Natural Selection

by Kickback

Rating: teen
Tags: Crossover, DJ P0N-3, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Other, Romance, Original Character, Trixie, Cheese Sandwich
Length: 34107

They say the measure of a man is shown through his acts after being granted power...they also say power corrupts.

[PROTOTYPE CROSSOVER]
Fate.
Some say it is evil, a cosmic puppet-master bent on controlling our lives through improbable yet predetermined ways.
A few say that the hand of fate is what guides them, shows them the path to live the way they were always meant to.
Others don't believe in it.
However, when a common high school student is inexplicably plucked out by Misfortune's hand to undergo possibly a fate worse than death , who is to blame?

Perhaps it is more than Fate, perhaps it is even Destiny or perhaps it was simply Nature that had selected him, to become a part of something more than himself.

Regardless of what's to blame...

"...What the Hell is happening to me!?"

*Tags will be added*

Published 2014-05-22 03:00:04 UTC
Last updated 2015-02-09 09:17:55 UTC

Prelude - Faceless

Prelude - Faceless

Natural Selection
By Scarlet Brony

I'm not, I'm not myself
Feel like I'm someone else
Fallen and faceless
So hollow, hollow inside
A part of me is dead
Need you to live again
Can you replace this
I'm hollow, hollow and faceless

It was just like any other day, one might have thought.

The traffic in Canterlot was usually fairly low but today seemed to be an exception. The stream-line of cars down the narrow strip of road in the distance could be seen ever-rolling closer. By the intersection, stood a young girl of very pale complexion. She fastened the thick white jacket flush against her body as she glanced up. The clouds in the sky ever-slowly began growing larger and darker with each moment that passed, the few sprinkles of water that descended from the fluffy mixes of vapour found the ends of their journey splashed out along the magenta-lensed glasses that she wore over her eyes. The pale woman couldn't contain a grin at the sudden impact, it was relaxing, in a sense.

By now, the traffic was all around her, passing by her as she began to saunter off in the other direction. Initially, she had just planned to cross the street but today, however, she figured she could use a detour. No one seemed to want to walk today. She chalked it up to the weather but couldn't help but shake her head because of it. It was nice to just walk in a downpour of rain, she had learnt that from a...friend.

With a quick motion, she reached behind her head, taking hold of the loose fabric that hung around her neck and flipped on her blankly-coloured hood. It felt soft and warm, pressed down against her vibrant, spiky cerulean hair, the very tips of what was her fringe peaked out from under it, further concealing her face.

She always did like this hoodie, it was a gift, after all. She even remembered what was written on the card, lazily taped on the parcel she found it inside.

In a hand writing that she could never mistake read simply; "Hope you like it, Vinyl"

As she continued to walk, her smile thinned a little at the memory. At the thought of...him.

No, this wasn't the time. She glanced down and caught glimpse of the beamed note proudly stitched into the cotton on the right side of her chest. Vinyl knew why he had picked this out as soon as she saw it that day when it came in the mail. He could never deliver it himself. In a way, she knew why but...she just knew why.

She could never think of a "but".

The rain was beginning to really start up.

Reaching down into the tight pocket nestled just on the side of her hip, she managed to weasel out her phone. The earphones that were safely plugged in snaked through her jacket as she jarred it out, reaching with her other hand to place the buds that dangled out the top in the open, patiently. Placing them both securely in her ears, she quickly swiped her thumb along her screen, silently browsing her list of tracks.

Vinyl chuckled a little, seeing the music on her phone. People all knew her for her love of all things techno and dubstep. They weren't wrong to see her like that, she did indeed have a fair infatuation with the genre. She knew better, however. Her taste wasn't just comprised of a single type of music, it really never was.

When she really thought about it...she almost hated that he had influenced her life so much. She felt like he practically made her who she now was and who she'd always be.

Vinyl could only hope that that wasn't the truth.

With a sigh, she just tapped the latest song on her list. A think smile found it's way onto her face at the over-powering blast of sound echoed from the small speakers and into her head. Her strides took on a rhythmic bounce as the rain began to come to steady downpour of cool droplets that she could feel through her clothes, ever-growing damper.

Vinyl Scratch could hardly care. She felt a little alone, seeing no one else on the path she walked. In a way, that made her feel free. There was nothing anymore. Just her music, the concrete path, the rain and steady lights of the cars that passed her by, leaving her in their wake.

She felt free. She always did at times like this.

Entranced by her bliss, she closed her eyes behind her shades and a closed-mouth widened on her face. She threw her head back, promptly causing her hood to limply slide off her head, her hair whipping back with it and with a quick motion, she removed her magenta-lensed glasses from her eyes.

Vinyl blinked a few times as she stared up at the dark grey sky. Her irises, much like her shades were a brilliant hue of magenta, they sparkled lightly. She wanted to feel the rain on her face, feel it dampen her hair, to just feel free, like nothing was wrong with the world and that she had all the time in the universe to just walk in the rain.

Vinyl knew she couldn't but it was a dream she felt was worthy of dreaming.

Vinyl didn't even notice that she had suddenly stopped walking, choosing to instead just stand firmly on the ground, held tilted high, eyes wide open and her mouth agape, catching whatever stray drops of water found it's way onto her tongue.

She wasn't there long, however, something brought her out of her little self-induced trance.

Someone walked past her.

She barely paid the new person any attention when they passed her, she almost thought it was odd how she didn't notice them. They were clad in a straight black leather jacket, two white stripes elapsed around the sleeves, she figured he might have been a biker. She figured it was a "He", his shoulders were broad and his figure was straight, the way he walked also gave it away. He was tall, head hunched low as he seemed to stop just a fair distance away from her, not facing her.

Vinyl couldn't make anything out, his hands were buried deep in the pockets of his jeans and the dark grey hood pulled tightly over his head didn't help either. Something about him was...familiar, somehow

Then it hit her.

It hit her hard, square in the gut as she finally noticed the bright red pattern, running across his shoulder blades. It nearly defined a skull with a pair of wings if she stared at it long enough.

She might have been insane but she could swear she saw the insignia spontaneously...glow.

Vinyl took a shuddering breath and took a single step backwards. Her mouth stuttered, searching desperately for coherent words. All she could manage, however, was a single sentence. Just a name.

"Ki...K-Kick..?"

As soon as the breathless tone of her voice, her raspy yet tantalizing voice. His head ducked further, his gaze seeing nothing but the pointed toes of his black shoes and the water cascading onto the concrete path, washing away into the drains beneath them. His shoulders slumped and his hands limply retreated from his pockets, finding refuge at his sides.

If it weren't for the rain pattering against her head and ground, Vinyl might have heard the deep intake of breath that he took before sighing exasperatedly...almost, depressingly.

Vinyl took a less-than-confident step forward, ever-edging closer to the man that walked along her path. This time, she managed to speak a bit more clearly.

"Kick?" She prompted.

He didn't answer.

"It really is you, isn't it?" She walked closer to him, hesitantly.

He just lowered his head again. She stopped, Coming up at the half-way line of where they once stood.

"...Can you look at me when I talk to you?" The ghost of a smile cracked on her face at that and she let out an inaudible chuckle.

He turned his head slightly to the side, while keeping his body remaining still. He swivelled his head just enough so that Vinyl could spot the briefest image of a scarlet-hued face concealed by his hood and shadowed by his ebony and ivory striped-hair that cascaded down his features in a web-like tangle of smooth strands.

What caught her attention most of all was that one eye. She stared hard into it, the luscious jade and piercing black held more than she could've imagined behind it.

Vinyl stared into that singular eye.

The eye of what was her friend's.

The eye of what would turn out to be a killer's.

The eye of a monster.

And she felt lost in it.

Dazed as she was, she barely registered him turning back around. Vinyl shook her head, placing her palm over her temple, suddenly feeling very light. In her confusion, the black clad man darted off, leaving her in his wake as he ran swiftly into the nearby sliver of darkness that cracked itself between the buildings. Vinyl stared in the direction he went in shock. He was fast.

"Kick! Wait!"

Into the shadows, she gave chase. In her mind, she knew it was futile but if she managed to get him to stop once, whose to say she couldn't this time?

Besides, she wanted to talk to him. She needed to talk to him. It'd been far too long since he left her...since he left them.

Vinyl could hear the pattering of his footsteps echo down the alley, it was raining heavier now but she could still make out the sound. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light but much to her chagrin, she spotted no sign of him. She grunted, finding a corner at the end of the way and turning it. When she did, however, she was greeted with nothing but he open expanse of the next street. She heaved a bit, her eyes darting around frantically as her head spun from side to side. Desperately searching for any sign of the hooded man.

There was none.

He was gone...again.

The rain didn't seem to make her feel free anymore, instead, all it did was make her feel alone. Alone, cold and helpless. For a moment, she thought that maybe, just maybe, he'd jump down from somewhere and land right in front of her. He wouldn't be wearing that damn hood of his and she'd see his face. He'd spread his arms out wide and he embrace her, wrap her in her arms, hold her and just stand there with her in the rain.

It was a dream...but she figured it was a dream worth dreaming.

Vinyl slowly placed her shades back on her eyes and flipped her hood back over her head. She didn't feel like feeling the rain anymore. Vinyl wasn't even sure if it was raining anymore but what did it matter? It didn't matter to her, not now, it didn't even matter that she threw both her glasses and hood back on.

Her tears still dampened her face.

He watched her leave.

He always watched her leave.

Had she looked up, she might have seen him there. Perched up, standing tall above the shallow rooftops, the leather of his jacket blowing in the stormy wind. His eyes followed her every move, she had lost that bounce in her stride, there was no rhythm, no beat, just slow, solemn, sombre walking. It reminded him of himself.

He was greatly disturbed by that prospect.

Vinyl was nothing like him...and he was grateful for that fact every waking moment of his life. His new life, at least. It brought some sense of meaning, something he rarely felt in this world anymore.

He watched her. He watched her until she faded from his sight, he hoped that wherever she was going, she was going to be out of this rain. He liked the rain, it was the only company he could rely on these days but he wanted to know that she'd be warm and safe and not see her getting sick. Her well-being meant everything to him.

He tilted his head back, the water splashed his face in torrents but he could hardly care. The grey sky was almost reflective, he saw himself in those bleak tones and shaded masses of vapour. What struck him was that he could see Vinyl standing there beside him. He shook his head.

He lowered himself, throwing his legs over the side of the rooftop, carelessly they dangled limply. He stared hard at the street below, not really seeing it as his eyes glazed over. Slowly, he reached up and pulled the limp hood of his vest over the back of his head, he found it's end heaped up at the base of his neck. His lengthy black and white strands of hair fell smoothly against his skull, no longer hidden from the world, the scarlet hue of his skin stood in contrast to the lack of colour of it.

His bright green eyes darted slowly back over to where he had last saw her, lonely walking the street before disappearing. By then, he hardly noticed the rain anymore and it didn't matter to him, what if it was raining or not? It didn't matter.

The tears still dampened his face.

"Vinyl..."

In his right hand was nothing but a simple photograph. A captured moment in time that he held close to his blackened heart. It depicted that of a happier time, there, smiling next to eachother was her and him.

In simple faded black marker read; "Kickback and Vinyl - Best Friends".

The picture crumpled as his fist clenched against it.

Author's Note

This is the rebooted version of my first fic, also titled Natural Selection
I've been an Alex Mercer fanatic ever since 2009 and a Pony fanatic since 2012
So, why not make a story about both? In case ya didn't pick it up, it's set in the Equestria Girls plain.
Cheers for reading.

Faceless - RED

Prologue - Everchanging

Prologue - Everchanging

Now the lines are drawn
Is this feeling gone?
The best parts of this have come and gone
And now that is all this is
With the reasons clear
We'll spend another year
Without direction, full of fear
And now things will be different

How does one begin a story? Supposedly, one could possibly say that it started on a day like any other. Of course it would start on a day, stories do tend to start on days. The sun rose steadily over the horizon on this fine morning, the birds were chirping merrily and everywhere in sight there were those that were eager to start the day off and willing to live it to it's fullest.

In all modesty, one could say that that held some modest merit and one of those was none other than that ever-lovable party extrordinaire, Cheese Benjamin Sandwich.

But all his friends just call him "Cheese", he'd always tell you.

It was rare that Cheese would ever meet someone that wasn't his friend, so ironically, more often than not, some of his friends hadn't even the slightest clue about the "Sandwich" in his name. Let alone the "Benjamin".

He didn't mind though. He hardly minded anything. The only thing he could say that really got to him was people questioning his party-planning skills, if someone openly declared that they disliked whatever party he threw, one any level, especially if it was currently going...

Well, to put it bluntly...he lost his shit.

But he never hurt anyone. He just couldn't find any reason why someone wouldn't like his parties, he'd always get praise for them the next morning by everyone in school. He smiled at that. He smiled alot, actually.

Sadly, he had a few friends that didn't smile. In fact, some of them he'd never seen smile at all. Actually, now that he thought about it, there was really only one friend he hadn't seen genuinely smile but that was a special case. He had a different way at showing emotion. A more subtle one. Cheese knew he wasn't depressed, he was actually very much against that sort of thing. Nevertheless...

...Kickback was a special case.

Cheese Sandwich stood resolutely by his locker, idly chewing on a toothpick. The bell was due to ring at any moment now. He stood there, silently watching his fellow classmates open their own, retrieve their books and the like then proceed off somewhere else. He glanced at the small metal door one over from across his, there were little-to-no differences on the outside but Cheese knew that on the inside, the two lockers couldn't be more contrasting. Behind his own door hung a broad calendar, expertly marked with every precise date of every birthday, holiday, even a wedding was marked. Amongst his books rested an assortment of streamers, cake recipes, balloons, party-hats and, insanely, fireworks.

Cheese liked to keep all his things neat and tidy in one space.

Cheese had seen Kickback's locker. It was dark, the narrow walls were lined with posters of band insignias, he was always aware that his friend had a very distinct love of music. He was never curious by his taste, he didn't think a band named; "The Offspring" would interest him all that much. That's all he could ever really make out besides his assorted books and pens, strewn throughout the locker. He hoped that Kickback would learn to lighten up his image someday.

Cheese sighed, the few lingering parties, such as himself camped out in the same hall, idly chatting to one another about the latest topic or the oldest one or the other. It was your stereotypical high school scene.

Everyone that caught Cheese's gaze snapped to his own and smiled broadly at him, sometimes he'd even get a wave. Surprisingly enough, when he saw Roseluck, she promptly winked at him. He grinned at that. However, he did not move, instead he waited. He chose to wait by his locker, to wait for his freshly-dubbed "Best Buddy". Almost, uncharacteristically so.

When he sensed someone standing beside him, he turned, silently hoping that it would be who he had been expecting. However, that was not the case. Still, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He beamed when he saw hers.

"Hiya, Cheese!" She greeted ecstatically. Pinkamena Diane Pie was her name. When Cheese transferred to Canterlot High, he wasn't completely sure what he'd expect. He was already fairly good at making friends and contrary to popular belief, was actually quite bright but nothing could have prepared him for her.

His childhood best friend, standing there, her hair just as bright and curly as he remembered. Her bright cyan eyes sparkling brightly and that impossibly large smile stretched across her beautiful face.

"Hey, Pinkie! What's up?"

"Oh, ya know? Just thought I'd "Hi" to my favourite partner-in-parties. That one last week was super-funerific!"

"It sure was! Do you still think that I should've got blue strobe-lights-"

Pinkie promptly shut him up by clamming his lips together with both hands. "Shush your face! It was perfect!"

Cheese smiled as best he could, given his current state. He would've tried to manage a thankful reply but it was at that moment did he notice someone behind Pinkie, walking towards them. He recognized him instantly, one could never mistake that contrasting scarlet hue of his skin combined with his over-grown black hair with that clashing white stripe running vertically across it.

Cheese's mouth snapped Pinkie's grip on his lips clean off as he grinned. Even managing to make her stagger back a little. "Kickback!"

Pinkie followed her yellow friend's gaze and turned around to find the man in question. She looked him up and down, finding him clad in a simple three-quarter sleeve shirt, a leather vest and a pair of red-striped black track-pants. "Sup, Cheese?" He offered the tiniest flicker of a smile before reaching for his locker.

However, Pinkie was in the way, she only noticed this when he gave her a raised eye-brow. "Oops, sorry." She said, politely. Kickback only nodded in reply.

He unlocked the small metal door and reached in. It was then that Cheese figured why he had never seen the inside of it before. The door swung to where he now stood...and come to think of it, he always stood there. Call it a force of habit. "So, where were you yesterday, Kick?"

He didn't duck his head out to look at his curly-haired companion but spoke nonetheless. "Sick."

"Awww, well, 'least you're all better now, right?" Pinkie chirped in.

"Reckon so, I guess." He replied simply. With nothing to follow up with, she merely smiled at him, despite him not being able to see it and turned back to her fellow party-animal.

"So, Cheese, I-"

"Whadd'ya catch?" He swiftly cut her off. Pinkie felt a tad dejected but shrugged it off.

"Hmm?" Kickback murmured as he poked his head out this time.

"What d'ya get sick with?"

Cheese decided to ignore the slight roll of his friends dark green eyes. "I don't know." Pinkie, however, chose to not ignore it. He then pulled out an A4 page notebook and promptly closed the small metal door. Well, closed is a relative term, either of the party planners would use the term slammed. Pinkie grimaced a bit at that but was still grinning wide, from ear to ear, the pink-haired girl was starting to notice the flat-out contrast that the two boys had.

Yet, according to Cheese, they were the best of friends and for Pinkie, that's all she had to know.

"See ya in science, man." Kickback said. There was that flicker of a smile again before he turned and sauntered off, leaving both Pinkie and Cheese to themselves.

Cheese noticed his female companion/rival/equal/...well, there was alot of things he considered her but above all, she was his friend, her gaze never left the direction that Kickback had walked in before disappearing around a corner. He decided to speak up. "He's really cool when ya get to know him."

When he said that, Pinkie felt a little...ashamed? Why didn't she know him? She knew everyone in school. Hell, she was fairly sure she was familiar with 99.9% of the town. Kickback, however...she had only seen him a few times and barely shared more than few words with him at irregular intervals. Pinkie was aware that the red-skinned teen was not the most talkative of the lot, the only person that spoke less than him that she knew was Applejack's brother, Big Macintosh. She had to forcibly keep her eyes from widening at the sudden revelation.

She knew Big Mac.

Well, of course she knew AJ's brother but she knew him. He worked at home on the farm with his two sisters and grandmother, he's been at Canterlot high for as long as she can remember. Soon won't be though, since he's now in his senior year but that's also what bothered her. Kickback wasn't a new student, he only just transferred last year. "Is he always like that?"

"What do you mean?" Cheese counter-asked.

"I mean...he seems kinda mopey, doesn't he?"

Cheese paused before he let out a deep, light-hearted chuckle. "Yeah, good ol' Kick can be a bit of a downer but ya get used to it."

Pinkie took a moment to process that. "Well...that's good, then."

The Great and Powerful Trixie idly shuffled her deck of cards with expertise. She reclined back on the cheap metal-legged plastic chair and casually flicked them back and fourth with her trained fingers, enjoying the satisfying sound they made as they flailed apart and then clashed back together.

Trixie was a magician. Everyone knew that. Though, she always seemed to be a bit smug about that and more than a little obsessed with performing illusions to her "Adoring public". It didn't matter how small the crowd was, Trixie would amaze and amaze she did. She adored it when her fellow students personally asked for a trick, especially when she had just shown them one of the hundreds she knew just a few minutes ago. Trixie hated to admit it to herself but as far as she went to appear bemused but willing on the outside, as much as she tried to remain amazing at all time, all she really wanted was attention.

And attention she got.

At least, most of the time...

The cafeteria rattled with the muffled echoes of Canterlot High's students, chatting idly about anything they found worth talking about. Her own table was no exception, as it was anything but quiet.

Trixie glanced over across the table. Sitting there, casually relaxed back in her seat was none other than that spiky-haired dubstep enthusiast, Vinyl Scratch.

"So, then I say; 'Turntables on Motorcycles'."

Trixie tried to suppress her oncoming eye-roll, she really did...but she just couldn't.

"Turntables on motorcycles?"

Of course, there was the girl next to her she was talking to. Honestly, after what had just been said, Trixie wanted little to do with the conversation. She looked over at her. She was a short girl but Trixie had to admit that she was actually kind of pretty...

Shut up, you! The Great and Powerful Trixie is straight!!

...Ahem...

The hue of her skin was a light shade of red, almost bordering on pink. However, when Trixie thought about the colour pink, all she could compare it to was that crazy and particularly bubbly mare that hangs out with those other girls, what were their names? Argh, what did she care? Trixie only noticed that that pink one would occasionally hang out with her own friend, Cheese Sandwich.

Trixie had a sneaky suspicion of what just might be going on between those two.

But she could worry about that later.

Her eyes were a deep, crystalline azure and her hair was almost blindingly white, of course, one could barely call it hair, as it was so short but it suited her. She was clad in a grey, unzipped hoodie over a single white singlet, both of which were cropped, exposing just a peak of the flesh of her stomach. That's all Trixie could make out but she vaguely recalled seeing her walk over to their regular table in a pair of jeans.

"Damn straight." Vinyl smirked, taking a quick swig of whatever was in her plastic red cup. Though Trixie couldn't tell if she even was looking at the shorter girl. Those obnoxious glasses of hers always made talking to her so much less...personal and Trixie believed this to be the point.

Slip Stream was her name. "That's...possibly the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard." She replied, bemusedly.

Trixie let out a chuckle, Slip had always a tendency to swear at even the least appropriate of times, it was one the qualities about her that Trixie found charming, if not, hilarious. Sometimes, it could get a little out-of-hand, like the time her phone got confiscate by Principal Celestia...we all remember that one, she was this close to getting expelled.

Oh no, she didn't go off at her. However, it might've been better if she did. Slip managed to bottle up all her rage as she reluctantly handed her electronic "life-support", as she called it to the principal.

"You'll get it back at the end of school." She said.

That may have sent Slip over the edge. As soon as Celestia was out of sight, Slip let it all out in one fearsome bout of rage. True, she might be a little for over-reacting but you could either hate her for it or tolerate it.

And it's generally in your best interest to tolerate it, lest you feel her wrath.

Anyway, Celestia may or may not have heard her...and the rest is history.

Trixie found out quickly that if you wish to make Slip angry, all one needs to do is use her middle name. Trixie could understand, whoever heard of a middle name like "Dana" before?

"I dunno, I think it sounds like loads of fun! Maybe I should try it!"

And of course, she had to take that over-eccentric voice straight to the ear-canal. Sitting beside her was the ever-lovable Cheese Sandwich. Remnants of his lunch flying out of his mouth, almost skewering Trixie in the eye. She cringed at that, sometimes, it really wouldn't kill the that forsaken party-animal to learn some manners.

"Let us know how it goes if you come out of it alive, would you, Cheese?"

Ahh, Trixie had nearly forgotten.

Besides the exuberant yellow menace, at the opposite far end of the table was Slip Stream's brother. Tentatively gnawing a fresh green apple, Trixie's eyes were glued onto the red-skinned man in question, as were everyone else's. Trixie had nearly forgotten about Kickback.

And it would appear that everyone did fore as soon as he spoke up, all eyes were on him in slight shock.

Thankfully, Cheese broke the silence.

"You bet, Kick!" He replied excitedly. Kickback let out a closed mouth chuckle at that before tearing into his apple with hungry prejudice. He let it sit there in his teeth as he reached down, Trixie could only make out a thin black wire before she dropped a card in her musings and ducked to pick it up without leaving her seat.

"So..." Slip began, turning to face the table. "Rainbow Dash...whadd'ya think?"

Trixie hit her head on the table.

"Whatcha mean?" Cheese asked blatantly.

"I mean, is she...you know..."

Trixie looked back over and gave slip the highest eyebrow she could manage. Then she scoffed. "The great and powerful Trixie does not associate herself with...jocks." she proclaimed.

"That's just it." Slip looked over at the blue-skinned girl in question on the far side of the room, sitting by her regular group. "You think she might be...you know?" She asked, still just as vague as before.

Despite not being able to see her eyes, one could feel the deadpan look Vinyl was giving her. "No, Slip, I don't think she's gay."

Slip barely paid attention to the DJ and turned to her brother, who sat there, silently nodding his head with his eyes closed and mumbling along with the music that escaped his earphones. "What do you think, Kick?"

He said nothing but it seemed like he heard her...his music got louder as a result.

"Kick." She repeated, giving her brother a stern glare.

"Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a..."

"Kick!" Slip raised her voice an octave and grabbed him by the shoulder.

That seemed to get his attention, he turned his head to face her, obviously not impressed by being interrupted by his little sister. He silently groaned as he lowered the volume on his phone and pulled out the speaker on the side Slip was on. "What?" He asked, irritation laced in his tone.

"What do you think about Rainbow Dash?"

Kickback took a moment before speaking. "...She's a decent football player. Lass's got legs stronger than a horse. Once or twice, I swore I saw that ball catch fire as it shot by the goalie."

Cheese cocked his head inquisitively. "Ya mean 'soccer', right? That's the one where you can't use your hands-"

"No, I mean football." Kickback swiftly cut him off. Cheese fell silent.

"Yeah, that's great and all but do you think she's a lesbian?"

Kick stared at his sister. She was as blatant as she was crude. "No, Slip."

Trixie watched on throughout the short ordeal and silently wondered what sort of powers the black and white-haired teen possessed over his sister fore as soon as he gave his input, Slip dropped the subject with a shrug and an almost inaudible 'Huh'.

Before the table could undergo another bout of silence, Vinyl spoke up. "So, as long as you've decided to grace us with your attention." She said, sarcastically. "Did ya listen to that track I told you to yesterday?" She asked.

Trixie returned to her cards. Not partially caring about the conversation. Though, even as she watched the four of them converse, bicker and joke, she couldn't help smile. They were still her friends.

Her only friends, really.

Trixie did not like to admit it to herself, among other things but she truly enjoyed their company, despite not openly expressing it like Cheese might've. Outside of her little high school social group, she was actually quite lonely. Trixie frowned a little at that, she didn't want to feel so insecure about her feelings towards her social life. However, as her eyes glided over to Kickback again, she didn't feel so uncertain about it. Her friends were here, they weren't going anywhere.

They wouldn't leave her.

"Trix'?"

She perked up at the mention of the abbreviation of her name. It took her a moment to find that it was Kickback, breaking away from his current conversation to address her. "You okay?"

There was a slight warmth in her chest as she saw the concern in his emerald-rimmed eyes. She let out a small grin. "Trixie is fine."

He gave her a nod of affirmation right before she looked back down at her deck. "Just fine..."

Cheerilee was happy.

Anyone that new her would tell you that she was the kindest and most patient woman that you'd ever meet, which was probably why she worked as a high school librarian. At least, that's what she appeared as. Maybe at a time, Cheerilee could say with confidence that she was just as the people around her claimed her to be, perhaps there was a time when she would challenge any day head on with a beaming smile, facing any problem that came her way with determined vigour.

She wasn't so sure of herself anymore.

Outwardly, she was never mean, hateful or resentful. However, on the inside, she was still only human. She had imperfections, she had everyday problems, she was just a normal person and normal people can only take so much. People can't be happy all the time and she knew that, she found solace in that, something to give her semi-bi-polar personality meaning, an excuse.

She shook her head on these thoughts and brought herself out of her musings.

Cheerilee sat reclined back in her chair within the library, her library. In her left was one of the many trashy romance novels from the less educational section, as she liked to call it. Little did her fellow faculty members know that some of these books were also less than family-friendly.

She could care less though, she knew that half the students had experience sex at least once...this semester and it wasn't like they were ignorant enough to not understand. In fact, Cheerilee felt herself more in touch with them as she let them read whatever they came across, made her feel like the "Cool Librarian".

She supposed that was one step below "Sexy Librarian"...not like that was her secret goal or anything.

Cheerilee let out a quiet giggle to herself as she reached for her the coffee mug beside her, awaiting patiently on the table, not quite watching where her hand travelled. Engrossed in her book, she went to grasp around the handle of her cup. Only to instead knock it off the side of the wooden desk.

Her reaction time didn't beat how long it took for the white porcelain to shatter on impact as it hit the floor, pieces of mug scattering amongst the dark brown spillage of condensed coffee beans.

"Shit!" Cheerilee breathed aloud to herself, quickly rising to her feet and pulling the chair alongside her as to not let the dark river reach it.

Normally, she would scold herself for swearing in student-accessible areas or more often, never curse on them at all but she thought it okay as there were clearly no one else in the library other than herse-

That's when she heard the tell-tale click of a computer mouse.

Slowly, she turned her head around to find that, in fact, she wasn't alone at all. For how long? She had no way to be sure. Sitting at one of the school's computers was one of the more regular students to come into the library, at free will, no less. Cheerilee suppressed a facepalm as she remembered him. Him and the fact that she hadn't noticed him until now. Him and the fact that she just audibly swore in front of a student.

She chuckled nervously. "Heh Heh Uhhh...Sorry, Kickback."

The screen's light bounced off his face, making his green eyes shine with the sheer emotion locked behind them; intent. "It's okay." He didn't even look up at her. "Need help with that?" He asked, his voice as monotone as ever.

Cheerilee stood up a little bit straighter and cleared her throat. "Oh, no, no, that's alright. Thank you though." Her eyes darted to the left. "You won't mention...that to anyone, will you, dear?"

The few seconds of maddeningly stressing silence felt like an eternity to her. She could imagine it now, this red-skinned kid was going to tell all his friends and then the staff would catch wind and then she'd be called up and then she'd be warned and then she'll accidentally do it again and then Principle Celestia will know what kind of person she is and then she'll fire her and it'll all be this little brat's fault-

"Of course." A deep, scratchy voice brought her out of her dazed breakdown. Normally, she would never find the voice to be all that special but right then, she heard the most sweetest melody come fourth from between the teen's thin red lips. "Who am I going to tell?...Heh, who would even believe me?"

She had never seen him smile before. Even if it was small...and he still wasn't looking at her. Cheerilee felt a sudden great deal of appreciation for the boy and for the second time that day, she genuinely smiled.

It was a bitch that the library floor had to be carpeted. Sweeping away the porcelain shards was easy enough but now she had to scrub out the coffee stain. It wasn't until she was done and tired did she realize that there were in fact faculty members that work to clean the grounds, namely the school janitor.

Cheerilee hadn't spoken to him very often but whenever she did, she always left either grumbling or laughing. Discord was always the wild card. It amazed her that he wasn't doing stand-up comedy rather than working at a high-school.

Maybe he just prefers it here.

Cheerilee let out a yawn, her mind did tend to wander during work hours. Speaking of which, she had no clue what the time was, so on her way to her desk, she passed Kickback, still sitting idly at the computer, his eyes never leaving the screen. She stopped to peer at the small digital clock in the far bottom, right-hand corner of the monitor. It was nearing three o' five, she grinned at the prospect of soon returning home.

Cheerilee's eyes flicked up from the clock up to the webpage Kickback had up. All she could make out was a bold headline, a name; Hope Ida-

That's all she could read before he promptly closed the window and logged off, almost by the second that she saw what he was looking at. Cheerilee blinked, barely registering that Kickback had darted off so quickly and before she knew it, he was at the door with an almost inaudible "Goodbye, Miss Cheerilee."

Call her crazy but she could sense the irritation behind his normally stoic tone. Then he was gone.

Right as the bell rang.

Cheerilee just stared.

Not long after that inevitable siren had rung throughout the grounds did the wave of eager-to-get-home teenagers begin piling out in droves. In the oncoming crowds, filtering out the various exits, one could hardly make out any particular face, especially if they were to be looking for someone, specifically.

Applejack stood resolutely, leaning against the dusty red brick outer walls of the school, doing just that.

Applejack was in all fairness, a cowgirl. She knew this and she was down right proud of it. AJ wore her Stetson with the utmost pride and never decided to play off her natural southern accent, even in the company of those that would call themselves "Sophisticated".

At least, not anymore.

She clacked the sole of her heavy leather boot against the wall, letting out a deep groan of impatience, ever watchful of the front entrance. She eyed some of the out-goers a little bit more lengthy than what was considered appropriate but she didn't care, no one was watching her...and she was bored.

That tended to happen when she waited.

However, she spat in time's face and waited. As she always did. Applejack liked to consider herself thick-skinned. It took a Hell of alot to try and get under her skin and she prided herself on that. She wasn't anywhere near as impatient and headstrong as her friend, Rainbow Dash.

Applejack chuckled quietly to herself at the thought of her long-running prismatic companion. To think, her, Rarity, Pinkie, Fluttershy and Dash had been the closest of friends since their eighth grade, about 3 years ago and she didn't think they'd ever stop being best friends.

She just knew it, what could possibly come between them?

"Might nothin', I reckon." She smiled to herself.

"Hmph."

Applejack jumped at the sudden deep, audible grunt behind her. Whipping her head around, she spotted the source. It was that red fella, the one who looks a mighty tad too much like her older brother, Macintosh. Except he was darker.

She decided that was probably the best way to describe the person in question; Dark.

His eyes were dark green, his skin was dark red and most of his hair was black. Not only that but Applejack could tell that the word was accurate on his personality.

Applejack always had a keen eye for folks. Could more often-than-not tell what you who anyone was like, really like. She liked to think of it as her "Super-secret-revealing powers" as Applejack tended to see through deception and lies as if it were the glass on a brand new wind-shield.

"Hell! Ya darn near startled me to death, how long have you been standin' there?" The cowgirl questioned.

"About as long as you have." Kickback replied, simply. "I take it you're waitin' for someone too?" He asked, though, the ingenuity in his tone was lacking as he lifted a fist to inspect his fingernails, almost smugly.

Applejack raised a single eyebrow at him. Not that she didn't know he couldn't see it. "Yeah...mah little sister, actually."

That managed to get Kickback to turn his head to look at her with his own little subtle surprised look. It didn't last long and about a second later, he turned back to face the grass beneath his feet. "...Me too."

Applejack smiled. "Didn't know ya'll had one...Kickback, was it?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"I'm Apple-

"I know."

She stared at him. "How d'ya know?"

"I'm good with names and we've spoken before."

Applejack couldn't recall a time when she had shared this many words with him. "Ah'm sorry, Ah don't quite remember-" She cut herself off as she noticed him wave with a thin smile at something behind her. Barely a second later after she had spun her head around to see just who, she saw what looked like a smaller, feminine version of who she had just spoken to. Only, she had blue eyes, her hair was miraculously shorter while there was no black in it and the red of her complexion was a tone or two brighter. With a little skip in her step, she bounced over to them.

"Hey, Kick!" She greeted swiftly before spying the girl next to him. "Whose your girlfriend?"

Applejack's eyes widened exponentially. Kickback just shook his head with a tired sigh, his lips turned up in amusement. She looked towards him, silently begging for him to usher in an answer, a denying statement, a truthful explanation! Something honest!

But all he did was just remain silent, not caring at all for his sister's little comment, however comical, embarrassing or wrong it may have been.

Applejack decided to step in.

"C'mon, Slip." Kickback quickly said, cutting her off and motioning his head a swift tilt in a gesture to be followed.

The younger one nodded resolutely, still smiling. "Can we stop by Sugarcube Corner on the way?" Slip Stream asked, walking alongside her brother. She was marginally shorter than him but that was to be expected, the fella was roughly about Big Macintosh's height aswell.

"Sure." He replied, looking down at her.

"Awesome."

Kickback then stopped and turned back around, looking as if he'd forgotten something. "Bye, Applejack." He gave a nod of salutation.

Then the two were gone. Applejack, stood there, her jaw partially gaped as she watched the two siblings stroll away down the street, occasionally blending in with the other students as they walked. All she could do was stare.

"But, we're not-"

"Howdy, Applejack!" An accented, high voice rung from her side. She turned to find Applebloom, her own little sister standing there, gazing up at her with a wide beam strewn across her face. She must've noticed her expression as her smile dropped, replaced by a curious frown. "What's wrong?" She asked.

Applejack asked herself that and she didn't come up with anything.

"Nothin', sugarcube." She smiled, ruffling her sister's bright red man affectionately. "C'mon, let's go home."

Applejack considered herself a cowgirl and Kickback; dark. That's all she needed.

How does one begin a story? Does one start with the main protagonist idly going about their business, showing whatever their lives were before the sudden events told in the story? Does one simply focus on the main character and only them as they write their tales? Speaking only about what they were doing, who him or her are and how they wind up mixed in the conflicts, confrontations, decisions and climaxes of the book? Only presenting supporting characters that range from the overly perfect, to the diverse, to the loved, to the hated, to the ones that the readers will pick as their favourites and even to the catalysts? Is that all what a story is? A narrated venture predetermined by some higher power, toying with the lives of those that know not of the real world and are instead cursed to live in the set universe that the author has conjured up for them?

Perhaps so. Perhaps not.

As one continues to ponder over these questions, to determine whether or not stories are simple prisons, just as they are conduits for their imaginations.

A story now begins to write itself.

Kickback was...less than empathetic. Actually, he supposed official doctors and psychiatrists would deem him a borderline sociopath and maybe he was.

He didn't care, which probably just added to the case.

He never gave it too much thought as to why ended up the way he did. If he had to guess, it was the nine years he spent in foster care with his sister, Slip Stream. He hadn't even known his mother until she was released from prison about seven years ago. He wish he could still say that. Kickback despised his mother and couldn't wait to graduate from school so that he finally move out and hopefully take Slip with him.

That was the chink in Kickback's armour, his sister.

No matter how dark he may appear, no matter how much he may seem to be an uncaring yet intelligent brooding teenager, he loved his sister and he didn't think that was going to change any time soon. After all, he was the only parental figure she had and he didn't feel like just her protective big brother but more of a guardian to her.

Though, just like any other emotion he had, it came out extremely subtle. It wasn't his fault but he just naturally didn't express himself, sure he'd smile when appropriate and wasn't a complete pessimist, he even had a small group of friends at school, so that would imply that he was at least slightly likeable. Didn't it?

Kickback shook his head, his elongated hair swishing back and forth, bouncing off the walls of his hood and brushing softly along his face. Now was not the time to dwell on his psychological or social status.

Kickback had always been exceptionally intellectual in all fields, never truly caring for any of them but when he first began to study genetics, he found his passion. This lead him to being approached by a researcher, named Sharp Shot that happened to work in said field and said work was supposedly invaluably important. It was only by chance that the young student would become the apprentice of this particular scientist. Though, he would go on about how it was "Destiny" that brought Kickback to him. He couldn't agree, he didn't believe in fate. However, it wasn't so much an apprenticeship as it was an internship, the young boy found himself doing errands around the office more so than he would've liked but the doctor at least had the good nature to pay him. It was a complicated relationship but Kickback had a sneaky suspicion the doctor knew more about him than he had ever spoken and that didn't settle right with him.

Nor did the implications of his work. He had never even heard of Hope Idaho and he kept seeing that name pop out in the doctor's notes. Kickback didn't like being left in the dark, he didn't like not knowing.

The air outside was marginally cold, the chilling steam that escaped his breaths was evidence of such. He stood, clad in a dark grey vest with no design, of which he had pulled the hood over his head and a long-sleeved white collared shirt, he supposed it was a bit too formal as it was a dress shirt but he didn't care.

Tilting his head up, he took in the familiar sight of the building. Kickback had never quite gotten used to seeing the rather grand scale of the tower. It was as if it just continued to reach the sky, even as it was confined to it's static form. Kickback's eyes travelled downwards from there and locked of to the large, bright, bold lettering that hung above the the three pairs of doors that lead into the building.

GENTEK

Kickback stared at it for a long moment. As the seconds went by, he suddenly found an urge to just back away from the tower, to race to the train station and return to his home. Something in the back of his mind told him to run, to never look back, to just continue with his life as best he could fore if he didn't and instead chose to walk into the building...He wasn't sure what was going to happen.

He thought back to the events of the day. It was just like any other day why should that change now? Why would that change now? He reminisced on the last words he spoke to Slip. He had just gotten dressed and was about to walk out the door. That was until she had popped her head from around the corner to her room.

"Hey, Kick?" She prompted.

His hand grasped around the cheap brass knob. "Hmm?"

"Can you help me with my science homework?" Kickback had thought she had figured out that her little 'Adorable Begging Puppy' face wasn't quite as potent on him as it used to be but she tried nonetheless and he chuckled good-naturedly at her. "Please?"

He shook his and turned to look at her with a smile. He managed to make this one a tad bit warmer than he normally would. "I'll be right back, Slip." He opened the door, letting the cool night hair to sweep in.

"Do you have to go?" Kickback stopped. That tone in her voice...

He turned back again. She was standing right in front of him, a sincere pleading look on her face. "I mean, in case Mom comes back before you..." She trailed off, choosing instead to cast her gaze down to the floor.

Kickback let go of the door knob and placed a hand on his sister's shoulder. That got her to look up at him. "Okay."

"What?"

"I'll stay tonight." He grinned kindly at her. "Someone's gotta take care of you."

"Y-you mean it?"

"I promise."

Slip Stream tackled Kickback into a bone-crushing hug.

He cringed.

That's what he should have done.

"Can you help me with my science homework?" Slip asked.

Kickback barely gave her a sideways glance. "I'll be back later. We'll do it, then."

Then he was gone. The door roughly slamming shut behind him before he promptly locked it from the outside. The sight of the empty driveway brought an angry glare to his face. He flicked his hood on, shoved his hands in his pockets and walked on. He silently wished it would rain soon. He liked the rain.

Kickback hands balled up into fists as he sauntered up to the door. He was going to keep his word, in there and out, easy, no drama, no work, he needed to get home. So, as he pushed open the door and walked into the lobby, only one thought swam through his mind.

Today will end as an ordinary day.

...Oh, how wrong he was.

It wasn't difficult finding the lab, this certainly wasn't the first time he had trekked the ridiculously large facility nor was his destination very far from the first floor. Something about the building left an uneasy feeling in his gut, he couldn't quite tell what it was until he reached the wing. He walked up to a door, one amongst the other few in the hallway, in a tiny bar was a thin slip that read; BLACKLIGHT.

It was then that he found what was bothering him. He turned his head to look down both corridors. There was no one. He hadn't seen anyone else in the building since he had arrived. Normally, he'd bump into someone and more often-than-not manage to shatter a coffee mug or two in the process but not tonight, evidently.

For a moment, he considered just backing away again, perhaps this was just another sign but a sign to what exactly? That he should make time for what really matters?

Kickback would've mused on this further if he wasn't brought out of his thoughts by what sounded like...laughing? Someone was laughing from beyond the door. More so than that but it held a certain quality about it that he couldn't quite place. With a now bold sense of curiosity, Kickback pushed on the door, only to find it locked, oddly enough but he could understand. Still, Doctor Shot had provided him with a keycard to the section.

An immense wave of dread washed over him as the security designated him fit to enter right before he went to open the door.

He searched around the lab, not a person in sight, no scientists, no interns, nothing. However, he could hear something. A low muttering if his ears didn't betray him and as quiet and jittery as it was, Kickback couldn't help but recognise the voice as Dr. Sharp Shot's.

Tentatively, he walked. As he did, the muttering became louder and more coherent, Kickback could begin to hear rummaging, like the sounds of furniture and equipment being carefully yet frantically thrown around in some attempt to accomplish something...but what?

He needed to know, he hated not knowing.

He made his way to the office, his hands tightly clenched into fists and a a glare crossing his face. Kickback stopped just short of outside the door, the words; Dr. Shot printed on the slip between the suspended brass bars. Now, he could hear his voice clearly, gravelly yet refined and he could note the undertone of malice glee in it. The door was cracked ajar just a touch, enough for Kickback to peak inside.

"Sharp Shot's journal, entry no. one hundred and eighty six." There he sat on his revolving chair behind his desk, looking directly into a simple pre-set-up camcorder on a tri-pod, so far he hadn't seen the intruder that now silently spied on him. His lab coat was dirty and ripped in several places, his hair was a dark tangled mass of slick violet and the hue of his skin was a pale blue. Kickback noticed he was actively concealing something in his coat, almost as if he was waiting to surprise the camera with it.

"I've done it." He breathed, cackling mid-sentence. "I've finally done it. All my life, I've been trying to usher in the next evolutionary step for mankind and have always come up short." He looked down into his pocket where his hand rested. "But now...now, I can give it to them. It was right in my face the whole time. It was there, mocking me, practically giving itself to me and I didn't take it...until now."

Kickback watched as he raised a vial from his tattered coat. His eyes widened. The substance inside seemed to move on it's accord even as Sharp Shot moved it about while raising it to the camera, cradling it the same way a mother would handle her child. "The key was always the original strain. I just had to isolate it, separate it from all it's imperfections. It took time, oh, yes, it took time. Lost so many test subjects...but I've done it. I've perfected the virus!" He cackled madly as he brought out a syringe from one of the drawers to his left.

He drove it into the vial and extracted at most, half of it's contents. "Operation: Blacklight is over...the dawn of a new age has arrived...and I...shall be it's prophet."

Before Sharp could inject himself, the door to his office was abruptly barged open. When he turned towards it, he suddenly found his head collide with a nearby wall.

Kickback's eyes narrowed, his teeth gritted against eachother as he watched the doctor rant and rave above his 'Gift' to mankind. All he could think about was driving that needle directly into his eye socket. Now, it all made sense. Sharp Shot had taken to studying viral genetics since his enrolment at Gentek. Kickback knew better, between the virus's traits and the research Sharp had put into it, he could tell that Dr. Shot was studying bio-weaponry and had fooled everyone. All this time, he'd had a hidden agenda, there was only one thing Kickback could say to him.

He kicked in the door. "You sick fuck!"

Before Sharp could even respond, the hooded intruder promptly grabbed him and threw him against a wall, the vial falling precariously to the floor while his hand kept tight around the syringe. Sharp staggered from the shock and impact but regained composure just fast enough to watch the glass container shatter onto the hard floor, the contents of which splattered across it in a dark red stain.

Kickback expected him to scream in denial, to lash out at him the second he got but all Sharp did was look down at the needle in his hand and then up to him. In that moment, the boy could see just how far the doctor had fallen from his sanity and even more so when he began to speak. "Why, Kick, I wasn't expecting you tonight. How's school?"

"Shut the Hell, you mad bastard." He growled. "So, this has been your little 'pet project'."

Sharp Shot stood up slowly. "Well, technically it's our project but yes. Yes, it is." He mockingly dusted himself off. "I thought you were on board with it."

"Infecting the world with a deadly virus? I should kill you."

Sharp's expression suddenly made the hooded boy a tad less confident. "Infecting it? I'm saving it! Can't you understand what I'm doing? Humanity is stagnant, dying!" He raised the syringe in his hand. "I would give it one body, one mind. I'm sure you've done some digging around and found just what happened in Hope Idaho."

"Yes, I have and you want history to repeat itself..."

"Think about it. No more conflict, no more disease, no more suffering. Don't you see? I'm giving it a second cha-!"

Kickback had enough. With a swift motion, he swung his fist into Sharp Shot's jaw. This time, actually managing to make him drop the syringe. That seemed to be enough to set him off fore when he looked back at his former apprentice, the anger that burned within his silver eyes was immeasurable. As the glass shattered, Kickback was roughly knocked to the ground by a single punch to the teeth. Before he could stand up, Sharp growled and brutally kicked him in the face, sending his hood flying off and sending flying him across the room.

Kickback staggered to his feet but was hoisted off of them as Sharp grabbed him by his collar and threw him flat across his own desk, papers and equipment following the boy as he rolled off the edge, crumbling to a heap on the floor. Sharp sauntered over to him and glanced towards the shattered containers that dropped from his hands. His hopes and dreams that were literally crushed by this child.

"Do you have any idea what you've done!?" Sharp shouted, crouching down beside the trembling body of the hooded student. Kickback's hands scrounged around the debris for a weapon, he grabbed the large and heaviest object he could find. A laptop. "Years of research and for wh-" And roughly bashed it against Sharp Shot's head. The resulting thud and cry of pain was satisfying. However, he couldn't bask in his sudden triumph for long. He stood up, noticing that the doctor hadn't and was about to dash towards him with a swift kick but was stopped as Sharp managed to find his weapon; a beaker. Without hesitation, he spun around and ditched it right at the hooded teen.

Even as he brought his hands up in a reaction to protect himself, Kickback felt the glass shatter and pierce broken shards through his clothes and into his skin. He screamed in agony as he felt blood seep from his forearm and his side. Before he could focus on the pain, he was roughly shoved backwards and ended up tripping over the table again. Kickback looked towards the chair and grabbed it by it's leg. As Sharp pushed the desk aside to reach him, Kickback swung the chair into his head.

Sharp staggered backwards across the office, stepping precariously towards the large glass window. The boy in the hood noticed this for a brief second and decided to act rather than think. With as much strength as he could muster, Kickback threw the chair at Sharp. Too dazed to realise what was going on, he failed to dodge or catch it and instead went flying back into the glass. A small crack formed in it when the back of his head bounced off against it.

Kickback didn't waste any time. He dashed over to Sharp Shot, grabbed him by his neck and squeezed. The mad doctor squirmed and wrapped his hands around the arm that held him, that choked him. In that moment, something seemed to snap inside Kickback, the green of his eyes might as well have been on fire because the way Sharp looked at him as he fought for his life...he had never seen anyone so scared before.

He didn't like the way it sounded but for whatever reason...he liked it.

A growl escaped him as he punched Sharp across the face, still holding him in his vice-like grip. Bloody splattered from the doctor's mouth onto both of their clothes. Kickback slammed his head into the glass, the crack that formed there grew as did the splash of crimson. He became relentless.

Punch.

Slam.

Punch.

Slam.

Crack.

With a roar, Kickback pulled the now-barely alive Sharp Shot away from the unstable window and grabbed his collar with both hands. He looked into his eyes once again, watching as they struggled to remain open. There was no madness or hatred in those eyes now. They were dead. He was dead. He just didn't know it yet. Kickback gave the doctor one more rage-filled glare before he acted.

He threw him.

The weight of the geneticist's body was enough to finally make the glass give way. It shattered on impact. Sharp Shot was sent hurdling towards the ground from about twenty stories up. Kickback staggered to the ground, slowly moving away from the window, not bothering to look over the edge. He knew what he'd find.

A ragged sigh escaped him. Oddly enough, it hurt to breath. He looked down, he saturated in blood, and the floor began to pool it around him. His lacerations went deeper than he had thought and he was sure a rib or two were broken as were a few teeth knocked out.

Had Kickback done the right thing? Was what he had just done justified? Murder is still murder but given the circumstances...

He couldn't think, his head felt light and he felt drained. Kickback looked over to the vial. Then over to the syringe, viral liquid spilling from each. He smiled at that.

He smiled even as the tears flooded his eyes.

Was this it?

Was he just supposed to die tonight? Was there some form of poetic justice in this? A sacrifice for the good of mankind? Or was it just karma biting him for killing a man in cold blood just moments before?

Kickback began to weep, clutching at his bleeding wounds as if that would get them to stop. "S-slip..."

He wondered if there'd be a funeral. If anyone might be able to understand why two men had to die tonight and the darkness behind the reason. He wondered if there might've been anyone that would agree with Dr. Sharp Shot. Maybe humanity is inferior, maybe we do need to find some way to better ourselves, to evolve.

It's just natural selection, after all. A key mechanism in evolution.

He though about his sister. Hopefully she'd be okay without him, maybe their mother will get busted again and she'll be sent into foster care again. He thought about his friends. He chuckled. If they could see him now, not even Cheese could lighten this mood, try as he might. The thought of Vinyl looking down on him as he lay there, dying brought upon another wave of sorrowful tears.

Perhaps his claim to hold no empathy wasn't as true as he had thought.

Kickback found comfort in that, he wasn't a heartless monster.

He breathed one final time.

"...I-I'm...s-s-sorry..."

Then he was gone.

Unbeknownst to the contents of both the vial and syringe bonding together on their own accord and slithering towards him in a heaping, writhing viral mass.

How does one begin a story?

With the end, of course.

Author's Note

I know, I know. Some of you are screaming in your seats; "A prelude AND a Prologue? When will the claw-cleaving carnage happen?! C'mon Scarlet!"
Don't worry, trust me, mate, there shall be blood.

Everchanging - Rise Against

Chapter 1 - War of Change

Wait, it's just about to break, its more than I can take,
Everything's about to change,
I feel it in my veins, its not going away,
Everything's about to change.

Slipstream was tired.

Her jaw opened wide as she let out a powerful yawn, staring blankly up at the television screen, the remote to control it's display hanging limply off the armrest by her left hand. She was the only one home. It seemed that was the regular case for the past few nights. Before, it was just her and her brother alone in the house and she couldn't remember when it was all three of them. Slipstream didn't even know the fourth, she was certain he was dead. Still, she could be thankful, this was far better, in her opinion, than living at the orphanage.

Even if she knew if Kickback had his way, they'd still be there. He didn't like their mother and neither did she, at least, in the beginning. Slip was starting to warm up to her but neither her brother, nor her mother were making much of an effort to get along and she knew it was just for her sake.

Slipstream loved Kickback. Despite everything, she knew she could count on her big brother for anything and he would always be there for him, no matter what.

She looked over towards the front door and sighed. Where was he?

She glanced towards the clock that hung high on a wall in the kitchen, peering at it from her distance she could make out that it read out quarter to eleven.

Slipstream sighed again. She had been waiting too long and had now accidentally cut even more time off her sleep, she groaned, irritated at that thought. With a flick of her wrist, the television's screen became void of picture before she sat up, yawning and arching her back as she stretched. Slip smacked her lips together as she trudged towards her bedroom. She would see Kickback in the morning and if not, at school.

She was always thankful that he stuck by her there, even proudly introducing her to his friends when she began high school. She liked Vinyl, she thought the DJ was cool. She even knew certain things about her that her brother didn't, or at least, suspected. That was a given, however, she noticed how Kick acts around people, even his friends. He was never one to be the life of the party but rather was content to merely sit aside, smiling that tiny smirk of his and only speaking when spoken to, most of the time.

Slip had a sneaky suspicion that Vinyl had a certain outlook of Kickback, one that caused her to stare at him for longer than appropriate and whenever she would call her out on it, she'd blush and deny it.

Slip let out a giggle and she nestled herself in her bed. Her head dropped lazily onto the pillow and she curled herself up closer to herself. It was cold but her thick blankets helped out some.

As she closed her eyes, she swore she could hear a voice speak to her. It almost sounded like an apology.

Nodding politely to the old light green lady behind the counter, a gesture that was gladly returned by the woman in question, she took the metal tray in her hands and exited the line with her food balanced precariously in her grasp. Her dark cerulean eyes scanned the large room, the tables bustled with her fellow students as they chatted amongst themselves, all seeming to be categorized by some un-written rule. What was clear, however, was that she didn't know who anyone was nor did she know who she would fit in among.

Colgate was uncertain.

Her large, sparkling blue eyes darted left and right as she slowly carried her tray through the weaves of tables. Most of them were packed, not leaving any room for a newcomer to take a seat and even if there was, she wasn't sure she welcome in any of them. Colgate was a smart girl and had a keen eye for character in people. She was thankful of that as it managed to steer her away from any trouble, the last thing she wanted was to make an enemy out of some pretentious bitch on her first day at Canterlot High. Colgate supposed that made her a tad overly-sumptuous but more often than not, it's worked in her favour.

Suddenly, she caught sight of a fairly crowded table but noticed a couple of empty seats. Immediately, her attention was brought to a singular girl that sat there with an aura of superiority around her. The girl's hair was a fiery two-toned mass of gorgeous red and yellow strands and her eyes were a as light blue as the sky. Colgate could only make out the white, metal studs that dotted around the opened collar to her black denim jacket and simple light purple shirt with the image of a sun printed on it. Her expression as she talked amongst the others that occupied the table made her seem friendly enough.

With cautious optimism, she took a step forward.

Only to be stopped by a wall of yellow.

"HI!!" It greeted.

"Ah!" She yelped.

It took Colgate a few seconds to register what she was seeing. She shook her head and look back to find two wide bright green eyes and an impossibly large, beaming smile staring at her. She took a step back to compose herself and took in the figure before her. A tall, lanky, dark yellow boy with poofy, culry brown hair stood in front of her. Donned in a button up, striped shirt. She nearly cringed at his sense of fashion, the thing was sporting black with red, white, yellow and purple stripes, all going in random directions.

"Are you new here?" He asked, giddily.

Colgate cleared her throat. "Yeah?"

"Awesome! Come on, sit with us!" Before she knew it, she was yanked by her wrist by...Who was he, again? She was about to ask but was promptly thrown into an empty seat. Miraculously, she found her tray placed safely in front of her on the table. Colgate was confused. She looked to her left and found a girl sitting next to her, her two-toned spiky blue hair bobbed as she nodded her head to the music blasting into her ears from the DJ-grade headphones she wore upon her head. She greedily took a bit out of her sandwich, not really noticing her.

Colgate looked to her right and found yet another fellow female. This one was looking at her with a cocked eyebrow with a set of five cards held openly in her hand. She brushed a lock of snow-white hair behind her ear as she stared at Colgate with an uncertain look shining in her oddly dull purple eyes.

"Umm...Hi." Colgate offered.

She didn't reply, instead choosing to cast a deadpan look over to the boy that dragged her here. "Cheese, who is this?"

Cheese, as he was evidently called just smiled at her. "She's my new friend, Colgate!"

Colgate perked up. She hadn't even hinted at her name. "How did know-"

"She's new here and now we can all be buddies!" He cheered, cutting her off.

"How..." She began, looking back over to the newcomer. "...Delightful." She groaned, sarcasm dripping from her words.

"Awww, don't be like that, Trix'." Colgate heard a new voice. Loud, bombastic but genuine. She turned her head to see it was the girl to her right, apparently, she had finally chosen to be a part of the conversation. "Besides, we are kind of a small crowd, it might be cool havin' a new face around here." Colgate noticed her offer her a toothy, friendly grin. "Name's 'Vinyl Scratch'." She pointed a finger towards the girl across her. "You've already met Trixie."

"That's 'The great and powerful Trixie' to you." She scowled at Vinyl, flicking a deck of cards in her hands back and forth, almost mechanically before she looked back to Colgate and offered a smug little smirk. "Charmed."

"Ummm...Likewise."

"Anyway." Vinyl spoke up again, prompting Colgate to look back at her. She pointed over across the table. "That's Slip..." Her blue eyes casted a glance over to the light red girl, prodding at her mashed potatoes with a somewhat solemn expression on her face. Vinyl gestured over to the guy that brought her to the table. "...This is Cheese and-" She paused as her hand waved over towards the direction of an unoccupied seat at the end of the table. "Hey, where's Kick?"

"Dunno! Haven't seen'im all morning!" Cheese happily mentioned, ironically

Colgate was confused, again. "Kick?"

"Trixie hasn't seen him either today." Colgate looked over to the girl and saw her dull expression, starring at her cards as she shuffling them around. "Not that Trixie cares, mind you. She just thought she'd mention it."

"Who is-"

"Slip, where's your brother at?" Vinyl asked.

Slip scowled down at her food. "What makes you think I know where he is?" She spat with disdain. The others were all slightly taken aback by her tone but Colgate just sat there, clueless of what or whom they were speaking of.

"Well, doesn't he, like, I dunno, live with you?" Vinyl's voice became steadily more aggressive with each word she spoke. Slip just scoffed. Everyone went silent at that, almost out as if expecting her to talk again. She didn't. "So? Where is he?"

Slip's shoulders slumped. "I don't know."

Vinyl's eyebrows cocked from behind her glasses. "Whatdd'ya mean; 'You don't know'?"

Slip's eyes snapped to the DJ with spite. "I said I don't know!" Her glare lingered for a moment longer before she looked back down at her food. "He left the house last night. He didn't come back and he wasn't there this morning. I figured he might've gone to school a bit earlier than me..." A half-hearted grin crossed her face as she let out a brief chuckle. "...But he's kind of a creature of habit, so I didn't follow up on that thought."

Cheese seemed to catch wind of the conversation at that point. "You tried giving him a call?" He offered. Colgate and even Trixie looked to him in slight awe, his tone was quiet, composed and genuinely concerned.

As if on cue. Vinyl brought her phone down from her naked ear, oddly enough, no one saw her with it a second ago. "Straight to message bank." She looked over to the newcomer. "Well, guess ya won't be meetin' him today but ya just might if ya stick around with us." She looped a loose arm over Colgate shoulder. "Trust me, you won't find a better bunch of friends in this school." Colgate looked around the table and before she knew it, a little smile worked it's way onto her face.

"You're sure as sugar about that!" Cheese chimed. He gulped the last remnants of his sandwich with gusto and reclined back in her plastic chair. "Hope he's okay."

Slip offered a thin smile.

"Yeah, same." Vinyl added.

Trixie shied away from the others and looked down to the floor, she spoke in a hushed tone, as if not wanting the others to hear her. "Me too."

It took a special kind of person to make a career out of working at a hospital. It took a special kind of person with a certain interest in death to make a career out of working at a morgue.

Dr. Scalpel was one of those certain special people.

It was quiet in the office late at night, she sat upright in her chair in the revolving chair behind her moderately expensive wooden desk, she always felt it was important to keep a straight posture. There was nothing to special about her workplace but it was her's and that was enough, wasn't it? Her hand scrambled around frantically with a pen held loosely in her fingers as she scribbled down the last of the details from a homicide that happened last week. She had only received the body yesterday.

Victim was killed instantly by a single gunshot wound to the chest...how boring.

To anyone else, this may have seen disrespectful and very inappropriate, perhaps even worrying but Dr. Scalpel had been a mortician for...how many years was it?

She could worry about that later, all that mattered was that she had seen every case there was to see and frankly had gotten bored of the method that most of these killers take. Sometimes, she gets lucky and there's a serial killer with a very unorthodox preferred way to 'off' someone, if you will. Now, that was the way to do it, with imagination. Sometimes, when she was alone, she thought about how she would commit her murders if she was a-

She stopped herself, her dull lime-green eyes stared dead ahead, she paid no mind to the loose strands of black hair that swayed across the glasses. At that moment, Dr. Scalpel thought that she might have been going insane.

Her ears caught the distant sound of wheels rolling along a solid floor but the clatter of the double doors being barged through the doors to room is what broke her out of her daze.

"Doc?"

"Officer Smoke."

The mortician regarded the police officer with a friendly smile, this was hardly the first time that she and the cop had crossed paths under these circumstances or otherwise. In he walked, his short, light brown hair slicked back under his short-brimmed hat. Dr. Scalpel often questioned why she had rarely seen him in his standard blue uniform and to present himself, looking more like a detective than a cop. Still, she thought he looked, if she was honest with herself, quite handsome in that dark leather vest of his. She could deal without the horrid stick of a cigarette poking from between his teeth. Scalpel could never stand or understand why people would want to voluntarily consume deathly chemicals through their mouths or otherwise. She could look past that, however, it wasn't necessarily her business even if she considered them friends.

She supposed it was a trait that fitted his name.

"Got a couple of bodies for ya, Scalp'."

The doctor cast her eyes to the thin sheet on top of the table he wheeled in, the outline of a, as he said, body lay under it, motionless. She internally groaned, she had had enough time on the job to see a boring case when she saw it, even before she got a knife into the body. Everything was there, arms, head, torso, legs, everything was intact. However, she did find it odd that there was no blood anywhere seeping through the sheet from the body. She scoffed at that, it was a probably a strangle victim.

In her musings, Smoke had stepped back outside and retrieved another body.

"This one seems a bit straight forward. We found him on the concrete with this one-" He gestured to the first body. "-about a hundred stories up with the glass to the room shattered and dead on the floor. Dunno what killed him though."

Scalpel didn't reply to that and instead decided to have a quick look at the first body. With a quick flick of her hand, she pulled the tarp off the face of it. In the corner of her eye, she could see Smoke's features noticeably yet not dramatically fall.

"He's just a kid. Barely older than my son..."

"You shouldn't empathize with a corpse, especially when there is two of them. For all we know, he was the killer here and the other one just managed to get a fatal shot in before taking the express elevator to the ground floor."

Smoke's eyes widened a touch but he managed to let out a nervous laugh. "I guess you're right but still...poor kid." He gave a look to the other body and merely sighed.

Scalpel seemed to welt a bit at his emotional display. "I'm sorry, guess I'm getting a bit too used to this, heh."

"Do whatcha love, doc." He yawned. "Alright, well, 'night."

"Goodnight."

With that, Smoke walked out of the morgue, leaving Scalpel alone with the latest two subjects in her career.

Octavia considered herself rather ordinary.

There she sat in one of the school's most popular hang-outs, Sugarcube corner, nestled in her regular booth.

She glanced down and watched in silence at the waving tendrils of steam rising from her coffee cup. She gave a quick lick of her lips and out of feeling the slight dry touch to them, she lifted the how liquid to her maw and took a quiet sip. The bitter flavour brought a smile to her face. Her eyes scanned up the table and she spotted a the finest tip of a snow-white finger and that's when Octavia remembered that she was all but alone.

She followed the hand up the forearm, decorated in assorted bracelets, up to the electric cyan, spiky hair that fell over hidden shoulders and finally to the the shining magenta goggles that concealed her friend's eyes.

Vinyl Scratch sat there in her side of the booth, one elbow leaning on the table while she rested her cheek on her fist, twiddling her thumb around on her phone that she kept at eye-level. Octavia hardly believed that she was paying any attention to her and if she was, she looked just as well as she did.

Sometimes, it confused Octavia as to how her and the DJ were friends, quite close friends at that. Sure, she didn't sit with her group during breaks at school but she had numerous classes with her and ironically, the two seemed to just click. Something she found quite odd, after all, Octavia was a cello player, something everyone knew. Sometimes that felt like the only thing people knew about her and even sometimes she thought that...well, that was all that needed to be known about her. This girl sitting across from her was a DJ, also something everyone knew. She had her headphones on so much that it was considered an oddity that you would hear the spiky-haired music lover ever utter a single word, an honour if that word was spoken to you, specifically. She supposed her...rather mixed-up group was far ahead from used to it. Octavia would always look over and see her talking up a storm with that party-animal, Cheese Sandwich, that over-zealous magician, Trixie and those other two. She could remember the young girl's name was Slip Stream but for the life of her, couldn't remember the older brother's name.

Octavia considered herself quite ordinary.

Octavia considered Vinyl Scratch anything but.

Yet despite their opposing nature

Octavia was glad she was her friend.

"Heh Heh..."

"What?"

"This pic of me and Kick'."

Vinyl flipped her phone around as Octavia leaned forward to see what she was referring to. On the thin rectangular glass screen was a photo of Vinyl standing next to the other boy in her group. Her hand looped around his shoulder as his own lay half-heartily just above her hip. Her goggles were swinging precariously by her opposite hand and possibly the biggest beam Octavia had ever seen was planted without mercy on her face. The taller figure looked less-than-thrilled about the situation but gave a thing smile nonetheless, his opposite hand firmly in his pocket as his eyes rolled upwards, the black and white strands of his hair drifting lazily in front of his eyes.

It was then that Octavia noticed the neatly, obviously edited-in text that displayed itself in curvy, oddly light red lettering.

Kickback and Vinyl - Best Friends

Octavia resisted the urge to snap her fingers and plant a firm palm against her forehead. That was his name.

She let out a brief laugh, allowing a playful grin to spread itself across her dull-grey features. "And I thought we were the best of friends, Vinyl." She joked.

If Vinyl looked up at her as she turned the phone back towards herself, Octavia couldn't tell. "We are, Octy'." She chuckled. "Just Kick' here is my best guy friend."

Everything about that sentence could be reworked into something entirely different to what it meant and Octavia, being a teenage female high-school student, almost jumped at the first chance she got to do just that.

She didn't however.

She let it sit for a good few seconds, letting the silence seem like a safe-haven for all things platonic.

Then she struck.

"Oh? Is that all?"

Vinyl's head didn't tilt in her direction but if she looked at the grey-skinned girl sitting across from her, she would've seen the largest shit-eating smirk that Octavia had ever plastered on her face.

"Whadd'ya mean?"

"Well, I think you two look rather cute together."

Octavia was cackling in her head. She could picture it now, Vinyl would blush and shyly deny it then she would press forward and Vinyl would get overly defensive, which in-turn would make her angry, which would lead to her saying something. Something she didn't want her to here, something she didn't want anyone to hear and she would be in on the secret. Octavia was always a fan of drama, she would push Vinyl in the right direction, guiding her heart to the one that she holds close to it. It may take days, weeks, months or even years but if she's lucky, she would manage, in the end, to see Vinyl reach her goal. To become enveloped in the arms of her love, they'd kiss and she's be there, roaring with victory in the side-li-

She heard a deep, raspy chuckle across from her. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, Tavi'." Octavia blinked, watched with a slightly open jaw as her friend swiped away at her phone. "You go ahead and giggle all ya want about me and Kick', can go and think whatever you want and shit." She laughed again. "Honestly, I think all those drama classes and those books you read are messin' with your head, girl."

Octavia deflated a touch. "Sorry, Vinyl. I just thoug-"

"But."

Vinyl lifted a hand to her glasses and slowly, almost teasingly brought them down from her eyes. Octavia stared as her friend blinked a couple of times before staring back with bright magenta irises. She smiled briefly before looking back to her screen, Octavia noticed the slight lowering of her eyelids as she gazed back at her phone.

"I guess I am kinda into him."

Octavia blanched.

"Just wish I knew where he is..and if he's okay."

The tray clattered to the ground, the metal hitting the porcelain creating a deafening ring that screamed throughout the building. A foot was planted, shaking in it's cheap black shoe. The leg followed up to a simple dark skirt, a simple aqua-marine shirt, shielded by a white coat and finally, up to the face of one particular mortician.

Dr. Scalpel stared, trembling as the look of abject terror and confusion was etched across her face. At least once in a person's life, they've done something that they wish hadn't done and instead had done something else. This was definitely was one of Scalpel's moments and the option she should've chosen was going home, reading a book, perhaps an erotica and go to bed.

She wished she had done that but instead, she had decided to stay at the morgue and perform an autopsy on the latest cases given to her.

Now, the good doctor is a professional. During her work, she is always composed and steady, never surprised and never unprepared. She also doesn't tend to talk to herself other than when she's doing her voice recordings for certain cases but that's for work. Personally, she isn't prone to speaking when she's the only one around and is always composed during her work and in general. So when she takes a step back, blanches at what she sees before her and her mouth speaks her mind, all while alone and in the morgue, one knows that the certain something that caused such is due for such.

"What. The. Fuck?"

Nothing.

Scalpel had laid out the body of the...intact victim on a surgical table. Getting through the clothing was simple enough, the guy was wearing a grey hooded vest, easily opened by a zipper and a white, collared, button-up shirt when he died and obviously, still was. She went to feel around the frame of the body, gliding her hand over his dark red skin. Anyone that caught her doing so would think she was crazy or to be more specific, a necrophiliac. She scoffed at the idea, the victim obviously didn't spend alot of time in the gym, that is to say that the victim wasn't necessarily out-of-shape, just not overly toned.

Scalpel had to admit that, facially, he was rather cute.

She paused.

Shook her head.

And went to take a surgical knife from the tray next to her.

With care, Scalpel lowered the eight-inch blade to the body's stomach. It took her a moment but she suddenly found herself quite curious. She had checked around the throat, finding no sign that the cause of death was suffocation and when she opened his shirt, she found no blood. Something she found rather odd as didn't she find blood on the corpse when it was brought in? It had been ages since a dead body had peaked her curiousity so much, she found herself grinning thinly as the blade made contact and with a bit of extra pressure, she cut through the skin with mild ease.

To her surprise, little-to-no blood spilled from the entry, which made sense, she supposed. Didn't it? No, the heart may stop beating but the gallons of blood in a living body just doesn't simply disappear...this sparked her to press forward, she simply had to know. Know what? Exactly.

With only the thin plastic of her gloves protected her from the grime and dead tissue that lurked from within the corpse, Scalpel pried apart the cut she had made with both hands and peered inside. Odd, she didn't see anything. She shrugged and plunged deeper. Still nothing. Weird. Grabbing a small torch that lay off to the side on the same tray, Scalpel shined the light into the bloody crevice, expecting intestines, a liver, kidneys, a bladder or the outline of a spine.

There was nothing.

Realising this, the doctor jumped back, knocking over her surgical tray and staring with blatant horror at the...what she thought was a human body.

That brings us up to now.

"What in the Hell are you?"

Nothing. Nothing in the world could prepare her for what she saw next. She could've watched twelve children butchered mercilessly by a demonic clown and she still would've had the same reaction that she did right then.

As if her words were a cue in a grand theatrical play, what she could describe as red and black...tendrils surged from the body. The visage was nauseating as they swarmed around the body. They seemed to focus on the cut, enveloping it in a writhing mass of sickly colours and shades. Through the blur and her own terrified bewilderment, Scalpel watched as the wriggling web seemed to...close the wound that she, herself, had made. She desperately wished this to be a dream, a horrible nightmare brought on by too many late hours and caffeine but the image was so ironically real, she almost threw up.

Finally, it stopped. The tendrils seemed to seep back into the body. The incision sealed tight, as if it never happened.

Scalpel dared not move an inch nor take her eyes off the body less she accidentally awaken the...whatever it was that was in the room with her. She tried her hardest to calm her breathing but the sheer horror of it all left her a hyper-ventilating mess, never had she felt so helpless. So scared.

Yet despite how focused she was on the body...

...she didn't even notice the pair of dark green eyes snapping open under his grey hood.

Author's Note

Leave it to me to write 300+ words about nothing that matters.
Fuck my mind.
Alright, ya find any errors? I've got little patience for pre-reading and no pre-readers at my beck and call.
Anyway, there's the official beginning, cheers for readin' and remember kiddies; An apple a day keeps Alex Mercer away...so unless you want him to be your friend, eat bananas.

War of Change - Thousand Foot Krutch

Chapter 2 - Figure

Chapter 2 - Figure

You've become a part of me
You'll always be my fear
I can't separate
Myself from what I've done
Giving up a part of me
I've let myself become you

Kickback's chest rose dramatically as his lungs inhaled a sharp intake of air. His body bolted up, his eyes were impossibly wide, his pupils shrunk to the size of pin-points. He hacked and coughed, wheezing for breath as he hunched over on a...what was he sitting on?

He heard an ear-shattering scream.

When he shot up at the noise, he only just caught sight of a woman in a lab-coat before he found himself rolling off the side of the...table? Kickback hit the white-tiled floor with a dull thump, he groaned and let out another cough, he stared at the splatter of red that splashed onto the porcelain ground and gritted his teeth, tasting an odd copper tinge around his mouth. He made to get to his feet but hacked as he felt a searing pain surging through his body, as if every individual cell that made up his biological structure was slowly burning him to death.

He heard a crash.

Straining his neck to turn, he forced his eyes look at what caused the noise. There was the woman again, scattered around her were a collection of surgical tools; syringes, scalpels, some of it Kickback didn't even recognise. He didn't pay attention to that though, all he saw was the look on the woman's face. Never in his life had he seen anyone look so scared. She stared at him as if he were some demon that had crawled from the darkest pit of Hell and even that didn't justify it. Her breath was ragged and short, Kickback was even certain he could hear her heartbeat quaking in her shallowly rising and falling chest. For a moment, one solitary moment, he could swear that he saw it beating through her breast.

He presumed she was a doctor of some kind. Her petrified stare from behind the thin glasses that rest on her nose never tore away from Kickback's eye. Her jaw jittered uncontrollably, as if she was trying to form words. All of this, of course, perplexed Kickback. Never had he been so confused. Where was he? Why was he here? How was he here? Why couldn't he remember anything?

This woman knew something. He was sure of it. With whatever strength he had, he tried to work his jaw, tried to roll his tongue into speech but nothing coherent came of it. He saw her eyes dart towards the door and he panicked. She couldn't leave, she needed to help him. He couldn't let her leave, he needed answers. The woman couldn't be able to escape. He needed to speak, fast. He needed to get answers. He hated not knowing.

By some miracle, Kickback's senses came to him in a blinding flash and he managed to say the first thing that came to mind and in a shaky, deep voice, he spoke. "W-where...am I?"

As if on cue, just as the words left his lips, she bolted upright and dashed for the door. Scrambling as she got to her feet and knocking the surgical supplies about the porcelain floor. Kickback watched as she barged through the exit, the dual wooden doors swinging wildly as ran out into the hall.

"W-w...wait."

He tried to yell, to scream, to plead for help but he just couldn't muster it. Whatever had brought him here, whatever that happened that caused him to wind up here bloody well sure managed to take it out of him. If only he could remember. He needed to remember. He had to find Slip Stream. Where was she? His confusion soon turned into frustration. How could that doctor just leave him here? He obviously needed help. What had scared her so much to just freak out like that? Kickback struggled to stand up, every muscle of his body burning with protest. Each time his arm or leg so much as twitched, a rippling burn shot through his system. His frustration wasn't long to turn into a angry determination.

Pain be damned.

Through the most strenuous act he had ever been experienced, Kickback willed himself to his knees. His hands balled into fists on the clean, white floor as he hunched over on all fours, panting and coughing in agony. What was happening to him?

Confusion be damned.

He needed answers, that's all that mattered now. He needed to get out of here and find her. Find that doctor...then find Slip.

Steadily, the burning seemed to cool. No, that wasn't the word. Kickback began to feel...used to the burn. As if it were becoming part of him. Slowly, he began to rise to his feet. The joints of his legs ached but he pushed through. Kickback felt significantly heavier than he had ever recalled and yet despite that, as each muscle locked into place, control over his body became ever-easier. He let out a deep, ragged breath as he stood to his full height and clutched his side. There was a slight stinging there but it wasn't unbearable. He also felt a...he couldn't necessarily describe it. At first, he wanted to simply say that it's simply an unfortunate air-trap, he used to get them all the time but that just wasn't it.

This feeling was new. He didn't like new. New meant unknown. Unknown meant potential danger. He needed to know. He hated not knowing.

Kickback's eyes scanned the around the room before setting firmly on the exit. His gaze narrowed, his hand clenched into a fist. Kickback staggered limply towards the set of white doors. His dazed mind barely noticed what the room was as he barged through the exit. Kickback fell into a hall and collapsed on the adjacent wall. He didn't pay much attention to anything, all he could make out were two long white walls and a room at the end of it. Coughing involuntarily, he staggered along the porcelain hall, desperately hoping that the exit would be in front of him.

Or rather, that's what he used to think...before he heard a noise behind him.

Slowly, Kickback turned to see a door at the other end of the hall loudly shut in on itself, accompanied by the fleeting sound of tapping heels on the ground.

There.

Kickback's eyes darkened as he swivelled his body and forced his legs to carry him. His shoulder crashed into the door and the skin that was left exposed by his clothes was assaulted by the chilling breeze of the cool night air.

His body shivered against the icy air. The cold was a nice contrast to the boiling heat inside of him but still, cold was cold. The sky was dark, the sparkling flickers in the inky void were all but invisible, veiled by the blinding lights of city. A single lamp overhead illuminated the parking lot. Kickback looked up to see the same doctor dashing for, what he assumed, was her car. Holding a hand hard to his side, Kickback staggered towards her as fast as he could manage. He coughed, she turned her head and he saw that look again, she didn't scream but instead just ran faster.

In any other situation, he would've found it slightly humorous to watch trip on her heels and crash into the hard asphalt. He noticed she as looking for something, hastily scraping her fingers around the ground for something. He caught up with her but before he was within arms reach, she looked up and forgot all about everything except running away. As she bolted up and took off running again, slowly as to avoid tripping again, Kickback felt a piercing, stabbing pain under his ribcage. He fell to his knees and his breathing became more ragged. It was because of this that his eyes fell to the floor and he spotted something, a shining reflection of glass in the dark pavement.

Dr. Scalpel had one thing on her mind; escape. There was nothing that could stop her, nothing that....thing could say or do to make her do otherwise.

She needed to believe that.

She needed to believe she could get away instead of thinking thoughts of that freaking zombie catching up with and doing who knows to her! She was a mortitian, she worked with dead bodies that don't move and don't talk not this. Definitely not this. This was beyond her. She needed help, she needed to tell someone, someone that would help her.

Dr. Scalpel reached her car, she made a quick silent prayer to whatever deity was smiling down at her, she could barely see a thing without her glasses but what was more important? Life or sight. She chose the obvious one instead of being able to see while that undead freak tore her apart. A panicked smile graced her features, she was going to get away! She went to unlock the car door...then stopped. She quaked in utter horror. Her car keys. They weren't on her. In fact, she knew where they were.

They were on her desk...in her purse...inside...

She heard deep, husky breathing behind her and a pair of sneakers tapping along the floor.

This was it.

This was how she'd die. Torn apart and eaten by a zombie high-school student in the parking lot of her own morgue. Maybe...maybe it won't be so bad. Surely, if he leaves enough of her, she'll become zombie too and if she still retains the power of speech like he does then maybe she can go to everyone she hated and eat while she rubbed their noses in it, both figuratively and literally. After all, she did like dead bodies so why not just let herself become one?

This train of ironic suicidal thoughts was morbid, even for her but she came to accept her fate with whatever optimism she could muster. Slowly, she turned around and caught his eye. She jumped back, pressing her body as close to the car as possible. She stared into his face for what seemed like an eternity, white and black tendrils of hair draped across his features, she could barely make the colour of the piercing eyes that stared into her soul. Hell, to her, really he was only a dark red and grey blob.

He raised an arm steadily, as if it took all of his strength to do so and reached it towards her. She closed her eyes and braced for the end...but it never came. She never felt a hand on her, never felt his sinking teeth digging into her. She opened up her eyes and found him, just standing in the same spot as he was and holding something towards her. She followed his arm up and to her bewilderment, her hazy eyes saw a simple pair of glasses, just hanging there in his fingers. They were hers, the ones that she had dropped. She gave him an extremely confused look, all he did was gesture to his hand. She took the hint and went to grab the pair of lenses. Dr Scalpel let them rest of her nose and took in the sight of...whatever was standing in front of her.

Just a kid. Barely out of his teens and standing before her, clutching his side and looking at her with a gaze that screamed of pleading and his breathing was heavy but short. She lingered along his eyes for a brief second, something seemed...off to her about them. She chuckled in her head, yeah, his eyes were the most off thing about everything that was happening.

Finally, he spoke. "Why...why did you run?"

She tried to find her voice, she really did but everything she attempted to say came out in unintelligible nonsense. She wanted to slap herself, she was acting like a child. She was scared, obviously but that didn't mean she couldn't keep a rational mind. Besides, she was being spoken to and it was rude not to respond. Scalpel liked think of herself as mannerly and it wasn't lie she hadn't talked to a dead body before.

She was about to will herself into speech but was cut off by the...or what she thought was the dead body in question. "Please...help me."

His voice was low and oddly husky. He sounded so desperate, almost pathetically so to Dr Scalpel. She needed answers aswell, the deceased don't just get up and start asking for help. At least, not in her career. "What are you?"

He raised a hand and planted it firmly against his forehead. "Can't...remember." He took in a deep breath as he pulled his palm away from his face and stared down at his hand. "Where is Slip...?"

The doctor's brow furrowed. "Who?"

"My sister...where is she?"

"Just how much do you remember? Can you tell me what your name is?"

He stretched his back and visibly winced. "K-kickback...where is Slip Stream?"

Scalpel never relaxed as she slowly pried herself away from the cold metal of the car. "Well, my name's Scalpel. Do you remember anything else?"

"I...I left home and...Gentek and...Dr. Sharp Shot but...that's it."

"I see." Scalpel hadn't a clue who he was talking but she did recognise that name. Typical oscorp lab facility on the other side of the city. She had been inside the once and that was enough, everyone one of those so called geneticists gave her more creepy feelings than an all night creepypasta binge.

"Please, tell me...where is my sister? Is she safe?"

That's it, no more being a stupid kid. This...whatever it is, needs help. Scalpel was going to get to the bottom of this, she was going to help him. In turn, maybe he'd help her, voluntarily or not. Scalpel's mind flashed an image of her on a stage or news show. Just think about, she had discovered a literal walking, talking zombie. Oh, she was going to milk this but first thing's first. "C'mon, Kickback. Let's find out just what's happening here."

Scalpel walked past him, gesturing for him to follow her. He stood there, rigid when she started to walk but she was sure he would follow her. He wanted her help and now he was going to get it. She only made it a few steps before he spoke again.

"No."

She stopped. Scalpel looked back, he hadn't moved, he hadn't even turned to look at her. "What?"

"No."

This was not what she expected. "What do you mean? I agreed to help you and-"

He turned around to face her slowly. She could see a burning defiance in his shining eyes by the time their gazes locked. "You're ...taking me to her."

Scalpel could only stare at him as he walked towards her. Each step he took looked to be close to knocking him down and by the time he stopped, his face was barely a forearm's length away from her own. Kickback took in a deep breath as he raised his arm to her shoulder and snapped his eyes back up to her. She caught a brief glimpse of his teeth barring in the dark of the night before she felt a harsh grip around where her arm connected to her body. The strength in his hold made her wince and she immediately re-evaluated her choices here. He was evident that Kickback wasn't as weak as it might have appeared.

The doctor didn't answer right away, much to Kickback's annoyance. He wanted her help, sure but not in the way she might have thought. All he wanted was to find Slip. He made a promise to her and a big brothers own up to their promises...right?

He added more pressure in his grasp on her, clasping at her coat. He felt so feeble in his state but the visible wince on her face said something else to him. Now, only if he could form words without that burning constantly making him stop for breath. "Please...I said...I'd help her with her homework."

He expected her to decline, to insist on her way. Kickback didn't feel like he had to strength to refuse her if she did let alone abandon her altogether and make it on his own. By some miracle, whatever amnesia inducing event he had gone through to wind up like this left him little memory of who he was. Of course, that only included what his name was, where he lived and...a surprising amount about his sister. Though, anything further than last month is lost on him. Kickback figured he'd take what he could get. There'd be time to figure this all out. Once he found her.

Scalpel's face contorted in thought. Kickback couldn't fathom what was going on inside of it. It was then that he noticed that he had planted all his trust in a stranger, a stranger that was obviously afraid of him and judging by what he could gather, was about to cut him up on a surgical table before he...supposedly 'came back from the dead'. He hoped she would say yes. Please say yes!

"Alright."

Kickback's face softened into a look of hopeful confusion as his grip loosened. His hand fell from her shoulder, much to the doctor's evident pleasure. She gave it a solid roll, the expression among his features refused to leave him.

"Alright?"

"I'll take you home. Do you remember where it is?" Scalpel's voice was level, void of any expression Kickback could detect. He nodded. "Then get in. I'll drive. You navigate."

The mortitian walked past Kickback to the driver's door of the car. He watched her for a short moment before looking down at the handle to the back seat. He figured it appropriate and thought walking all the way around to the other side was, sadly, pointless. The door opened with a sold click, the light automatically shone brightly from the ceiling of the car as he opened it. Barely giving it a second thought, Kickback climbed inside and sat resolutely in the seat. He heard Scalpel's door slam before he even saw her get in. She reached behind and craned her neck to look at him.

"You got that?"

Kickback took another raspy breath and looked over to his opened door. "Y-yeah." He reached over and tugged it shut. He winced at the noise it made, surely he hadn't pulled that hard on it...

Scalpel never stopped shouting in her head at herself as she pulled out of the lot and onto the road. There goes everything she planned. At first, she thought just refusing him and if necessary, over-powering the kid would suffice but the more she thought on it, the less that seemed rational. He had already demonstrated how fast he was recovering and there was no telling what a walking dead man with a temper would do if it didn't get it's way.

"Do you have a map?"

"It's in the pouch in front of you."

The doctor listened to the sound of rustling paper and plastic sheeting as she kept her gaze firmly on the road. What had she gotten herself into? Scalpel swore that if the government suddenly came to her door about all of this, she was going to slap the little undead bugger in her car so hard that not even those blasted tendrils or whatever would fix it. She shivered. That image will never leave her mind. Standing over him and watching as the incision she made swarms with a mass of red and black, healing the wound. The prospect was fascinating on a scientific level but Scalpel had never seen anything more unnerving.

"What street are on?"

"Discovery drive."

"Turn left here."

Her fingers tapped against the wheel. She was having a sick day tomorrow, by God, was she ever. The thought of just leaving the kid on his had crossed her mind, in fact, she could do that now, just pull over and tell him to get out. Consequences be damned. Of course, the fear of him snapping and lashing out at her was still there, Scalpel couldn't deny that whatever concious she had could never let something like him go unaided like that. The doctor briefly imagined herself in his place. Waking up in a morgue without any memory. Didn't sound like a good time. Like it or not, she was the only one that could've helped him. She let out a light chuckle. Never did she think to call the police, surely they'd handle this situation much better than she ever could.

Ahhh, well. Too late for that now.

"Head straight up here."

She nodded but this silence was getting old to her.

"So, how old are you, kid?"

"Can't remember."

"Oh..well, I'm twenty-nine." That didn't work. "What kind of music do you like? Jazz? Rock?"

"I can't remember."

Alright, now this was getting old. "I'm partial to a bit of pop, to be honest."

"That so?" Finally, a response.

"Mhmm." She hummed resolutely. Kickback didn't press the subject further, much to the doctor's chagrin. Surely there was something that could make the drive less soul-crushing. It was then that she had an idea and even though it was a long-shot, it was worth a try.

"Got anyone particularly special in your life, kid?" Scalpel's eyes scanned up to the rear-view mirror hanging above the dashboard. She regretted asking that as she caught his bewildered stare before he winced. Kickback brought a hand to his head and clutched at his contrasting hair as his teeth clenched tightly together. Whatever that reaction was, it was lost on her. "Are you okay?"

He ignored her last question and after regaining his composure, he spoke up. "Yeah...what do you mean?"

Scalpel rolled her eyes. "You know, like a girlfriend."

Kickback cast a look to the mat at his feet. She didn't notice anything specifically off about his expression. If anything, he just seemed contemplative. "I don't think so."

At least it was a different response. Scalpel decided to try a more rational topic, she figured since it was only thing he could think of, she'd manage a bit more than small talk out of it. "What's she like?"

"Who?"

"Your sister."

Kickback's body tensed up for a moment before relaxing in his seat. He stared at Scalpel for a long moment, something that made the doctor feel uneasy behind the wheel. "Why?"

"Just trying to make conversation. Who knows? Start talking and maybe you'll remember something else."

Kickback's head went limp to the side and he stared, unblinking out the window into the night sky. "She's...not like me." Scalpel remained silent, waiting for him to continue. "She's childish but she's a good girl...I liked to think she looks up to me but...I'm not always sure." For the first time ever, the doctor saw the briefest reflection of a smile spread across his mouth. "Heh, probably gets it from Vinyl."

A new name, Scalpel grinned. Progression. The mortitian gave a resolute glance to the road, seeing that it was clear before she turned in her seat to face him. "Who?" She asked, a triumphant smile on her face.

Kickback's eyes widened, he never looked at her, his gaze was locked outside. Right when she thought he would turn to her, he screamed. "Look out!"

Scalpel only just saw the blinding flashes of a pair of headlights blaring down from the intersecting road on the right side of the car. It didn't brake at the compulsory stop and instead drove straight for the metal shell of the vehicle. Scalpel didn't have time to steer the car away or even place her other hand on the wheel, the last thing she saw was the kid reach out towards her from his seat, obviously in panic and then the flying shards of glass exploding from the windows as the car crashed into her own.

Dr. Scalpel's world went black.

Cheese Sandwich let a goofy grin slap itself between the growing hairs on his face.

"I'm sure my critics will say it's a grotesque display. Well, they can bite me, baby! I perform this way!"

He bobbed his head, letting the brown hedge of an afro growing from his scalp to swing wildly in the air as he sang along to the music blaring through the colourful walls of his room. The socially normal part of his brain thought it pretentious to sit alone and listen to your own singing voice blasting from a stereo speaker but then again, Cheese wasn't particularly normal. What else was he going to do with a microphone and some high-tech recording equipment? He laid down on his stomach, his eyes glued to the laptop screen while his nimble fingers stabbed relentlessly into the keys as he kicked his legs into the pillows at the head of the bed along with the beat.

Cheese Sandwich was one for more direct interaction with his friends but he couldn't deny that he as well had gotten sucked into some of the various social networking sites on the internet. It wasn't bad and more often than not, was rather fun. Cheese cast a glance towards his ALF alarm clock and recoiled a bit at the what it read. Well, it wasn't like it mattered, it was a Friday night after all. As he turned back to the monitor, it made an audible blinking noise and his beam stretched when he saw the small window that popped up on the screen. In the bright blue bar above the box read the name in plain white letters; "Pinkamena Diane Pie". Right beneath the name was a simple but sweet message.

Hiya!

Cheese hummed to the music as he typed. Hey! -

Are you listening to yaself?

...No -

Cuz I am!!

Me too! -

Hehe

Cheese was about to start typing again but was cut off by another beep. To the left of Pinkie's inbox was another window but this one was different. He could see one name, while the others were reduced to mere tallies in the form of the phrase "and 2 others". The name he saw was one he new quite well, it belong to the sister of his friend, Kickback. Below the bar was the somewhat worrying message that read; Has anyone seen him?

Pinkie's window caught his attention with that familiar beeping sound. - So...

Cheese felt kind of bad about it but he had to put Pinkie on hold, this looked like it was going to take his full attention. Hang 10 Pinks I got another call comin in -

The small arrow on the screen floated over to the name as Cheese's finger brushed along the pad beneath the keyboard of the laptop. "Slip Stream", it read and with a resolute click, above it in a tiny black box read the names; "Trixie Lulamoon" and "Vinyl Scratch". Neither of which had replied yet. Cheese quickly typed in his response.

Who? -

Kickback

Cheese rubbed his eyes and looked back at the screen in disbelief. Before he could write anything, Vinyl beat him to it. He's still missing?!

Yeah! It's almost been 2 days!

He heard the same distinctive beep come from Pinkie's inbox and shrugged it off as a just an "alright". I swear Im gonna beat his sorry ass the next time I see him!

C'mon guys this is Kick' we're talkin about he'll turn up

Cheese smiled to himself. He always thought a positive outlook was best to have in any situation. He pushed the mouse back toward Pinkie's window but when he opened it up, he felt disappointed to see the hastily typed I gotta go. Bye! sitting in the window and the lack of a green dot next to her name indicating she was no longer online.

He wanted to be positive...but he suddenly found it harder than usual.

The sound of whistling steam was a maddening outro of the clustered symphony of shattering glass, screeching rubber and deforming steel. There were no footsteps, no worried denizens come to find the crash. No people, no witnesses, no one to help. In the darkness, a figure stirred from the chaos. Clad in grey, he lay on his face amongst the gravel and reflective shards. A groan escapes his throat as he crawls to his knees, the jagged remains of what used to be windows tearing at his flesh and clothes. Black and white threads dangle in front of his eyes as he stares at his bloodied hands supporting him from the dark pavement of the road. He hastily tried to push searing pain from his wounds to the back of his mind. He wasn't the only one in the crash.

"S-scalpel..."

Kickback's head slowly turned to his right. Nothing but an empty road lay ahead, the path of which they had come through. He tensed his muscles in an effort to move and barred his teeth as he pushed himself up. His eyes drifted to his right and shrunk in horror at what he saw. A stabbing pain shot through his leg as he pulled his body up to stand on his feet. He looked down to find a sickeningly large piece of glass lodged in his thigh. Barely a thought ran through his head before he reached out a hand to take it but the end. He closed his eyes and pulled. Kickback let out a muffled cry of pain as the jagged edge was dislodged from his muscle. He stared at the shard and almost threw up. The piece was unnervingly large and dotted with red liquid. There wasn't necessarily alot of blood, something that he briefly found quite odd, surely he had severed an artery but this was hardly the time. Kickback rushed over to her, throwing the glass in a discarded, broken mess on the ground.

"Doctor."

There she was. Her body lay amongst the destroyed ruins of the crash, just he did. However, the light in her eyes that normally shone through her glasses was nowhere to be found. Her head hung limply to the side, as if her gaze had been locked on where he had landed. Her coat was torn and ragged. Red gashes of torn flesh strewn across her body, more notably on her head and much to his sorrow, her neck. He didn't even bother to check her pulse, not that he quite knew how to but it didn't matter. Blood pooled underneath her from her wounds. Somewhere, in the most rational part of his mind, he already new she was dead. Even before he found her like this. Kickback thought it was good to try and be hopeful. Evidently, that doesn't count for much.

For a good while, he just stood over her, staring, not really feeling anything. It wasn't like they were friends, even despite how much she was trying to be friendly. He supposed he should feel sad for her, after all, she was still a human being that had a right to life. Yet, even still, he didn't know how to feel. If he was honest, he was just tired but he didn't like how that sounded. Kickback searched through what was left of his memory banks and found nothing suitable to do or say or even feel. Was apathy all he offer to the dead woman? He shrugged his shoulders slight and crouched down over her. He found her glasses not far away from her corpse and reached for them. He gave the woman one more mournful look and gently closed her eyelids over her eyes before placing her glasses in the breast pocket of her coat. He supposed this was deemed respectful to the dead but he couldn't help but feel hollow for some reason.

Kickback looked down the road they were driving on. It wasn't far now. He could make it on foot. He didn't even check the other car to see if the other driver was alive. He didn't care. Kickback's walk was more of a limp but he didn't care. His wounds hurt like Hell but he didn't care. He was almost there, nothing else mattered but for him to get there. In his mindset, he didn't even noticed the swarm of crimson and ebony slowly coating the bloodied gashes in his flesh and torn rips in his clothes. It wasn't long before his stilted limp turned into a determined hurried walk and the tears in his jacket and jeans were all but washed away as if simply sewn back together. It was by the time his wounds had healed that he stopped. Something wasn't right. He gave himself a once over and recoiled a bit at what he saw. It was as if the crash had never happened.

A sound pierced his eardrums. It was like a...wet swirling noise. His eyes drifted to his hand and he almost screamed. The bloodied rips in his palm were slowly closing in as a swarm of what he could only describe as tendrils lapped furiously at his flesh as if they were working tirelessly to heal him. He wanted to swat it away, to shout at it, to make it go and never come back but he was stunned in shock and confusion. What was this? He didn't get very long to study it as it didn't last very long and soon there was nothing, the tendrils seeped back into his body and disappeared into his form. Kickback stared down at his hand, turning it over and working his fingers.

"What the Hell is happening to me?"

Kickback looked up and nearly dropped to his knees at the sight. It was the house, just around the corner. There it was, he had made it. He had reached her, finally.

Slip Stream let out a groan of annoyance. No one had seen him since last night. Where was he? She cursed under her breath as she discarded her phone to the side. He'll turn up. She hoped. Slip managed to shrug it off for now and grabbed the remote resting on the armrest of the couch. It was just her home...again, so she was bored, understandably. Unlike her runaway brother, she didn't partake in being a loner so much. Slip enjoyed the company of others and it was because of this fact that she felt embarrassed and kind of lonely that she was home all by herself. It was too late to invite anyone over and even if she did, who would she? Vinyl, maybe? Slip let out a brief chuckle at that. Hell, if she did, that head-bobbin' maniac would probably even do just that. Though, she knew that she wouldn't stick around very long unless her brother was home and if he was, it was a chore to get rid of her.

Slip found it ironic. She was socialite but all of her friends liked Kick' more...though, she supposed she could forgive that. After all, they were his friends first. That's not to say he was particularly popular, there's no way she'd compliment him that much. Not a whole lot of students at school knew him well at all. They knew her, she made it a forefront objective to be widely known. She supposed that was kind of shallow and she was more or less attention-seeking but what was the harm in having a good reputation in high school?

Ugh. She could think about school some other time. Long weekends aren't made for thinking about-No, no, no. None of that. TV. That's what she needed. Some good old fashion brain-rotting material to make the night complete. Besides, this was the final season of her show, she needed to pay attention.

She wish she hadn't.

"Dan, No! C'mon, Nathan! Save your fuckin' father, damnit!"

Slip jumped up and down in her seat, flailing her arms excitably like a fanboy who just found out that Attack on Titan season two will come out early. Her hands cupped over her mouth as the gripping tension of the old drama series hooked her in like a new, shiny fishing rod. Her screeching chorus rivalled that of those old opera singers you'd see in...well, opera houses, you know the ones! She didn't even hear the knocking at the door over her cries of excitement.

The next set was enough to grab her attention though. Now who the Hell could that be?

Slip turned back to the screen briefly and sagged a bit to find it going to commercial. At least she won't miss anything. She grunted as she stood up from the couch and lazily walked over to the door. It was at times like these, you know, the times when it's half past eleven and then there's someone at your door, that Slip dearly wished that they had a peep-hole. So, with the current lack of one, she opted for the next best thing.

"Who is it?" She called out.

For a moment, all she heard a heavy sigh of...relief?

The next thing she heard shocked her. "Slip."

That was all she needed. She almost broke off the knob as she swung the door open and standing there, out in the cold night, was her brother. He just stood there, leaning against the wall as a tired smile etched across his face. There was something different about him, she couldn't place what but that could wait. She didn't smile back, in fact, she made it a point to turn her dumbfounded look into one of pure anger.

"And just where the fuck have you be-"

Oh, wait...he was hugging her.

Kickback dashed towards her and wrapped his arms around her body in an almost bone-crushingly desperate embrace. Slip Stream was too confused to return it and instead just turned her head as much as she could, all she saw was the chalk and charcoal hues of his hair draping from his head. All she could feel was how tight his grip was on her and how weirdly warm he was. What had gotten into him?

"Kick-"

"I found you."

Author's Note

Figure 0.9 - Linkin Park...ya know, back when they were cool.

Alright, here it is. Sorry to keep ya waiting but half the time, it's just not fun to write when your raw exposition is just boring as all fuck. That's kinda why I like to switch up the mood based on character perspectives. 'Kay, had my talk.
Take it easy, all you lovelies.

Chapter 3 - Half-Truism

If we don’t make it alive
Well it’s a hell of a good day to die
All our light that shines strong
Only lasts for so long

There was never a moment of silence for her. There could never be quiet. If there was quiet, then there was no music and if there was no music, there'd be no sound and she just couldn't have that. She didn't like quiet. She liked noise. Pure, unadulterated, blaring, symphonic, musical noise. She loved it and she thought whoever didn't had something very wrong with them. She tried to avoid those kinds of people, those who don't like or can't appreciate music, she just didn't have anything to say to them. You'd think people that just outright didn't like music wouldn't exist but you'd be wrong. Hell, she could deal with someone who just wasn't into what she liked and was very, very direct and aggressive with their opinions but not someone who just outright despised all genres.

Contrary to popular belief, Vinyl liked all music but as much as she told herself that, she couldn't deny the sneaky hipster tendencies lurking in her tastes. Anything produced by what she deemed as a mainstream artist was instantly shunned and cast out. Sure, she didn't hate them by any means, she just...felt like she needed to keep an image up to herself.

That's not to say she had much of an image in the first place. Vinyl knew full-well what her reputation was around town. She was that girl. You know the one or maybe you don't. It's always the one with the blue hair. Vinyl knew she was...eccentric, let's say and that she was always viewed as unapproachable. Probably why she was thrown into the batch of misfits she called 'friends'. She didn't care. Trix', Chesse and Kick' were possibly the best group she'd been roped into. Sure, she could do without that damn magician's arrogance and Cheese's party-loving attitude wore her out but it was their flaws that had brought them all together in the first place. When it came to Kick, she found him the most relatable. Something of which, when she thinks about it, is probably not a great thing. Once again, she didn't care. He was just as she was, unapproachable to the general, naive public. The 'Sheep' as she referred to them.

People around always called 'mysterious' or 'brooding', even outright going for the term 'emo' but Vinyl knew better. He just...wasn't characteristic. A contrary thing, she thought. He liked music almost as much as she did and more often than not, that;'s what their conversations would boil down to but when they didn't, Vinyl managed to see-

Silence.

It brought Vinyl out her thoughts and she bolted upright on her bed. She stared dead at laptop on the desk in the corner. A playlist of tracks displayed on the screen and the last few seconds of the current one ebbing out of the timeline. She had to cut that string of unnecessary quiet out of that damn song. She hated it when MP3's had those, what was even the point? The silence wasn't maddening or anything. She wasn't nuts or neurotic by any means, just...touchy about it. Vinyl glared at the monitor on the far end of the room for felt like an eternity before the next track blasted through the speakers. At that, she smiled and flopped her head back down onto her stack of pillows. Vinyl glanced up at the ceiling and idly played with the spiked ends of her hair as her mind got back on the track it was heading down before.

She felt as though her conscious was about to wander over to one of her other friends, maybe Octavia, possibly the most unlikely person to befriend her but just today, they were hanging out down at Sugarcube corner, shooting the breeze but that just made her think more of him.

Vinyl tried to think back to a memory during School where Kick hadn't been there but she just simply couldn't. At every step of the way, he'd been there. Not really contributing to anything, he was just there. He was sideliner, a bystander. Just like her. In the background, just barely in sight and if you'd ever see one of them, you'd acknowledge it but that was the extent, you wouldn't go out of your way to meet either of them. She felt as though that was the normal perspective. She didn't care. Vinyl though back to what she had said today to Tavi. She pretty much just admitted to having a crush on him and with that in mind, her eyes widened. It was for a second before she brushed it off with a brief chuckle.

So what if she did? Vinyl laughed as she wracked her head for any significant reason as to why she would but there really wasn't anything. She just thought he was cool. It wasn't like she was in love with him or anything, she just...thought he was cool. Wasn't that enough? Did she really have to rattle off every little thing she liked about him? She liked him. She didn't like all the small details about his person, she liked what they all made up to be, which was him. Vinyl thought that was romantic enough.

Hell, maybe one day soon, when the bastard finally turns up, they'll-

Vinyl was broken out of her musings once again by a distinct blinking sound ringing from her phone. She reached over to the device sitting of the nightstand and low and behold, there in tiny white text was a message from Slip Stream. That little tike. Vinyl couldn't believe she was related to him. When her eyes scanned the writing and her brain registered the words, she gasp with a relieved smile on her face.

Unbeknownst to her, Trix and Cheese had the same reaction at that exact moment.

Slip Stream never had the urge to slap anyone harder before in her life than she did right now. Kickback could be an insensitive prick when he wanted but this was something else, he was never known to just up and vanish for days at a time. Slip was angry, that she knew. She could never admit to the soul-crushing concern that consumed her heart when she looked upon her brother. As soon as he came in the door, she thought he would never let her go. There was a certain desperation in his grip that spoke monuments to her...confusing, as they were. Alot of 'nevers' are happening lately, Slip noticed. Just a smidge of familiarity would do her just fine. Of course, she wasn't about to get any of that. She didn't say a word as he hugged her. For what felt like an eternity, he just held her and she, as perplexed as she was, could only stand there, mouth agape with her arms hanging loosely by her sides. If she was honest, it was kind of nice. Kick also wasn't known for being to affectionate, at least not when it came to physical contact. She let a smile come to her face, oh, she was going to knock him upside the head in a minute but she could at least humour his new attitude while it lasted. Yeah, that's what it was. She totally didn't just remember how much she loved her brother. She hated him. She had to. He fucked up and she was going to make him know that...right after a quick sibling cuddle.

Right when she went to wrap her arms around his frame, he released her. Well, not so much that as he simply, more or less, kinda just fell off her. As if he just lost all consciousness.

"Water."

That's all he said. Barely a thought crossed her mind. Slip immediately went to help him back on his feet but he was already up and going straight for the kitchen. She watched as he downed about nine pints of tap-water. Just one after another, he chugged the stuff like he had just cycled through a desert. Now here they were, both of them recoiling back in the lounge room. The only sound was that of his ragged breathing as he sat in his chair. She leaned forward, staring at him with her hands folded in her lap. He finally looked back at her and it was only when she could see her eyes clearly that she noticed something. Something was up with them. She just couldn't tell what.

"Just you tonight?" He asked, visibly exhausted.

"Yeah. Where the Hell have you been, Kick'? No one's seen you for two days. "

He turned away from her at that. "I don't remember."

Slip didn't like the sound of that. "Well, what's the last thing you do remember?"

She didn't like the way his gaze refocused back on her. "You asking me to help you with your homework."

That managed to surprise her. "That's it?"

He didn't respond to that.

"C'mon, man! You can't just come in the door after being missing like that and just give me that!"

"I'm sorry, Slip but I don't..." He didn't finish, instead just settled for trailing off into silence.

"Do you have any idea how worried I was?!"

"I'm sorry."

"How worried you had everyone else?"

"I'm sorry."

"You never just up and do that! What was I supposed to think? You never tell me anything! You never tell anyone anything!"

"...I'm sorry, Slip."

Slip Stream brushed aside a stray lock of white hair from her face and closed her eyes, letting out a grumbled sigh as she pressed hard against her temple with her hand. "Just...don't do that again. Please?"

Kickback looked from down at the floor up to her, he looked unsure of himself, like he wanted to do something but didn't think it was his place to. "I promise."

Slip looked back up at him for a long moment. Kickback felt like a mouse looking into the mouth of a lion as he stared back at his sister. Suddenly, she slapped her hands against her knees and stood up. He watched her walk into the kitchen, open up the fridge and reach inside. When she emerged, she was holding two ice cold colas a small grin adorned her features. She sauntered her way back over to him and roughly threw one of the freezing cans his way. Kickback had to take a minute to note just how fast he caught it and how the aluminum instantly dented in his grasp upon impact. Slip didn't seem to notice as she sat back down and took the TV remote in her hand. "Well, drink up, then. "

Kick was left confused. "What?"

She gave him a quirked eyebrow. "Did you not want one, bro?"

"N-no, just...I thought you were gonna chew me out some more."

Slip giggled and took a long swig of her drink. "I was but I guess your girlfriend's chill attitude is rubbin' off on me. Besides, if you're telling the truth, then I've said all I need to. Plus, you're gonna get an ear-full from the gang and probably mom, so drink up, brother." She narrowed her eyes suddenly. "But do that again and I will personally make you into streamers for Cheese's next party."

There was another name he recognized...

"Hey, what's wrong?"

Whiteness flashed across his vision again and again. His head ached with the force of an earthquake. He groaned as he put a hand to to his scalp to try and quell the pain. It only lasted for a second but he sure-as-Hell felt it. Next came the confusion, just what was that? He suddenly remembered another thing; Cheese Sandwich. Flashes of loud, obnoxious yellow blurs danced in his brain and he was suddenly reminded of a familiar face. Was he regaining memories? Maybe if he just...

"Hello~?"

He shook his head. "W-what?"

"Are you okay?"

He wasn't sure. "Yeah."

"Good, 'cause Invader Zim's on."

Kickback decided to not ask what that was and instead just sit quietly and watch. When he made sure she wasn't looking, he carefully went to crack open his drink. With all that was going on tonight, he didn't think he could be too careful. With as much restraint in his muscles as he possibly could manage, the aluminum snapped on itself in his hand. He smiled and brought the can to his lips, keeping an eye on the screen the whole time. Whatever was in the can was a welcomed pleasantry on his tongue. He couldn't say the same for the cartoon on his eyes.

Slip still wasn't impressed with her brother but she honestly didn't know what else to do. At least she can say for certain he was safe. He apologized and well, there was something about his behavior the second he came through that door that just didn't make her want to give him a hard time. She could let him off with a warning this time. Slip let out a chuckle in her head, she was too forgiving but what was she to do? After all, she was the younger sibling. She reached into her pocket, her fingers dancing along the metal edges of her phone. Pulling it out, she unlocked it, displaying the groupchat. Trixie, Vinyl and Cheese were all still online. She grinned at that and took another chug of her cola as typed her message in.

I found him.

Author's Note

Like The Offspring? You're my friend.

Chapter 4 - Beast

Chapter 4 - Beast

Stand tall for the beast of America.
Lay down like a naked dead body.
Keep it real for the people working overtime.
They can't stay living off the governments dime.

Kickback wasn't sure how long he had been sitting there in the same spot with his sister, just watching whatever she felt was worth watching at this time of night. At least, that's how she put it. There was something off about the whole thing though. Something he could barely put his finger on. While the night rolled on, Slip would laugh, cringe or groan respectively in reaction to what she was seeing on the blaring screen. This didn't strike him as odd, at all except for the fact that he just didn't...react to anything. Was he always like this? Stoic all the time. No, no, there was something else there. While he watched or stared, rather, his senses, his instincts picked up on the humor and his mind followed through with the reasonable notion of laughing. He just didn't. He just didn't feel compelled to show emotion.

That changed when his sister picked up on it.

"C'mon, I know you thought that was hilarious." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Crack a smile, you zombie. Jeez."

Then he felt compelled. Not because the inhibition was gone but because his sister had made a comment about it. From that point on, he willed himself to react accordingly to whatever they watched. Kickback didn't like the fact that it took time and a bit of practice before Slip stopped giving him weird looks at his over-the-top laughing fits.

"Okay, I get it. Don't be a dick."

He turned and made to make a quick apology but was cut-off by her speaking up again.

"Oh. Well, would'ya look at whose callin'." Slip Stream grinned coyly and tapped twice on her phone. Kick just eyed her curiously. She held the speakers at the bottom of the device close to her lips and leaned in. "Hello~?"

"YOU THERE, YOU GRUMPY SACK-O'-SHIT?!"

Everything about the scratchy voice screaming over the feedback of screeching static flowing from the tiny black rectangle sent Kickback's senses into dethcon one. Whoever's voice it was, it was horribly familiar. The same white flashes danced across his vision. His eyes dilated to the size of pinpricks, his ears felt like they were bleeding and oh, sweet Mother Teresa on the hood of a Mercedez Benz, did his head pound like a bitch. In his mind's eye, he was assaulted by jumbled visions of porcelain skin, striking blue spikes and shiny magenta eyes, all to the steady beat of a slow 'wub-wub' sound.

This was the second time this had happened. Another thing to stack onto the weird bullshit that was going on tonight. Just what the Hell is happening to me?.

All the while, Slip just grimaced at the sight of him. "Yeah, he's here...just being a fuckin' weirdo."

"More than usual?" There was underlying sound coming out of the speaker that he just couldn't place. He chalked it up to just miscellaneous white noise in the background. Even though he sensed some form of rhythm to it. Music, he guessed.

"Oh, no, the usual level. Just...in a different way."

Kickback didn't quite know how to respond.

"Well? Aren'tcha gonna say 'hi' to your best buddy in the whole-wide world, you asshole?" Said the oh-so-too-innocent-sounding tone over the phone.

"...Hi?"

"There ya go! So, Slip tells me you have amnesia."

How could she possibly-"What?"

Slip pursed her lips pretentiously. "Who do you think I've been talking to all night?"

"...I thought we were talking?"

"That's what you call this!?" At that, he shied away.

"Heh. Maybe he forgot what texting is." Just like that, another wave of memories flooded back into his mind. Despite wanting to regain all of them back, he really could've done without that particular one. He let out an audible groan as the headache simmered down again. "Anyway, you still remember me, right, Kick?"

Apparently, he did. "Uhh...Y-yeah, Vinyl."

That got the voice to take on a smug tone. "Yeah. I am pretty unforgettable."

Vinyl Scratch breathed heavily onto her clenched fist and rubbed it against her chest, grinning all the while. She reclined back in the chair and lazily pushed the bottom of her foot against the edge of her desk, casually reaching over to her laptop and pressing the skip button on her current playlist. "You two should totally come over tomorrow." She said, idly watching her unpainted fingernails.

"Oh, I dunno, Vinyl. I'm kinda busy but I'm sure big brother here would just be delighted to see you." The teasing in Slip's voice wasn't lost on the DJ.

"...Busy with what?" She head Kickback ask.

"Shut up and watch me get you laid, bro."

"Alright, shut your face now, Ellen." Vinyl chuckled. "I'm not fussy. Seriously, I got fuck-all happenin'."

"Sweet. He'll be there by noon."

"...Wait, wha-"

"Bye, Vinyl!"

"Hold on, Sli-"

The little red-skinned girl didn't even let her friend finish before tossing her phone to the coffee table in the centre of the room. "Well, looks like you got a date, brother." The low and stoic glare that he gave her did nothing but widen the shit-eating grin plastered on her features.

"...Are you actually busy tomorrow?"

Slip blew through her lips like a horse. "Man, you do have amnesia." Leaning her head on a hand while resting her elbow on the armrest to her left, she continued. "I start work down at the tech shop tomorrow."

"Oh." He muttered. Something dawned on him then as he gave a quick glance to the clock above the TV. "Shouldn't you...Not be awake now, then?"

"Pssh." She let out, slowly turning to follow his line-of-sight with a half-lidded gaze. A second went by. Then two seconds. Kickback watched her features drop in sudden realization. "Shit!" She bolted upright and dashed for the stairs faster than he could register. He only briefly caught sight of her right foot disappearing into the upper floor before she was gone. Kickback let out a sigh and turned back to recline in his chair but before he could get comfortable, he felt two thin arms wrap themselves forcibly around him in a tight embrace. His eyes bulged in surprise. "G'night, man!"

Just like that, she was off again. Leaving him breathless, confused and...oddly content, even letting a tiny smile worm it's way onto his face. Which is more than what he could remember doing as a sign of happiness.

It didn't last very long.

Kickback looked down at his arm, remembering what had happened tonight. He tensed the muscles in his forearm, clenching his hand into a tight fist. His veins bulged from beneath his skin as his fingernails came close to cutting tears into the flesh of his palm and much to his shock, just faintly, he could make out the same glowing red and silky black tendrils swarm out from beneath the surface of his skin before writhing in a mass of dark hues and seeping back into his hand, as if nothing had happened. It only lasted a second but he saw it. He felt it. Some part of his brain told him that he made it.

Kickback was home and things would never be the same again. He would never be the same again.

Letting out a sigh. He arched his neck, sinking his head further into the chair and closing his eyes to sleep. Unmoving. Not even noticing that while he sat there, ready for whatever dreamy embrace was about to take him, he didn't breath. Not once. Yet, he still remained there, alive as ever, just waiting for his mind to wind down into darkness.

It was snowing that night. Not like he cared. He didn't really feel affected by weather anymore. The flakes of ivory fluttered gently onto his dark form, practically disintegrating on contact as the heat radiating from his body melting the soft descending frozen specks. No one ever looked up. Especially at night. The moon shone brightly behind him and through the contrast of his silhouette, one could make out the piercing, bright red shade of his narrowing eyes. Perched high above the ground, he stood there, ever-vigilant. The scene below reminded him of a swarm of cockroaches desperately scurrying away from the light. They might as well have been. Vermin were still vermin, regardless of what they looked like. His nostrils flared, he could smell the blood coursing through their veins. Hear their bones creak and pop as they moved. Shuffling cargo in and out from a truck into a warehouse. Not long had he been staking this place out and already, he was reeling in fish.

Kickback's mouth stretched into a sharp grin at that, he almost let out a chuckle at that comparison. It was so fitting.

He had recently...acquired knowledge of an arms shipment being moved here. It was what was to be expected. More than a dozen shady cut-throats all working busy in the shadows, nothing but greed clouding their minds. If he had been anything like he once had been, he would've flinched in disgust as he watched a man, apolice officer come into the scene, talk with one of the same scum shuffling crates of guns around and then watch the bastard hand the cop a thick roll of cash. Smiling at eachother the whole while. When they both turned around to watch the others at work, Kickback grew tired of watching.

In the night's embrace, no one even noticed one of the workers being dragged by a shadowy figure into the darkness of a nearby alleyway by a barrage of overlapping whips, strangling and muffling him before disappearing and thanks to that, no one noticed the same man walk out with a particular piercing glare etched in his gaze. No one gave him a second glance as he walked up to the truck but before anyone could notice that he was, in fact, making a beeline for the cop and the con next to him, it was too late.

"Ya know. Af'er dis job. I reckon we outta take it easeh."

"Heh. You want to take it easy?"

"Yeah, man. Take some time to relax, spend the moneh we've made, live it up a litt-"

That would be the last thing the con ever said. Right before he could finish, he felt something grab harshly at the back of his head. The surprise of it all stunned him as he felt fingers digging into his scalp. The last thing his eyes could register was the metal sheeting of the truck's trailer before his brain crushed under the force of impact that shattered his skull. Blood painted the cold steel and splattered the snowy pavement.

By now, the whole crew had reached for their guns. The killer didn't miss a single beat and dashed for the cop. Hooking his arm tightly around his neck, he reached into his side and pulled out a nine millimetre pistol. His eyes locked onto the first one to draw out his weapon and without a second thought, the killer aimed, pulled the trigger, letting out a brief bang as the hammer hit the shell and watched the bullet go straight through his chest and stopped dead in his heart.

He heard another shot. He didn't feel a thing but he did hear the cop in his grip let out a choked groan of pain. He spotted blood trickling out of the officer's side. Not like it mattered. The rogue focused in on the man that fired and put a piece of lead straight his brain.

That's when one of the fucks got lucky.

Before he knew it, a gaping, bloody hole was made in the side of his head. He could feel the impact blow up half his head while the bullet was left buried in the middle of his cranium. He could almost taste the amount of triumph the criminal who got him was feeling in that moment. Time to be the bringer of disappointment. Among other things starting with 'D'.

Kickback felt it was time to unveil the curtain.

Slowly, he turned his head. He watched the glee from the man drop from his features as he stared into the only eye left in his face. If anything, all he did was provide the tissue inside his crown a nice breeze. Kickback felt his mass begin to shift in his form and in the blink of an eye, he started to change. From his the toes of his shoes, from the tips of his fingers, swarmed great, writhing masses of chaotic tendrils. In a jumbled atrocity of red and black, they lapped at the surface of his body, transforming his image. His eyes morphed into a set of faded, grey jeans. His arms were wrapped in a binding grip of patterned ebony leather and lastly came his head. Tendrils folded over the wound, reforging his face and overlapping over his head to form a simple, dark grey hood. The final thing to take form were his eyes, they glowed crimson with disdain as he watched the same con shakily point his gun at him.

"W-what the fuck are you!?

"Oh, shit..." Kickback's glare snapped to another one off to the side. "It's him."

"Who?!"

Kickback didn't give them the chance. Raising the cop's gun, he popped the same man's knee out from under him. He collapsed in a scream of pain. Whoever was left started taking pot-shots at him, he felt the impact of every bullet but what was that to him? Kickback caught one of their gazes and ditched the gun at his head, knocking him out. Turning back to his hostage, he laid stretched his fingers out while keeping them together and roughly jammed his hand into the corrupt officers back. He let out a silent cry of agony, something that didn't last long as he began to violently cough. Kickback released him and gave him a swift kick, knocking him to the ground in a fit. He almost smiled as he watched his own mass swirl in and out of the pig's body.

Taking another shot to the shoulder, Kickback didn't even bother looking in the direction it came from. His legs kicked into gear and he dashed straight to the man that clipped him. As his last few steps cracked the earth beneath his feet, he pulled back and clenched his fist. When he launched it, the con's bottom jaw literally broke away from his skull. His body lay there, limp in the snow.

"Die, you bastard!"

Kickback's hand moved on it's own accord to crush the spiked, wooden baseball bat in mid-swing in his grip, stopping it from hitting the back of his head. His body turned by reflex and his other hand shot out and went straight forward to wrap around the assailant's throat. Reeling back, Kickback tossed his body toward the heaving cop. He watched as three others jumped out from their respective cover-spots and make a dash for him. Idiots.

Just as they crossed him, the officer let out a high-pitched scream as his body was torn apart from the inside. Massive, spike tentacles show from his form, skewering everyone around him. Kickback had to stifled a dark chuckle as the one he threw landed perfectly in time with the eruption of giant, viral thorns, stabbing him straight through his chest from his back. The hooded man had to take a moment to admire his work before the skewers retreated back into the now, very dead officer's body.

And then there was one.

Now, it was only a matter of rounding up everything they unloaded and destroying it all. Surely there'd be explosives in the shipmen-

He ears twitched when he heard wheezing. Spinning himself around, he noticed one left. Ahh, yes. He had only left this one unconscious. Time to fix that.

Propping himself up on his hands and knees, the con looked up. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This was the last job. Just one more and then...and then this. When he looked up, he saw him. The reaper. His reaper stalking towards him. His eyes groggily closed and opened again, he was standing above him. He slowly blinked one last time. His arm wasn't an arm anymore, it wasn't anything more than a giant, hulking blade, connected to his body by that red and black stuff. He felt tears well up in his eyes.

"No...no, no. Not me." He begged. "Not me, man!" The face under that hood barely even twitched. "C'mon, man. I got a family." The man began to cry. "Don't do it...don't kill me, please." He closed his eyes and prepped himself for the worst.

"You must have me mistaken." At his deep, piercing voice, the pleading criminal looked back up at the terror.

The last thing he saw right after he turned his neck back up was his reaper's cold gaze as he slashed his blade across it. His head fell off his shoulders and landed in the snow with a dull thud.

Just another night.

That's all Kickback thought as he felt the blood splash against his face, fading in with the red hue of his skin. That's all he thought as he watched the truck burn to in a blinding blaze of smoke and fire in the snowy darkness of the night. What was there left to say? Left to feel? The wind blew against the hem of his jacket as he stood high above the streets, gently watching the ignorant passerbies go about their nightly plans.

He wished one of them could've been her...but it's not like it mattered.

It couldn't be like it used to. Not anymore.

Kickback wasn't too sure as to how long he had just been sitting here with his eyes clenched shut. Surely it hadn't been too-

Footsteps.

Scarlet lids peeled back to reveal contrasting emerald irises at the steady 'thump-thump' sound. Just who was it? It was still in the middle of the night and Slip had only just gone to bed. Kickback's hands balled into fists as the thought of some petty lowlife prowling into their home. He began to stand up when he caught sight of the time. Apparently, he had been doing absolutely jack shit for roughly six hours straight without even noticing. That wasn't the part that got to him. It was the fact that he just wasn't tired. Like, at all. He figured after everything that transpired last night, he'd drop dead faster than a fish in the desert.

"Couldn't sleep?" Kickback's head snapped to his right where he heard the voice call out. There, standing in the kitchen was his sister, idly pouring herself a glass of milk. Well, that answers the question as to who stirred him. She was decked out in a simple white button-up shirt and faded blue jeans. She shook her head at him. "You have a room, you know?"

"Uhh...Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"Just checkin', Wolverine."

"...What?"

"You know, amnesia." She gave him a look that spoke monuments of how much she thought he was an idiot. Honestly, this whole memory-loss thing was starting to get exhausting to Slip Stream. "Anyway. Can I trust you enough to be left alone until you go to Viny-...You don't know where she lives, do you?" Her eyelids sagged as she gave him a level stare.

Kickback scratched at a sudden itch in his arm. "No." Groaning, Slip walked out of sight into the kitchen, returning shortly with a notepad in hand. When she came up to him, holding it out for him to take it, he noticed a message scrawled onto the paper. An address. "Uhhh..." Was all he said as he took it from her.

"Alright. I gotta go."

He didn't react until she reached the door, something occurred to him then. She was leaving. She was going to be away from him. Out of sight. Again. Kickback's whole body shot up off the chair. "Wait!" Slip stopped and turned, giving him a confused look as she slowly opened the door. He just stood there, mouth agape, not quite sure how to follow up. "Will..." He began. "Will you be okay?"

His sister's expression took on one of complete bewilderment, much to his slight embarrassment. Then after a moment, he watched it shift into understanding and then compassion. She gave a brief smile. "Look, Kick'. I don't know what happened to you to play the loving big brother all of a sudden and I'm starting to think I don't care but I'm just going to my new job. If you ask me every time I leave if I'm 'goin' to be alright', we might just have a problem." By now, she was already standing outside the house. "Still. It's cute that you care now." With that, Slip gently shut the door in on her brother. Leaving him alone in the lounge room.

Kickback wasn't sure how to feel about that.

After what felt like hours of just idly standing in the same spot, he managed to put a word to the feeling. Bored. He wasn't hungry, he wasn't tired and he just wasn't interested in anything around the house. He even grew bored of being bored and that's when something new hit him. An urge. It wasn't very strong but he followed it and when he did, he found himself outside. The compelling feeling drove him to move. Nowhere in particular, just move. No one else was around when Kickback idly began to walk along the side of the rode. A stray car would pass by here and there but for the most part, he was still alone. Not once did he look back. There was still nobody in sight when he casually strolled into an alleyway between two tall buildings. That's when the urge stopped.

Kickback didn't try to stop himself when his whole body shifted to the side and his shoulder ended up propping him up on his feet as he leaned into the wall. He could feel it already. The weird wriggling sensation in his arm started back up again. He couldn't see it but it was there, just under his skin, crawling around in his flesh. It scared him. It scared him to think of what it could mean. It already proved to him that it could heal his wounds, just what else could it do for him? To him?

Maybe the urge brought him here to find out.

In the corner of his vision, he noticed something move. His eyes looked up to spot an insect. He couldn't quite remember what they were called, it was those tiny red ones that crawl on your finger. He watched it steadily as it scampered vertically up the wall he leaned on. As he studied the creature, he felt that same writhing in his arm but this time, it was centred around his fingertips and it tingled more than usual. What if-

Footsteps.

"Oh, there you are!" Kickback didn't recognize the voice at all. This was a new voice. Soft, light and feminine. It was new. He didn't like new. "You really need to stop running off so much like that, Dot." Kickback's gaze turned slightly to see a girl walking up to him. No, not up to him, to the bug. Her skin was a pale shade of yellow and the long, curvy locks of her light pink hair danced in the cool breeze of the morning. He watched her put the end of her index finger an inch off the wall. The insect taking notice, it turned on it's axis, crawling down the wall for just a moment before buzzing it's tiny wings, carrying it's frail body over to land on her hand. Kickback was in awe of how she didn't just crush the thing as she lightly brushed her finger over it's chitin. She must've felt his gaze because that's when she turned and caught his eye. Just as she did, she flinched dramatically and shied away.

Kickback didn't know what to say and just stared at her.

"O-oh! I'm s-sorry...I didn't...s-see you there."

Great, now he was being spoken to. A few moments silence reigned between the two as he strained his mind for something to say. He searched and searched through his memory, whatever was left of his knowledge of speaking to other people. He didn't find much. Without anything else, he settled for the first and most intelligent thing he could come up with. "...Uhhh." That wasn't it. Think, you bastard. "He-"

"Well, umm...Bye."

Kickback was once again left in awe of the girl as she sped off in the direction she came in. If he blinked just as she turned, he would've missed her.

Odd lass.

Looking down at his hand again, he slowly balled his fingers into a closed fist and glanced up at the towering structure. There was that urge again. The compelling ache to move. It couldn't hurt to see just what this new thing he had was capable of.

Tentatively, he placed his hand on the wall, feeling the cold, hard concrete against his skin. With his other hand, he reached up and placed it higher on the wall. After only a second, he pushed himself up with his feet. He went much higher than he thought he would but in the end, the force of gravity did it's job and he was pulled back down to the ground. He let out a grunt as he breached for his shoe to hit the pavement...only it never came. Kickback looked up again to find that his fingers were hooked into the wall. His eyes widened, he was literally digging into solid concrete with his hand, just hanging there above the ground by nothing but his sheer strength. He barely felt strained at all.

The ache never went away. Putting his toe to the wall, he pushed himself up again, throwing his opposite hand into the wall and consciously trying to grapple onto it. Just like before, his fingers sank in to the building. Kickback began to steadily crawl up the side of the building, it wasn't until half way up that he noticed the same lapping tendrils swirl around his forearms. His eyes narrowed at that. An idea popped in his head when he gave a particular forceful push with his legs. Then another and another. Soon, he found that he had stopped using his hands and began running alongside, vertically up the building. The feeling was...exhilarating.

He saw the edge of the roof closing in on his view and with a final burst of strength, he kicked himself into the air, overshooting the buildings limits. He hung there, suspended for not by a few seconds by to him, it was an eternity. Kickback dropped, landing with a quick roll on top of the tower and glanced back to the edge, taking a minute to process what had just happened. There was no way he just did that.

The urge still didn't leave. Kickback turned away from the edge and stared down the rows of rooftops ahead of him. He must've walked for hours, this district of Canterlot was anything but suburban. The muscles in his legs tensed and he felt a surge of those tendrils tightened against the surface of his flesh.

He took off, running. It felt good. The wind blowing his long white and black locks back as his feet carried him faster than he knew they could. He jumped off when he reached the end, it was a good long drop to the roof below. It nearly crumpled in beneath him when he landed on impact.

Fuck stopping.

The ache needed to be satisfied. He dashed, sprinting across the skyline. He grinned when he vaulted an upcoming air vent and chuckled as he saw a protruding doorway before practically breaking it down as he kicked it in and flipped over it by the force of his foot.

Fuck exertion.

Kickback hollered when he put all his cards on the table and promptly jumped off the edge of an apartment building and practically flew over the street below to the next rooftop over.

He toppled over and landed hunched, propping himself up on his hand while kneeling, looking back at the distance he just crossed. He began to laugh again as he glanced down at his open palm again. "I don't know what you are..." He breathed, flexing his fingers. "...But you're startin' to grow on me."

Standing up, Kickback walked over to the end of the roof and closed his eyes, wearing a thin smile on his crimson features. Without a thought, he let his body flip over the side and he went down, falling into the alley below.

Fuck fear.

When he opened his eyes again, he twirled his body around. He crashed into the paved ground on his feet with a sharp thud. He didn't waste a moment and took off walking, putting his hands firmly in his pockets. He only just turned the corner when he felt something in them and pulled it out to inspect it but stopped mid-way when he passed a window. Inside, there stood a mannequin of a male frame. Clad in a simple porcelain singlet under a denim, cerulean button-up shirt with black jeans.

The attire wasn't especially attractive or wanting to him but just after a moment of studying it, Kickback felt a wave of writhing mass envelop his body, it was gone just as quickly as it came. When he looked down, he found that he was wearing what the mannequin was. Everything was exactly the same about it and it felt good against his skin. Soft and warm. He had no real keen eye for fashion but it was definitely better than what he was sporting before.

"Hmm. What else can you do, I wonder?" He asked, brushing his hand against his chest. He glanced down at his other arm and found a scrap of paper in his grip. That's when he remembered ripping this off the notepad Slip gave him and taking it with him. He read the message again in his head.

144 Discovery Dr. 12pm.

"...Umm."

"So, I tells 'im! Oatmeal-"

"-Are you crazy! Yes, I know, you've told me this story before. Like, a gazillion times." It might have been literally the most amazing and mind-numbingly stupid yet epic tale of metal and goofiness but everything gets old eventually. Rainbow Dash grinned as she brought her drink up to her lips. It wasn't necessarily her beverage of choice but it was too early for anything else. Plus, she didn't have anything else on her and well, Pinkie offered. When she looked back at the eccentric party-animal, ironically, the first thing she noticed was that she wasn't making cracks in the sidewalk with her constant bouncing, instead she was just walking like an actual, normal person. Rainbow began to worry. "Yo, Pinks. What's eatin' ya?"

At the sound of her name being called, Pinkamena whipped her head back around to see her friend give her a confused look. She blinked rapidly and let a brief skip into her step. "Oh, nothing, Dashie." He replied, not really speaking her mind.

Pinkie Pie was going to pretend she didn't just see Fluttershy across the street.

Rainbow Dash brushed a stray lock of green hair from her face, lowering her gaze to a half-lidded blank stare. "Still pissed at squirrel-girl?"

Pinkie's hair darkened. "Still mad at Jessie, the yodellin' cowgirl?"

The blue-skinned girl growled through her teeth at that. "Touche." She kicked a stray pebble onto the road. "Still, I think you two outta patch it up."

"She asked for a big party, I threw her a big party and what does she do? Flips the crap out at me and doesn't talk to me for a week!" She fumed."I'm not doing anything 'til she apologizes." Rolling her eyes, she added, "So, why don't you make it up with Applejack?"

"That bitch stood me up, that's why! I already told you!" Dash groaned. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Alright." Pinkie grinned suddenly. "Have you let Soarin taste the rainbow yet?"

"...You did not just make that joke." Dash deadpanned.

"Well...?"

"What?"

"Have you?"

"NO!"

"Awww."

"What?"

"You're gonna die a virgin, Dashie."

"I'mma hurt you."

"No, wait!"

"Hurting you now."

"Ow!"

"Ha!" Pinkie pie rubbed the spot on her arm her friend had punched. It wasn't awfully sore but she didn't appreciate being hit. She gave a heavy scowl to the rainbow-haired girl walking by her side. Would it kill her to not be so rough all the time? "Oh, c'mon! I didn't hit you that hard."

"You're a real dyke, Dashie." She snorted. Rainbow just brushed her off. Pinkie opened her mouth to speak but stopped when she saw a familiar face on their path. He stood there, staring at a piece of paper in his hand, looking absolutely lost. Pinkie took a minute to recount where she had seen him. There was no mistaking that hair, she thought it was kind of funny how it looked like a skunk. Of course, she'd never say that, that'd be mean and Pinkie wasn't mean. She was nice and when you're nice, people are nice to you. Except Sunset Shimmer but Pinkie didn't want to start thinking about her right now.

That's when she remembered him. He was one of Cheese's friends. Something starting with 'K', she recalled. Pinkie felt a little sad at that. She was Pinkamena Diane Pie and she couldn't remember something about someone? How unbecoming of her. She needed to fix that. Cheese was her friend and any friend of him was one of hers. Except maybe Trixie.

She frowned a little at that. Lot of 'excepts' happening today. Sometimes, she wished that everyone at Canterlot would all get along. She wished she could like everybody but there were just people there that were just so...unfriendly. What did she really expect? It was a high school and the chances of every single student coming together to be friends was incredibly unlikely.

It was a nice thought though.

"Hey!" She called, much to Dash's confusion as she waved her hand in the air to and fro at the speed of a fighter jet. His head snapped up and his gaze met her's. She swore, if it weren't for that hair, she would've mistaken him for Big Macintosh. Dash rolled her eyes as she skipped up to and walked over to lean against a building off to the side, keeping herself steady with a feet placed firmly against the concrete. Pinkie bounded over to him and stopped at arms length, she gave him a closed mouth smile. He just stared at her, like a deer caught in a pair of headlights. Pinkie waited for him to greet her back for a moment. Then two moments. Three. A full minute went by but she never stopped smiling and he never stopped staring. This was going nowhere. "What's up?"

"...Hey?" Well, there was something.

Pinkie decided to go with her gut. "Looking for someone?"

He didn't say a word, he just looked back at the piece of paper and then to her again. He nodded and showed her what was written on it. An address. She didn't know the house but she knew how to get to the street, which is why when she thought about where they were currently, it confused her greatly. She smiled, regardless and reached into a nearby mailbox. Kickback watched in horror as her hand somehow slid through the narrow slot and popped back out with a map in hand. "Here ya go!"

Kick stared at her as she presented the markings to him. Pulling a pen out from her poofy, pink hair, she scribbled a large black 'X' on the sheet. "That's where you you're goin'." She then drew a line diagonally up and tapped against where she stopped. "And this is where we are."

He nodded. "Which way?"

Pinkie pointed with the marker. That was enough for him. He was about to just run off but then he remembered something. Which was what he felt was a good sign. There was something he had to say. A custom, a phrase. It dawned on him. Kickback looked back at Pinkie and smiled at her. "Thank you."

Pinkie grinned wide at him before he started down the path. She didn't really think anything of it as he turned into an alley instead of strolling down the sidewalk. Whatever, her job was done and maybe she just made a new friend.

It was a sweet gig being a walking plot convenience.

Author's Note

God. Easily not the best chapter I've ever written but it's there if ya'll want it.

Nico Vega

..Did you know, she's a million years old?

Chapter 5 - The Animal

Chapter 5 - The Animal

For the animal's soul is mine
We will be completed right before your eyes
I have no control this time
And now we both shall dine in Hell tonight

Just another night. Well, for the most part.

As he walked along the path, he glanced down at the envelope in his hand. It was heavy with bills, just the way she wanted. When he looked back up, the first thing that caught his eye was the bright yellow streams of light escaping the glass windows of the bakery. It was more of a cafe but that's what it was initially. She was there, waiting for him. He saw her through the window, idly glancing around, bored as she was. His lips twitched upwards a little at that. Noticing what he was wearing as he crossed the road, his form seamlessly writhed in a haze of viral tissue. Just as quickly as it came, it was gone, replacing his jet-black leather jacket and hoodie in return for simple denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He felt her eyes on him the whole time. He caught her looking at him from the inside and instead of what was once terrified shock, instead was calm content at the sight of him.

He strode into the building, barely getting a glance from anyone inside. He knew all of them just by scent alone. After all, this was a fairly popular hangout for really any part of the day.

She waved him over. He nodded and sat down across form her in the booth.

"Hey, bro."

"Hi." Without another word, he slid the envelope across the table towards her. She picked it up, silently, opened it up and sighed when she took sight of the contents.

"You know, you don't have to keep doing this."

He folded his arms. "I told you. It's what you need to live. Not me." She sat back and flickered idly at the amount of bills she had in her hand. He just watched her. That seemed to be the only thing he did anymore. Watch, listen, watch. What else did he have to do now? He never felt obligated to, he just...didn't know what else to do.

"I'm gonna get us some drinks." She muttered under herself, slipping away from her seat.

"No thanks, Sli-"

"Kickback." For the first time in what felt like forever, he actually was taken aback by something. The look in her eyes when she spun around to glare at him was something he hoped to never see again. She sighed, closing her eyes and overall softening up. When she looked back at him, her gaze almost pleading to him."Please?"

His jaw slowly worked in his favour, there was only one thing he could have said. "Okay."

With that, she walked off. He didn't watch her go, just slumped back in his chair, focusing his gaze into the table. There was something engraved in the wood, he brushed it off at first, he could never understand idle graffiti. That is until he took note of what was actually written. Two letters, initials, he presumed. Scrawled into the material was a simply written 'V' with an 'S' next to it. He didn't need to think twice as to who it could have been.

His eyes snapped up when he heard the clanging of a aluminum can against the table. "Back."

She sat back down in her spot and cracked her's open. His hand reached out and gently clamped around the drink. Before, he'd never hesitate, he'd just open it up and chug it down, almost as a way of convincing himself of...

...nowadays, no matter what he did, he couldn't feel like that. Feel normal, like one of them. Like his sister. "Thank you."

Every now and again as they sat, mostly silently together, she always seemed to have something to say, despite everything, he'd sip at his drink. He knew it was sweet but he barely tasted it. She knew now, knew that he didn't want or need it but it seemed to make her more comfortable around him. He didn't mind, she could pretend if she wanted to and he'd do the same with her. He'd pretend for her.

As she went on about something, his ears twitched at a sound. The drink went down hard as something caught his senses. He'd never felt anything like it before. The noise was...hypnotic, enthralling even but not quite obligating. He tried to shrug it off but when something like this happens, when something different happens, nothing can force him to be at ease. It was new. He didn't like new. Besides that, there was really only one thing he noticed and it scared him a little...

"You know..." She tone shifted. "I can take care of myself."

He stared at her, her brow lowered as she stared down at her twiddling thumbs and her mouth creased into an annoyed line. He wanted to say how he wanted to take care of her, that now his greatest purpose was to protect her but instead, something made him lose his cool a bit. "Oh, really?"

He played it over in his head and more and more, it felt like something was definitely wrong. That didn't sound like him, that didn't sound like how he talked to her at all, he would never talk to her like that. "Yes, really. Why? You think I can't?"

Her angry glare snapped up to him. He didn't feel threatened like before, he just felt more annoyed. "On the salary you get, no."

Wait, what was that...? "At least I make an honest living."

What is that? "Lotta good it does, huh?"

Stop it. "Pfft, what the fuck would you know about the word 'good'?"

Stop getting angry. "You don't complain when I come home with rent money."

No...No, no, no. "I feel sick to my stomach when you do the things you do to get that fucking money!" Calm down. His teeth bared behind his lips and his fists clenched. "What's the matter, brother? Oh wait, that's right, he's dead." At that, he could feel tendrils surged through the surface of his skin. Why was he so angry?

Fuck it, Slip had crossed the line.

"Oh, what's this? The freaks finally showing his true colours, is he?" His eyes flashed a bright crimson.

By now, he could feel the small spikes forming subconsciously under his clothes. How fucking dare she? He'd never been so pissed with her before. Her complete mood-shift was so like her but it never got to him like this. Thought after though ran through his mind. His anger at his sister, the confusion as to why he was angry at all or even why she was and then the fear. Fear of lashing, succumbing to his rage. He only wish he could control himself enough to not turn the building into a massacre. He tried to compose, have some clear sight of who he was, maybe that would calm him down. He loved his sister, he would never hurt but goddamnit, did he want to right then. That scared him the most.

Something was very, very wrong. He never got like this around her. His muscles tightened under his surging skin, he could feel it coming. It was only a matter of seconds before he lost it completely and bathed the restaurant in blood and-AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT NOISE?!

Get out.

Kickback's body fought him as he slid out of the booth and onto his feet. His rage filled his psyche to the point where his head ached and burned with it. "And just where the fuck do you think you're going?"

Had to get out.

His eyes snapped shut as he walked to the door, straining his mass to stay in place. He didn't even notice the shouting and the bickering from everyone else in the building, none of it. Even still, every time his sister even breathed, he heard it and it annoyed him. Impudent little bitch thinks that just because he's never hurt her, he wouldn't? If she kept it up, he'd be all-too happy to prove her wron-Damnit!

Get the Hell out!

His hands covered his ears. The noise. That insufferable unidentifiable, beautiful, horrible, hypnotizing noise. He had to get away from it. Block it out. His shoulder crashed into the door, sending it spiraling open. He could still feel his anger, his sister's anger, all of it surged through his ever-morphing body and it hurt. She screamed at him as the cool night air touched his viral flesh. Under the cover of darkness, he let himself go, his body flailed in a hideous mass of tendrils uncontrollably. So...ANGRY!

Kickback ran.

She watched him escape into the darkness. Even after he was gone, she was still just...so pissed off with him. Slip muffled her scream between clenched teeth, folded her arms across the table and hit her head hard against them.

Just as suddenly as she felt it, all the anger, all the rage, it was gone. She couldn't help but feel like a force was lifted off her and her ears felt...free to her. It took her a moment but she began to think back to what had happened. She just snapped...but she had a good reason. Kick was always taking care of her and she couldn't stand that! She could take care of herself, like she told him, she didn't need him to look after her, provide for her, care for her...be with her...love her...

It was at that point did Slip Stream realize that she just fucked up royally by pissing off her brother. Her brother that had superpowers...She needed to find him.

"Kick'!"

Slip Stream ran.

Neither sibling was there to hear the conversation three girls were having in the back of the bakery.

"...Did you feel the energy coming off that guy?"

Just one of those days, it seemed.

Vinyl Scratch slumped further back in recliner, her limbs dangled idly off the sides as her eyes stared, bored into the screen ahead of her. It wasn't like she had nothing better to do or anything planned to do today, she was just...waiting for the plan to arrive. It was days like these that gave her time to think. Think about stuff she normally wouldn't, like what would it be like to be one of them. One of the sheep, the general demographic public, typical teenagers, them. Here she was, slouching away and bored-as-all-Hell while the rest of her dubbed fellow adolescents were out and about, hanging with their friends, doing whatever it is mainstreamers do. What would it have been like, she always wondered, to be one of the popular kids, the kind that everyone knew and were obligated to love in due of their reputation. For a moment, it seemed nice.

That is until she remembered that bitch, Sunset and she almost gagged at her own thought.

With a flick of her wrist, she idly switched through her preferred channels because let's face it, everyone only has about five of so that they like and everything else is miscellaneous. At least, that's what she thought. She glanced up at the time and groaned, he was late. Hell, he had amnesia, right? He must've forgotten where she-

Knock knock. Speak of the Devil.

With no time to be embarrassed by how eager she was to bolt upright, dash to the door and swing it wide open, presenting herself for the whole world to see, Vinyl looked straight ahead and was, to put it mildly, pleased to find her friend standing there on the welcome mat. His emerald eyes snapped to her and he stared blankly at her through his bangs. He didn't even say a word, just stood there, never turning away from her gaze. Typical. "Hey, Kick'."

"...Hi."

Now, out of all her friends, she had known him the longest. She always took pride in the fact that when everyone else found him mysterious and weird, she could read him like a book and know exactly what he was thinking. Now though...something was different. Off, even. Kickback had a different aura about him as he stood there in front of her. At first she wanted to just wave it off, take it as a response to her being, admittedly, a little under-dressed but he never much cared about anything like that before. Maybe she could just take it for just Kick being Kick but that excuse only worked if he was acting like himself. Not like now. "Well, c'mon in "

He just gave a nod and strode his way inside, closing the door behind him as Vinyl walked back over into the lounge room. When she noticed he wasn't following, she turned, eyeing him confusedly. Her lips parted to speak but he beat her to it. "...I remember you."

She grinned. "Well, I'd hope so. I'm your best friend."

"...Vinyl."

"Mhmm, that's my name." She cocked an eyebrow, smirking. "Any other ground-breaking pieces of info ya wanna give us? just shut up and get in here.

Kickback wasn't sure what to expect when he strode his way into the house. Part of him dreaded the thought of another flash sparking it's way across his mind. Silently, he watched the pale girl saunter passed him and plopped herself in a dark red chair. Never did he feel more out of place...at least, to his knowledge. The previous night with his sister gave him some clue as to what to do but his mind was void of any and all social norms and mannerisms that he presumed he used to know. Kickback decided to go with his gut on this one and walked to the other side of the room and gently sat himself down on a couch, adjacent to Vinyl.

"Alright, man." She began. "What's goin' on?"

"...what?"

"Why do you think I invited you over?" Her eyelids lowered, condescendingly. "What happened to you, dude?"

Kickback looked down into his lap. "I don't remember."

"Well, what do you remember?"

His muscles tensed. "Slip asked the same thing. I don't remember what happened."

"Don't get snippy with me, Kick'." Vinyl waved something in his face. "I'm just worried about you."

He wasn't sure what to say to that. Should he thank her, was that appropriate? "...okay."

"Yeah, well...whatever." She slouched back in her chair and pointed something up at the big, black screen adorning the wall. With a flick of her wrist, colour came to life within it's frame. Vinyl smirked. "Alright, 'nough o' that. 'Least you're alive, right?" She added, turning her head to smile at him.

Kickback forgot how to smile. When he suddenly recalled how to call it forth at whim, she had already looked away, back to the screen. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, his eyes widened slightly at the familiar image. There was a person standing there, high above the streets on a rooftop. It was weird, like looking into a mirror but it wasn't him and the surrounding environment certainly didn't look like the area he was in earlier but it was still all eerie to his psyche. That sense was immediately replaced by sheer confusion as he watched, blankly at what happened next.

"Go web!...Fly."

...what?

"Up, up and away web!...Shazam!"

The Hell is he...?

"Go! Go!! Go, web, go!"

"This is so friggin' stupid." Vinyl laughed. "Why do I love it?"

Kickback slowly turned to the girl recoiled, her elbow digging into the armrest while her face lay lazily against her closed fist with a scrunched up grin on her face. When he looked back, it felt like his brain just exploded. Twice.

He watched as the same figure spun out a strand of...he was certain he'd seen something like it before, recently. His eyes never even blinked while he stood up on the ledge and sent himself swinging above the busy street below, screaming all the while and crashing into a billboard.

Kickback stared at Vinyl, unwavering. "What was that?"

Slowly, she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes piercing with scrutiny. "Wow. You really do have amnesia."

He looked down at his thumbs. "She said that too."

Vinyl sighed and shot right up and onto her feet. He watched her curiously walk out into the house, he heard some rummaging and after a quick while, she came back, walking up to him with two cans and a bowl of yellow stuff in tow. Gently, she placed the plastic container down on the table in front of them and passed one of the aluminium canisters over to him. Kickback decided that he much preferred this than having it thrown into him. It was a different drink though, so now he had to decided whether or not this one was better. "Well..."

Vinyl plopped herself down beside him and scooted closer to where he sat, apparently barely taking notice of how much space or lack thereof there was between them now and cracked open her drink. Not even a second went by before she groaned, turning herself over with her can raised to the sky and settling to rest her head in his lap, her feet pointing up over the side of the couch. "Looks like it's gonna be my job to get you up to speed a little bit."

Her arm extended back towards the TV, Kickback took notice that the sound emitting from it got louder. Without much to protest or say, he slipped a finger into the cap of his drink and with a quick flick, the aluminium collapsed in on itself. At least he was quick learner.

He stared at the large box at the other end of the room. None of them even noticed that he never once blinked throughout the little improv movie marathon. Kickback barely moved, not even when he felt his apparent best friend's hands wrap around his arm and hold it close to her body while she lay there, he just didn't know what to say to that or anything, really. He only had one question on his mind and even he found it irritating, so he chose to keep silent unless when he was being spoken to. Kickback found that just taking all of the confusion of what he was seeing head-on was probably for the best.

If anything, it all gave him one or two ideas.

He took a quick sip from his drink.

Tasteless.

Author's Note

C'mon, how could I NOT sneak a little Disturbed in here?
I don't know how to write exposition.