}

Harper’s heart thudded in her chest as she stopped her movements, her fingers stilling again. The next words slipped out even softer, almost tentative.

_{“Would you…. like to have it? That drawing?”}

There was a moment of silence as Haven took a breath. She considered the person Harper had described to her. How Harper believed that he’d done things out of love for Haven despite the distance. She wasn’t sure if she would call it love, herself, but it was nice to imagine a world in which their father had truly felt that way.

She nodded against Harper’s shoulder as an answer. She’d felt Harper’s hesitation as the featherlight strokes along her back halted. Strange, how she wished that the gentle ministrations hadn’t stopped. She heard the way her sister’s heart thumped behind her, and it was obvious that Harper was reluctant to let even a small piece of her father go. It meant a lot to Haven that she even offered it. As if Harper was allowing Haven to have a piece of her own heart with it. Her hand squeezed Harper’s arm where she still held onto it as a silent thank you.

Harper felt the small squeeze on her arm, and it almost broke her. The simple gesture held so much weight, a silent thank you that dug at the edges of her composure. She wanted to give more, offer Haven the comfort she needed, but that wasn’t something Harper was always good at. She’d been trained to be tough, to hold things back, to fix things from a distance. Yet, now, the next words she had to say stuck in her throat, frightening but necessary.

_{“Haven…”} Harper’s voice came out lighter than she intended, cautious. She hesitated, chewing over the right words, wondering how to say this without making everything worse. _{“I need you to promise me something.”} The rhythmic motion of her hand against Haven’s back resumed, but this time slower, more deliberate. She felt Haven stir a little, a signal of attention, but also of apprehension.

_{“Don’t freak out, okay?”} Harper’s voice trembled ever so slightly, despite her best effort to stay composed. Leaning back a little, she felt her body stiffen, preparing for whatever was about to happen.

_{“My eyes… they’re a bit different now,”} she explained, her voice low but calm. She didn’t go into details, didn’t have to. The truth was right there, staring back at Haven—her eyes, once vibrant, now completely white. They looked as though they had been washed clean, like a fog had rolled in and stolen all the colour from her irises, leaving nothing but an empty canvas behind. No pupils, no irises—just an uncanny, ghostlike void.

Shame crept in, uninvited and all-consuming. She hated this part, the way people looked at her like she was broken. Like a part of her was missing. And though Haven, of all people, could probably understand where she was coming from, it didn’t make it any easier.

It had never been easy. Not during the long, lonely years when she’d been stuck with this... this blindness that came and went without warning, making her feel powerless and out of control.

Her chest tightened, a familiar knot forming there. She could feel the moment pulling her down, threatening to overwhelm her. Gripping the walking cane she had set beside Haven’s bed earlier, Harper averted her gaze. _{“I’ll get you the sketch later,”} she muttered, the excuse weak, even to her own ears. Still, she couldn’t stay, not now.

Before Haven could respond, Harper pressed the cane against the floor, the soft thud giving her something solid to focus on as she moved. Each step widened the distance between them, as if she were physically severing the fragile connection they had only just begun to rebuild.

^{_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.006: Where the Fire Burns

^{_{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}}

_{Interaction(s): *Insert Everyone gif here*}

Previously: Alone & Mourning Dove

Harper sat cross-legged in the sand, her fingers brushing against the gritty grains, feeling their coolness slip through her hands. She couldn’t see the fire, but its warmth kissed her skin, offering a faint comfort amid the cold that clung to her insides and outsides, despite the gray turtleneck tunic she’d donned herself to hide the last remnants of bruises on her neck. The fire crackled softly, its sound constant against the backdrop of shifting feet and stifled sobs from the others. Her eyes, now ghostly white, blank and unseeing, faced downward. She’d tied a piece of torn cloth from her old hoodie around them earlier, not so much to hide her blindness but to avoid the pity in anyone’s eyes—the looks she couldn’t stand.

At least she was alive, wasn’t she? Pity was best reserved for the ones that hadn’t made it.

Or perhaps jealousy?

It had been a week since Haven’s wings had been torn out, a week since their lives had changed in ways none of them could comprehend. The Chernobog was gone, swallowed by the abyss it had come from, but so were Amma, Calliope, and everything that had made the team- her family- feel whole. Every attempt to wrap her mind around what had happened felt like pushing through dense gloom; nothing became clearer. The absence of sight, both literal and emotional, left her feeling empty in the worst possible way. The void inside her was vast, dark, and indifferent, just like her eyes—devoid of hope, devoid of peace.

She dug her palms into her thighs, willing herself to stay in the moment, but her thoughts rebelled, dragging her back to the past as they so often did. The crack of bone and Haven’s scream pierced through her again, the scent of her blood, Gil’s blood, Luce’s blood-so much blood- thick in the space around her. She’d stood frozen, powerless, like a spectator in her own life, her hands useless at her sides. Useless. Blind now in every sense of the word, as though the universe had stripped away every ounce of control she thought she had, leaving her with nothing but guilt and the haunting weight of her failures.

Her fingers twitched involuntarily, her body aching to reach out, to feel something real, something solid. But she didn’t. The words she might’ve said were trapped somewhere deep inside her, buried beneath the fear and anxiety. How could she admit that she was terrified? That she had no idea what came next, or that without her vision, without the clarity it had always provided, she felt like a ghost herself, just drifting?

She couldn’t let them see how lost she was.

Go home or go to the Institute. That was the choice they all had to make. Simple, on the surface, but for Harper, it felt like being asked to pick between two traps. She didn’t have a home anymore, not really. She’d turned her back on them both, one to avoid being a burden, the other because it had become something unrecognizable—changed without her even noticing.
▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

_{“A mission…”}

_{“But what did Amma’s mission have to do with you?”}

As for the Institute? That was a blind leap into the unknown, full of uncertainties and doubt. What if her sight never came back? What if she couldn’t protect anyone, not even herself? How was she supposed to trust a power that failed her when it mattered most, that flickered on and off like a broken lightbulb?

She bit down hard on her lower lip, tasting a hint of copper as she inhaled the salty sea breeze, letting it cool her heated nerves. There wasn’t a good option, she knew that. But she couldn’t sit here forever, paralyzed by indecision, by fear.

Decision. The word echoed like a drumbeat in her mind. Harper needed to decide. Slowly, she lifted her head, her blank, shrouded eyes staring into the empty space before her. She didn’t need her sight to know they were all waiting—waiting for someone to speak, waiting for someone to lead. And maybe, just maybe, that person was supposed to be her. She was still Rory’s deputy, after all?

Harper scoffed under her breath, the sound barely audible, as she caught the tail end of Immanuel’s words: “I think… I think I miss my home.”

Home. The word sounded so distant, so unreachable. It wasn’t just a place they were mourning—it was the life they once knew, the sense of belonging they thought they had. Harper’s chest tightened. She had no home to go back to, no certainty waiting for her beyond the horizon of this decision. And yet, Immanuel had a point. What they needed right now wasn’t just a destination—it was an anchor. Something—someone—to remind them who they were and who they could still be, despite everything. Maybe that was the only thing holding them together now: scattered pieces of their past selves, searching for a reason to keep fighting, bound by one simple truth.

None of them wanted to face it alone.

Harper’s lips parted, her voice barely cutting through the crackling of the fire, raspy and unsure.“This was…is my home…” she began, the words feeling strange in her mouth. She hesitated, feeling the shift as some eyes turned to her. “It’s the only one I’ve known since my parents died. And I... I don’t think I’m ready to let that go.”

A long pause followed, the tension ever present in the air as the fire popped and hissed in the background. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, but she pushed through, letting whatever vulnerability she had left bleed into her voice.

“Maybe I don’t know where I’m going next, but whatever that looks like…I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t want to lose my home.”

She lowered her head after this was said, her voice trailing off, leaving the space open for someone else to step in, whether they agreed with her or not.