As the sun was coming up, a muffled scream came from one of the rooms in an abandoned apartment complex at the edge of the city. The building was only sparsely populated by squatters, allowing the occupants to make all the sounds they wanted.
"I'll kill her! I'll kill her!" Satchel yelled as she screamed in pain.
The young man from before, Lock, had dropped his tools to the ground, stunned to see her getting up on her own. The planks underneath her bent upwards at the sides, snapping loose from the floor as if to express her rage. He knew her powers activated on touch with any kind of life, but he didn't think wooden planks would do the trick. What an oversight…
"Don't touch me, twerp!" she yelled as she crawled away from him.
The headless puppet sat in the corner of the room, watching. There were two bloody bullets on the floor that must've hit her when the puppet was being shot. He'd just finished extracting the last one by the time she first twitched her finger.
"S-So, what was it like to die?" he asked, bewildered and ill-prepared for this scenario.
Satchel crawled away and got on her hands and knees, looking back at him and responding with a murderous gaze. Lock swallowed and gave her a guilty look back. He anxiously eyed the tools he'd laid out on the floor, a mix of mechanic equipment and what looked like butcher knives. It was far too late to try and bullshit his way out of this one, although it seemed like his beloved senior was more than aware of what he was about to do to her body.
"What happened… to the blonde?" she asked with boiling rage.
Lock stared at her for a second as he tried to remember at which point Satchel stopped witnessing the scene.
"Did you get her?" she asked him.
Lock looked over at his damaged puppet and answered calmly.
"No, she's alive. I almost lost the Mamba trying to get you out of there…"
Satchel looked forward and crawled again.
"Then put it to good use and find her!"
Lock rolled his eyes. Looks like he wasn't done with this expedition quite yet. At least her focus was on the blonde instead of Jenny.
Satchel mumbled as she slowly stood up with shaking legs, showing increasing control of her body.
"I'll skin her… No, I'll skin her friends… I'll skin her friends in front of her and then I'll skin her…"
♦
It was lunchtime, and Plural hopped out into the office parking lot. She was in a good mood because of the nice weather, and she wore her favorite summer dress. Nobody else on her floor dared copy her attire because it wasn't business casual, but she didn't pay any attention to that.
When she woke up this morning, Tatters was still awake downstairs, so they had a chat. The girl told her all about what happened last night with surprising zest, like a pent-up word waterfall releasing all at once. The way Tatters reacted when being told she did a good job was adorable, too. Before Plural even left the house, the dark hero had fallen asleep on the couch, like she struggled to stay awake until morning just so they could see each other.
Later that day, that same story appeared on the local news, with some details left out.
Plural walked over to Saturn, who sat on the hood of his car. He looked over at her and checked out her dress when she stopped next to him. He wasn't in a good mood at all.
"It's gonna rain later," he said with no emotion.
Plural stuck out her tongue and pulled her lower eyelid down.
"Someone's upset today," she said after not getting a reaction from him.
"You seem fine, on the other hand…"
His emotionlessness turned into anger as he said that.
"I'm not-"
Plural cut herself off. He was talking about Jenny, and about how they always used to spend lunchtime together. Now that he'd reminded her, she could feel the missing piece. Goodbye, good mood.
She sat next to him on the hood of his car to sulk with him. After some silence, Saturn spoke up again.
"Do you still… believe?" he hesitantly asked.
Saturn seemed the most hopeful about Jenny's recovery. Ever since they found her, they'd been taking turns spending time at Jenny's house, making sure there was always someone there in case she woke up.
"I don't know," Plural said, "Tats thinks she's gone."
"That girl has the emotional intelligence of a rock."
Plural frowned.
"Don't say that! Makes it sound like she's right," she said.
Saturn glared at the sky with a lifeless look to his eyes.
"The most powerful being in the world… died in her sleep… from a blown fuse…"
That did sound hard to believe. But if it was true, it'd be a frightening thing, how fragile she ended up being.
"What can we even do, though?" Plural asked. "I'm starting to think she's not gonna magically wake up anymore."
Saturn didn't respond, like he was already thinking the same thing. He kept staring into the distance.
"Wasn't even that long ago when we first talked to her, and we've been through so much already."
Even though he was the hopeful one, Saturn was talking like he'd already accepted the fact Jenny was gone. A kind of tone Plural tried to avoid.
"Don't you just feel like your life got a thousand times better since we met her? Like she's already taken us on a lifetime's worth of adventures," he asked melancholically.
"Yeah", Plural replied in a similar mood.
"I don't wanna lose her, Plu… and go back to my old life," he said, looking sad again.
Their life before Jenny…
Plural agreed, but she was a little offended, considering the two were already friends way before that. She considered him to be her best friend. Did he not feel the same way?
"Guess you still got a new housemate…" he said.
Tatters. Who was she kidding? Plural didn't want to go back, either.
"Hey!" Plural turned towards him, "she's your friend, too!"
"I… guess so," he said, embarrassed.
"Circus, too!" she said, then poked his shoulder twice. "And! Me!"
He looked her in the eyes like he'd forgotten all about that. He smiled, but his sadness was still visible on his face.
"Yeah…"
Then, someone called out to them.
"Hey! No illicit relations on company grounds!"
A girl yelled at them from the other side of the parking lot. Plural vaguely recognized her as one of Saturn's colleagues, slightly older than them both. Saturn was always popular with the girls, something Plural was envious of. She gave the girl in the distance the finger.
"She's just jealous of you," he said, not taking his eyes off Plural.
He had his classic cool smile on him again, like he'd been sufficiently distracted from his sulky mood and returned to his old self for a second. Plural didn't know what to say back, so she started lightly play-punching his shoulder, trying to hide her smile.
♦
"Isn't this gonna hurt Jenny, too?" Saturn asked, leaning over an EMP device in Jenny's living room.
"Well, hopefully not. Better than somebody stealing her body, right?" Circus answered, leaning next to him.
"Ugh, I hate this…" Saturn said and dropped himself on Jenny's couch.
"At least you can spend more time at home, now," Circus said, trying to comfort him.
Saturn sat with his arms crossed. He, Plural and Tatters had been taking turns watching over Jenny's lifeless body, hoping that one day, she'd magically come back to them. Lately, it was mostly him, since staying at his own home made him anxious.
During his first shift to watch over her, he couldn't help but lie next to her in her bed. He even caught himself tearing up thinking about how he'd lost the best thing that ever happened to him so suddenly. Did anyone in the world even know how to fix her? He sure as hell wasn't planning on prying her head open to try.
Saturn ignored Circus' comment. She was here with the police to set up a perimeter around Jenny's house. The two Adventurer's Guild members from the news were after Jenny, and they were still out there. One of them used robotic puppets, hence the EMP device. Circus' comment implied Jenny was safe, and he didn't need to be there anymore, but keeping her safe was never the point. He just couldn't leave her alone. On the off chance that she did wake up, he wanted to be there.
Saturn's dark train of thoughts was interrupted by his phone ringing. He was surprised to see the caller was Tatters. They'd never talked to each other on the phone before or even exchanged private messages. This might be important.
"Y'ello," he said.
"Is Plural with you!?" Tatters asked in a panicked tone.
He looked at Circus with a frown.
"No," he hesitantly replied.
"Was she at work today!?"
"Yeah, we talked. After work, too. Why?"
No answer. He heard a sliding door open on the phone, then wet footsteps. It was raining outside.
"What happened?" he asked worriedly.
More footsteps. Tatters took a while to answer.
"She's not- she didn't come home!" she yelled, sounding like she was losing her composure.
"What!?" he yelled into the phone.
His reaction prompted a similar one from Circus. If Tatters was acting like this, it was bad. He covered the phone's mic with his hand.
"Plu's gone missing!" he told Circus as he stood up in a panic.
Saturn looked at the clock in Jenny's living room. Almost 7PM. He left work an hour and a half ago, and so did Plural. He thought about what could've possibly happened, but the worst scenario was looking like the most likely. With Tatters' involvement in the events of last night, it was too much of a coincidence for Plural to suddenly disappear.
"I-" Tatters started but didn't continue. He could still hear her running outside over the phone.
He stared at Circus, who looked mortified, like she knew something.
"What are you doing? Call it in!" he angrily told Circus.
That snapped her out of it, and Circus fumbled trying to get her radio. She had guilty written all over her in that moment.
♦
Tatters arrived at the office parking lot, soaked by the rain and out of breath. The sun was setting, and only a few cars remained there. Plural's car wasn't among them. She uttered a yelp as she hopelessly looked around. She had no idea what to do next. It was beyond clear that the events from last night had something to do with it. Maybe the puppet took her, but she had no way to know. Her best bet was to run back and forth between this place and her house, trying different routes to find her car stranded somewhere.
Before she even finished that thought, she was already sprinting back home, trying to stop herself from crying along the way, telling herself everything would be okay. She ran in her casual clothes and her cape, which was the only thing she remembered to grab before she left.
When she reached the backyard, she was relieved to find a new clue. Broken glass of the sliding door. She ran inside to find more broken glass across the floor, and she frantically looked around for any meaningful clues. It had gotten dark in the meantime, so it was hard to see, but she found an envelope on the kitchen counter that wasn't there before. A break-in had never given her so much relief before.
She opened the envelope with shaking fingers to find a short, handwritten note.
Watch it happen.
See photo.
Below that was an address. Tatters took out her phone to find the location on the map. An old, abandoned apartment complex with an indoor skate park next to it. Not very close.
Tatters hesitantly reached into the envelope to retrieve another piece of paper with a printed photo on the back. Her heart was pounding as she tried to bring herself to flip it around, as if the contents of the photo weren't set in stone until she looked at it. The break-in only happened after she left the house, so if it was time-sensitive, she was still early.
Having finally gathered the courage to flip the photo around, Tatters shuddered at the sight of it. It was a photo of Plural, tied up against a steel chair. She looked bruised, beaten up, and had blood on her. Some of her clothes were removed, but not all. She looked mortified, gazing at an unnaturally large spider on her restrained arm. Next to the chair was a table with knives and other sharp tools, like a torture setup. Plural didn't look maimed in the photo, but the note suggested that that was going to happen later.
Tatters dropped the note and started breathing heavily. What now? Was she supposed to ask for help? From whom? Circus and the police? Was she strong enough to fix this on her own? Could she even still fix this? Or was Plural already traumatized?
In that moment, she wished she could turn back time. If this was revenge for what she did the night before, it would've been better if she died instead. No, Plural would've never been in danger if they weren't so close. She should've refused to be her familiar to begin with. Everybody who got close to her always ended up dying a horrible death.
When she snapped back to reality, she found herself hyperventilating in the dark kitchen, heart racing and cheeks covered in tears. She didn't even realize she was crying, and she didn't know for how long.
When she saw something pale in a dark corner of the house, she looked at it to make it disappear, but it didn't quite disappear this time. A pale, skinny, naked humanoid figure that was tall enough to bump its head on the ceiling stood in the doorway to the hallway. Its face was uncanny and terrifying, and this was the first time Tatters was able to get a good look at it. It had a crooked smile, and it was violently rocking its chest back and forth in an inhuman way, like it was mocking her for how hard she was breathing.
Tatters screamed in fear and ran out of the kitchen, through the broken glass and back into the pouring rain. She ran away from the thing, but also in the general direction of the address in the note. Her rational thoughts were slipping away, and she couldn't think straight anymore. She didn't look back, but felt the thing gazing at her from behind, like it had walked out on the street behind her. Her chest was heavy with emotion, far worse than she'd ever experienced. She cried as she ran, and couldn't think about anything anymore, like something was taking over her body and putting her in the passenger seat…
♦
"Are you saying we should throw her out on the street?"
"No. I'm turning her in."
"You know damn well what they'll do to her!"
"I know."
A little blond girl sat on a bench outside a closed office, listening to the voices inside. The girl was shaking and crying, and she had blood on her clothes.
"Do you think she's telling the truth? That she has… 'powers'?"
"Of course not! She's just a stupid child, for crying out loud. All I know is that she did it, fuck if I know how, and whether it's black magic or a freak accident doesn't matter anymore."
The two stayed silent for a while, and the little blonde's jaw was shaking in dread.
"Is there really no other way? They'll take her to the ice, or worse…"
"And we'll move on with our lives."
"I'm not gonna tell her."
"No one is. I'm making the call now. Not spending another second with the little shit in my building."
The little blonde hopped off the bench, drained of energy and hardly able to stand up straight. Still, she pushed on and walked, then ran. Through the halls of the orphanage, away from the door that opened behind her.
"Tatters?" a lady called out to her. "Tatters!"
…
"Is that… me?"
Tatters stood next to the lady and watched the little blonde run away. The lady didn't try to give chase and instead wiped away her tears and looked away.
"What's happening? Why is this…"
But Tatters' hand phased right through the lady like she was a ghost.
"…!"
She remembered now. This must've been fifteen years ago, right after the incident. But why was she viewing her own memories like a spectator?
"Am I… dreaming?"
Then, the world around her went dark, and she floated in a void. In the total darkness, that pale face appeared everywhere she looked. And she couldn't look away, because everywhere was darkness, and it would always be there, like an ominous presence.
Then, as if by blinking, the world reappeared around her. This time, it was snowy streets, and she was standing behind the little blonde again. She was reading a newspaper and wearing a garbage bag around her head to avoid attention. Tatters was able to look over her shoulder and read the headline.
Three dead in school slaughter.
"No…"
She tried to reach out, but her hand phased through the little blonde right just like before.
"It wasn't your fault…"
The little blonde wasn't doing a very good job at keeping a low profile, because she was sniffing, trying and failing to hold back tears. When an adult passerby stopped and tried to get a better look at her, the child made teary eye contact, and the passerby's eyes widened in fear at the realization of who he was looking at.
The little blonde moaned in despair, dropped the newspaper and ran off.
"Wait!"
Tatters reached out her arm.
"Wait! It's not your fault!"
But the little blonde didn't listen. No-one could see or hear her in this ghost form. Even still, she turned to the adult passerby.
"Tell her!"
He didn't respond, either, and moved on.
Meanwhile, the little blonde had already turned the corner and disappeared. Tatters looked at her hand to find it shaking. In fact, tears were coming out and her chest ached just as badly as it did that day.
"Why…?"
And the world went black again, leaving just herself and the ominous presence.
"W-Why are you showing me this!?" a distressed Tatters buried her hands in her hair, "is this a dream? What is happening to me?"
And another scene filled the space around her. A dreadfully familiar classroom. The little blonde stood at the center, covered in blood, and she was the only child who wasn't missing any body parts.
"No," Tatters covered her mouth, "that's not what happened…"
Twenty children surrounded her. A full class, all dead. The colorful walls of the classroom were adorned with dark-red blood splatters, and the floor's original color was hardly visible anymore.
Tatters covered her nose, too, when an awful stench assaulted her nose.
Then, from the doorway came a gasp, and both blondes turned to look. There stood a blue-haired child, around the age of ten, like the little blonde. She was wearing a winter coat and looked like a foreigner.
"P-Plu? How?" Tatters called out.
The little blue-haired child looked mortified and made eye contact with Tatters like she was the only actor in the scene that was able to see her.
"Don't look, Plu! This isn't what-"
Then, little Plural tried to step back but fell over and burst into tears.
The little blonde froze in fear and did nothing. Tatters tried to approach but stopped when she noticed two more familiar children on the floor near the doorway. A red-haired boy, also wearing a winter coat, and a silver-haired girl, wearing a brown sweater. Both wide-eyed and lifeless, with their bodies severed at the waist. The red-haired boy was leaking blood and guts all over the floor, but the silver-haired girl's insides were copper wires and electronics, and she was leaking oil.
"No, this is wrong," Tatters fell to her knees.
Little Plural crawled backwards until her back hit the wall.
"Plu, I would never-"
Then, the scene changed again. Tatters was still on her knees, but now in the old snowy town center. And before her lay Jenny's body again, but now in her adult form, with her head and hand severed.
"-kill…"
A blonde jumped down into the snow from above, landing next to the body, crushing a headset with her feet and retracting her steel wire.
"Weakling!" the not-so-little blonde snarled.
Tatters gasped and looked up at the new actor.
"No…"
This one wasn't from that long ago.
"That's not what-"
From behind came a dreadful scream. Tatters turned around and saw Plural and Saturn in winter clothing. Plural's legs were shaking and she was covering her mouth.
"Jen! No…" she cried loudly.
This time, Tatters had nothing to say, and she just watched the look on Plural's face in disbelief. She'd never heard Plural scream like this before, and it was painful to listen to.
"You're in cahoots with it!?" the angry blonde yelled in the background.
But Tatters wasn't paying attention anymore. Slowly, the world around her faded back into darkness as the sound of Plural's cries penetrated her heart.
"Plu…" Tatters muttered, "she's in trouble…"
Back in total darkness, she could sense the pale figure hunching over her, stroking her cheek with its fingernail. The image of Plural, restrained in the torture chair, came back to her.
"I have to… save… Plu…"
♦
When she opened her eyes, she found herself on all fours, hunching over a girl with colorful hair. Or rather, the girl's hair was currently dyed dark red all the way through from the pool of blood underneath, but Tatters recognized her anyway. Satchel the witch. She was making the same face as the last time she laid her eyes on her: lifeless eyes, and a half-opened mouth. All four of the witch's limbs were removed from her torso, which was split diagonally. And as if that wasn't enough, the rest of her body was covered in bruises, like someone had been beating her after the fact.
"W-What's…" Tatters muttered and stood up, seeing that her arms were coated in the witch's blood up to her elbows.
When she looked around, she saw that she was inside the indoor skatepark from the note. It was old and abandoned, and the walls and ceiling were covered by large plants and vines. One of the larger ones extended from the ceiling in her direction but was severed halfway and burning with blue flames. They were the same flames that appeared on her crossbow back when she fired at Dark Jenny.
Besides the plants, there were giant spiders and bugs, too. All dead and either dismembered, burning or both. The largest of these magnified critters must've been the size of a semi-truck, and the smallest was the size of a small car.
There were human bodies, too. Harder to spot among the enlarged creatures. They were armed and well-equipped, like soldiers.
It was dark in here, with only the moonlight shining in from outside and the atmospheric illumination from what remained of the blue flames, making the whole place look like the set of a horror movie.
A gasp from up ahead took her attention to Plural, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees, next to a tumbled-over steel chair. She was crying, and her sniffs reverberated across the concrete building.
Tatters responded with a gasp of her own, one of relief to find Plural alive. She hurriedly walked over until she came close enough so she wouldn't have to yell. From up close, she could see the wounds on Plural's body and her torn clothes. Her wounds were shallow and likely inflicted while she was still tied to the chair. On her right foot, her sock was pulled almost all the way off, and there was a nasty cut on her heel.
The sight of it made her chest ache, and Tatters pressed her eyes shut and swallowed her anger. She took another step closer, reached out her hand and spoke up.
"H-Hey, are you…"
A shivering Plural slowly raised her head and made eye contact, allowing Tatters to see the tears on her face and how they'd ruined her makeup. Plural's eyes slowly widened, looking fearful, like Tatters was a complete stranger.
"H-Huh?" Tatters took another step forward.
In response, Plural yelped and crawled backwards, turning her head away and raising her arm like she was bracing herself for death. Tatters felt her throat tightening and looked at the blood-soaked arm she was pointing in Plural's direction.
"N-No, it's…"
Then, a clicking sound came from her right, clicking faster and faster until it transitioned into a twisted sound of laughter. Tatters looked, and there was that pale thing again, looking the same as it did before. It didn't move a muscle, like a statue, but it was clearly laughing at her.
"SHUT UP!" Tatters screamed at it louder than she'd ever screamed at anyone in her life.
A gasp turned her attention back to Plural, who had taken the opportunity to get up and run.
"No, wait!" Tatters yelled with a shaky voice and gave chase until Plural covered the short distance to the wall and stopped.
With shivering legs, Plural dropped herself against the wall and covered her head. In the distance, police sirens approached, and she started looking for the nearest exit.
Tatters clutched her hands at her chest, and tears came out. Her nose was getting runny and she couldn't talk without her voice coming out weird.
"Plu, it wasn't me…" she said weakly.
Wasn't it? Plural was the one who saw it all happen, after all. There was plenty of evidence to suggest she'd witnessed in great detail how Tatters ripped the witch's body apart, and how the blue flames proceeded to burn every other living thing in this room except herself.
As the sirens in the distance came closer, Plural slowly stood up, cradling her arm and making her way towards the exit. All the while, she kept her eye on Tatters like she was trying to escape the clutches of some predator.
At this point, Tatters no longer knew what to say, and all she did was make unintelligible sounds while she watched Plural run through the exit and disappear.
Tatters stayed put, ashamed and defeated, surrounded by death. She knew not for how long she stayed put, but eventually the police sirens sounded like they'd reached the building and shook her awake.
Hesitantly, she turned around and walked in the opposite direction to where Plural left the building, slowly leaving her crime scene, with no home to return to.
Before she stepped outside, she turned around one last time, staring at the exit Plural had taken, hoping that by some miracle, she'd reappear and tell her that it was all okay. But such a miracle didn't happen, and instead she saw the pale thing, tormenting her with its smile.
This time, when she laid her eyes on it, it disappeared again.