Hashim gasped as he found himself standing on a bloody sidewalk. The world around him was painted black in the night sky. The manors surrounding him on the boulevard were massive enough to block most of the moonlight despite how wide the road was, almost enough for five carriages to roll along side by side, wallowing in the area's wealth and perfectly manicured scenery.
Hashim looked down. there was a boy kneeling there. His head was down, as though drooping forward on his neck, and beside him there were bodies. Shredded into pieces as though a monster had gotten hold of them, their blood spilled everywhere before they even had the chance to so much as die.
There had used to be three men here. Hashim knew it now. The fact assaulted his soul.
What was this? Why was he here? That boy wasn't him.
Then a voice called out. Shouts from guardsmen patrolling nearby. Likely they had noticed the absence of the lantern light from this group. The light was sputtering against the waxed cobblestones, desperately trying to eat through it as though it would find sustenance beneath.
The soldiers grouped up and began approaching, sweeping the area that the deceased trio had been walking. A single known threat was more important than the ever-so-slight possibility that someone might slip through while they were distracted.
Hashim knew that this was the guards' mistake. The boy who knelt before him was a distraction from a thieving crew, the rest of whom were ready to slip into the lord's manor and snatch some valuables. They hadn't counted on him actually killing any guards.
The boy looked up as the soft clanks of the night guards' steel armor, padded for warmth and secrecy, approached. In front of him were four, their weapons the only exposed metal. The boy raised a hand. It wasn't shaking.
Hadn't he been crying before? Where had the tears gone? The sorrow? Was despair so fleeting? Then again, wasn't it strength to ignore your emotions?
No.
No, it wasn't.
Hashim could feel that that was Jake's influence on him, but he was right. Emotion simply was. It could be exploited, but that didn't make it a weakness. It could also give strength, when the bearer needed it most. It was simply unreliable. An incalculable variable.
Hashim watched as the child raised a hand. It was dripping with black. Not blood, certainly. It didn't even appear liquid. It was more like... shadow.
Dark spikes erupted from the gloom around the soldiers and skewered them. Then the boy turned to him. And smiled.
Hashim woke in his mind prison, blinking in shock.
What was that? That emptiness behind the child's eyes? As if he had given up not just his humanity, but his life, even his very being.
Hashim curled himself into a ball and stayed that way, attempting to shield himself from the memories, as if Jake might do more.
But he wouldn't.
Jake sighed. He was being needled by Toon and Xavier. Toon wanted to know why he had done it. Xavier just wanted to know what it was. But he wouldn't respond. He had done nothing more than what had had to be done.
Avoiding your own mind forever could only hurt you. In Beyond, they cared about that sort of thing.
Toon agreed then, though still a bit frustrated with Jake's lack of communication. Xavier tried to keep arguing, but Jake ignored him. He was going through the motions of firing a bow, calling forth Toon's expertise to guide his hands and eye to their positions. It was getting smoother, more controlled. They were slowly improving their cooperation.
Jake thought that it was necessary to get outside help for their mind, broken as it was, despite how much Hashim hated the idea. And though Jake couldn't say it to Hashim because he would start connecting dots that Jake hadn't drawn, it was nearly true. They did have everything that they would need for a normal person to surpass society. Intelligence, strength, power, charisma, and strategy.
But each of them embodied one of those traits, or a combination of two for the fusions, which was natural because they were each literally a combination of two of the others. Toon was intelligence, Corpse was strength, Jake was power, Xavier was charisma, and Hashim was strategy. It was a well-designed system, all said.
Except for the fact that they didn't work together. But if they could surmount that somehow, using some sort of catalyst, they would be truly unstoppable.
The answer wasn't to keep fusing until they had an amalgamation of all of their best traits, if they even got that far. The answer was to discover how to get all of their personalities to function as one.