Men And Monsters: The Silent Killer

“Night? Hm, I’ve been called much worse things.”

Now that there was more light and her eyes had adjusted, Pinkamena could make things out better. There wasn’t a lot of distance between them, maybe eight feet or so. However, in between them was a large and wide, blue rectangular tarp. She slowly brought her right foot forward and pressed down on it, reflexively retracting it when she felt there was nothing under it. She was guessing that under that tarp was a giant hole that led to the bottom of the building, likely where an elevator was supposed to go.

“I know you aren’t Blake.” They said bluntly, their right hand reaching towards their left shoulder, pulling out a bowie knife from a sheath that almost perfectly blended in with their armor. “I thought you were yesterday, your mask was his for sure, then I started piecing things together after our scrap. That brief look I got at your face the first time we fought, your long hair, and how your british accent just sounds so forced. I don’t know who, or what, the hell you are, but you’re not Blake.”

The bowie knife they pulled out was large and sharp, much more so than the knives they were stabbing her with before. As she recalled that they had several knives hidden on their body, she also remembered that they had put poison on their knives, and was working on making one that could kill her.

“That the knife you’re going to kill me with?” Pinkamena asked, already extending her nails into claws and feeling that unique sensation as her body slowly transformed.

“Not this one.” They offered as they peered down at it, poking the tip with their finger to test the sharpness. “I’m not going to bother trying to figure out who you are, there’s no point. Before I kill you, I’m going to get all my answers anyway. When we first met, you called yourself my ‘worst nightmare’. So, that’s what I’ll call you until I learn your real name. Night for short.”

Pinkamena lowered her eyes to their body, noticing why they appeared different than before. They were wearing much less armor than before, and the armor they were wearing less small and less thick. It only covered their upper and lower arms, upper and lower legs, and the majority of their torso. Their sides, elbows, knees, and everything else had nothing on them except their black bodysuit. They still had their mask on that covered their face and masked their voice, along with the black boots and gloves. She could tell they were muscular and lean, clearly very athletic and having put themselves through vigorous exercise to get such a physique.

From their response, she knew for sure that they had more knives on them. If before was anything to go by, also flashbangs. While she couldn’t see their sniper rifle that changes into other guns, she did distinctly remember the pistol they had hidden somewhere on their leg. She was also assuming the reason they were wearing less was for mobility, so they could move around faster and more easily, which would also explain why the body armor they were wearing under their bodysuit now was evidently smaller.

“Let me ask you something: You said that the main reason you were doing all of this was for Pinkie. Were you telling the truth?”

They leered up at her, staring her down in silence for a brief moment. Then they dropped both their arms to their sides, twirling the large bowie knife between their fingers with little effort, and then began to walk around the tarp in a clockwise direction.

“You didn’t answer any of my questions until you’d thought you’d won, why should I tell you anything? We both know we came here to kill each other, the only person who’s going to get answers is going to be whoever's left.”

Pinkamena began to walk counterclockwise around the tarp, not taking her gaze off them for a moment as they circled each other like two predators in the wild. She slowly clenched both her hands into a fist one finger at a time, her teeth were on edge as she had to suppress the urge to attack them. She knew neither of them had the advantage, and if that drop under the tarp was as far as she thought it was, it’d kill even her. She needed to wait until either they moved away from it, or they attacked first.

“I’d like to offer you a deal before we get at each other's throats, if you’re interested.”

Pinkamena’s eyes narrowed behind her mask as she looked at them suspiciously, getting a tense feeling in her stomach she didn’t quite like. Their behavior was...off. Usually they were much more aggressive and much less willing to talk, at least that’s how they were the previous two times. They also didn’t bother to bring any guns at all from what she’d seen, she didn’t like any of this one bit.

“I’m listening.”

“Take off your mask.”

As soon as they said that, Pinkamena’s ears flickered at the distant sound of thunder, glancing in the direction and seeing lightning. She could see the storm approaching, the large black clouds suggesting it wasn’t going to be a short one either. Judging from the thick stench of petrichor, it was also going to be a big and heavy one.

She turned back to TSK, noticing they had both stopped and were standing directly opposite of each other, having switched where they were standing before. They were staring at her and waiting for her response, still twirling the large knife between their fingers like she saw Starlight do with pencils.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because, if you do,” They stopped twirling the knife, holding it by the handle and pointing it downward. They brought their other hand up to behind their head, grabbing something on the back of the mask they were wearing. “I’ll take off mine.”

There was a strong gust of wind that blew in from the same direction of the storm, blowing some of the strains of her pink and black hair that were sticking out of the mask to the right. Pinkamena was glad she had tucked most of her hair under her mask and put her hood up, now that the wind was blowing as sharply as it was, it would have been a pain to keep her hair out of her face.

“What’d be the point of that? Whoever wins is going to get to take off the others mask anyway.” The mask may have done a good job of making it impossible to tell gender, but it didn’t excel as much at hiding her snarky tone.

“Call it an honor thing. Other than that ninja guy who saved your ass the first time, you’re the only person, if I can even call you that, that posed any kind of challenge. I’d rather look back at this and remember it as fighting whoever you really are, and not as some masked figure with claws and fangs.”

Pinkamena brought her left hand up to the mask, her claws scraping against the plastic it was made out of. For a moment, she considered it. In the end, it didn’t make much of a difference. She fully intended to kill them tonight, she’d had enough of this game of cat and mouse they’d been playing, so taking off her mask now didn’t really make much of a difference in the end.

However, if Starlight was right, then that meant that wearing a mask is what allowed her to ignore her more humane side. Both times she’d fought them she was wearing a mask, and not once did she feel any guilt for giving in to her impulses and letting go. Doing that now might cause just that. Besides, while she was curious what TSK looked like, there was a downside to it. It would exemplify that she was going to kill a person, not some armed vigilante shrouded in mystery, and that would cause her to lose her resolve.

She dropped her hand, clenching it into a fist against, the tips of her claws digging into the palm of her hands.

“Nah.”

Their head shifted slightly, she could just vaguely make out some noise from their mouth that sounded like a scoff. “Yeah, figured.”

In a single swift movement, they moved their left foot under the tarp and lifted it upwards, kicking it over to their left as the wind blew it a couple of feet away. Pinkamena craned her neck downwards into the whole, seeing that it was the shaft for an elevator like she’d speculated. She also saw that it indeed went to the very bottom, though even with her near natural night vision, she couldn’t actually see it since there was so little light. Despite that, she could see there were some platforms she guessed the construction workers would be on, along with some beams in between them that worked as makeshift walkways. She could see that there was at least one platform on each floor, some of them still had a few tools and didn’t appear that they’d be able to handle more than three or so people at a time.

“Let’s get started then, I’ve never liked postponing the inevitable.”

They crouched down and jumped onto one of the platforms, their combat boots slamming against it with a loud thud. TSK steadily stood straight up, tilting their head up at her. Pinkamena couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was a gladiator from the roman times, and she’d just been challenged by another warrior that was trying to take her title of champion, the platform was the arena.

She smirked as she jumped down after them, her sneakers not as loud as their combat boots. Pinkamena quickly straightened her body, half expecting them to have tried to attack her while she got down there. Instead, they just watched her, standing deathly still like a mannequin.

Pinkamena planted her feet firmly against the platform, lowering her torso a bit and unclenching her fist, her almost talon like claws ready to strike at a moment’s notice. There were two ways she could do this: Either wait for them to make the first move, which she didn’t like doing since they clearly have some sort of plan, it was impossible to tell how long they’d been here and were waiting for her.

Which left her with the second option.

“Not sure if you noticed, but I-”

She jumped forward, taking a slash at their head. They moved in the blink of an eye, jumping to the side. Pinkamena didn’t want to give them a chance to breathe. She spun her body around, extending her right leg outward horizontally halfway through, bringing it towards them like a sword trying to cut them in half. From their previous two fights, she had a rough idea of how they fought and how fast they could react, they shouldn’t have been able to dodge this.

Shouldn’t being the key would, they defied Pinkamena’s expectations and ducked under her kick, her foot just barely scraping above their head. They didn’t hesitate as they leaped forward still crouching, bringing their left hand forward and roughly jabbing her in the center of her stomach. It didn’t hurt, but it did knock the air out of her, causing her to flinch for just a second.

TSK took advantage of that and pulled back their right arm, punching her in the face while still holding the knife in their hand. The mask bore the brunt of most of the blow, so she wasn’t anything more than slightly dazed from it, more out of surprise of how fast they were moving compared to before. She tried to grab their wrist before they pulled back, but as soon as she raised her hand to attempt it, they jumped to the side almost like they were expecting it.

They were little more than a blur as they lunged to the side, swiftly bringing up their hands, hovering in front of them in a defensive stance as they quickly and lightly hopped side to side. She was immediately reminded of a boxer, taken aback a bit by how effectively they had taken that stance. Whoever TSK was, they were proficient in more than just guns and knife combat, they knew how to fight.

“Am wearing less armour than before so I can move better, I’m not going to be as easy to hit now.” They casually finished their sentence, a laid back tone in their voice like they were just having an everyday conversation with her.

Pinkamena quickly regained her equilibrium, her eyes scanning over their body and searching for any weak points in their posture. She thought that this fight was going to be easy, that she’d handle them this time without hesitating to ask any questions or anything. She didn’t think they were that smart either, since they could have brought guns and made it a lot easier for them.

However, it was evident that they didn’t just want to kill her, they wanted a fight! They had learned from their previous two encounters, having more or less memorized how she fights, and had come here as prepared as they could to battle her to the death. If she had to guess, they were going to avoid using that knife until they had to, wanting to beat her into submission until they felt like they had won without a single doubt. Then, they were going to pull out another knife they had hidden on their body somewhere, coated in a poison they had been working on to kill her, and put her down like a sick dog.

This should have made her worried, that she was at such a serious disadvantage and this wasn’t going to be as much of a cakewalk as she expected. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, not from fear, but from anticipation. She was excited. After all, an animal is most dangerous when it’s backed into a corner.

“All right twinkle toes,” Pinkamena said sardonically as she cracked her neck, holding her arms out to the side and rotating her shoulders, stretching as much as she could before lowering her body into a similar position as a quarterback. “Let’s dance.”

She slammed both her hands on the platform, lifting her lower body up and forward as she did a front flip feet first. They dodged it by jumping to the side, twirling around in a circle and stabbing the bowie knife into the center of her left leg. Pinkamena grit her teeth as she ignored the pain, her feet slamming loudly onto the platform. As soon as she landed, she took another swipe at them, which they ducked under. They placed one hand on her forearm and the other under her elbow, performing a near perfect judo flip as they swung her over their shoulder and she slammed into the platform.

She let out a grunt as a dull pain vibrated throughout her vertebrae, resulting in her closing her eyes for just a brief moment. When she opened them again, TSK was bringing their boot down toward her head. She managed to move her head to the side, the loud sound of their deafening stomp caused a sharp ringing in her right ear. She raised her hands to behind her head and pressed her palms against the platform, spinning her body around and forcing her legs to collide with theirs. This forced them off balance as they began falling, their arms out in front of them as they tried to catch themselves.

Pinkamena didn’t give them the chance. She did a kip up to get to her feet, thrusting her hands forward and penetrating the body armor on their chest as deeply as she could. She tossed them off the ledge before she saw where she was tossing them, watching as TSK just barely caught themselves a moment before landing on another platform. Their combat boots hit it first, then they pushed their right hand against the platform and their left hand above them, trying to prevent themselves from going over the edge of this platform too as their body skidded.

They managed to stop themselves a few inches from falling off, standing up straight as their right hand went behind their back, unsheathing another knife. She couldn’t see their face, but she had the impression they were giving her a cocky smirk.

She reached down and unstuck the knife in her leg, ignoring the strange smell of her black blood coming off it and feeling the heat coming off the wound as it began to heal. She crouched down and jumped down towards them, reeling back her right arm and lunged it forward, launching the knife as straight as an arrow towards them. She was expecting them to jump to the side again, instead they just sidestepped. Pinkamena cursed under her breath, raising her other arm above her head as she came down on them.

This time, they did jump to the side, right as her claws came down where they were. She tried to retract her arm and attack them again, but she swung too hard and her claws were stuck. The moment she glanced at them, she was greeted by the combat boot she had avoided a kick from just a minute earlier. Following the bludgeoning pain, there was a sharp agony as they stabbed the knife through her hand, making it even harder for her to move.

She turned to look at them once more, discerning they were reeling back their arm and preparing to punch her. Pinkamena uncomfortably twisted her body around, managing to grab their arm by the wrist and stopping it. With a muffled yelp, she gave her left arm a tug, the knife still stuck in the lumber platform and a large slit in her hand where it used to be.

She twisted her body again, smashing her elbow into their mask, the first direct hit she had made on them. They tried to move away from her, but her grip was too tight and they were dazed from the hit she made on them. Pinkamena shambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her hand and leg. She’d never say she was ‘grateful’ for what Blake did to her, but she had to admit that her abnormal pain tolerance thanks to the hell he put her through made some things easier.

She pulled them forward towards her, thrashing her knee into their stomach. She heard them let out a muffled grunt in their mask, their head dropping before they quickly brought it back up. Their other arm shot up, hitting her on the underside of her elbow and breaking it with a sickening crunch, her humerus broken and sticking out of her skin like that had done before.

This time, Pinkamena ignored the agonizing pain, refusing to loosen her grip on them at all. They reached down to their ankle and pulled out another knife, flipping it in their hand and tried to swing it down on her left arm. She grabbed it by the blade, halting it as it began to dig into her hand the tighter her grip was. The wound was healing almost as quickly as it was being made, coating it in a thick layer of her abnormally colored ichor.

They noticed this peculiarity, letting up briefly as they shifted their head to inspect it. “What the fuck? Your blood wasn’t bla-”

Pinkamena couldn’t help but grin, taking advantage of the opening and attacking, headbutting them where she guessed was the bridge of their nose. It knocked them back just enough to where she could yank the knife out of their hands, flipping it to the handle and stabbing them in their side and trying to get between their ribs. She mispredicted how slick the knife would be, unable to get a good enough grip to stab them as much as she wanted to. She got the knife about halfway in, feeling that they were wearing some kind of lining under their bodysuit.

Before the knife got more than halfway in, they yelped and jumped back, pulling it out of them and tossing it to the side, now covered in black and red blood. They put their hand over the wound, using their other to reach down and pull a knife out of their other ankle, their movements more sluggish and they were breathing heavily.

“You...gotta be,” Pinkamena bit the inside of her cheek as she forced the bone back into place, she really should have expected they’d do that again. “Quicker than that.”

Once again, they took up their boxer like stance. However, this time was less energy filled. Instead of jumping up and down they spread their legs apart, holding the knife forward in a tight grip, their hand open and in front of their other like they were aiming.

“Don’t worry, I will be.”

Despite being injured, they attacked her with nonplus speed, moving towards without wavering in the slightest. She barely had time to react, seeing them appear in front of her and stab her in the side with nothing short of absolute precision. She tried to grab them when the knife entered her, expecting that they would leave it in like she did with the previous ones. Instead, they pulled it out just as soon as they put it in, jumping back and resuming their position.

“Getting serious now, a-”

They didn’t give her the chance to finish her remark, leaping forward once more with their body off the ground for just a split second, jabbing her again with the knife in her shoulder. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in their movements, they appeared more like a machine than a person. They were moving mechanically, going through the motions of attacking her at nearly inhuman speed, then retreating and preparing to do so again.

It reminded her of Juno, in a way that actually bothered her a bit.

There was purpose behind each of their stabs. The brachial arteries in her shoulders, the lateral thoracic artery in her chest, even the femoral arteries in her legs. If it wasn’t for the fact that The Whispers had given her knowledge about the body to know the best places to attack people, she would have just thought that these attacks were random. They never hit the same place twice, and while the wounds healed rapidly, a significant amount of blood was lost. Which could have meant only one thing.

They were trying to make her pass out from blood loss, that’s how they intended to beat her.

*They saw that my healing doesn’t account for blood loss when I passed out, so they’re trying to recreate that. Clever bitch.*

The real problem wasn’t that she couldn’t keep up with them, their speed was fast, but still human. Pinkamena could react fast enough to stop them, if she knew where they were attacking. She knew almost all the vital points on the human body, but it seemed like they did too. With the sheer amount of options they had to attack, that left her to do little more than guesswork. If she could just get an idea of where

*They’re going to duck and go in from your left, they’ll be going for your carotid artery.*

She heard The Whispers say, their usual background chattering became louder. While it was still omniscient, authoritative, and sounded like dozens of different people speaking it once, it was more muffled and monotone than normal.

Pinkamena questioned what they said for a moment, before seeing TSK jump forward and lower their body, moving towards the left side of their body. She reacted before thinking, bringing both of her hands to her neck and managing to grab both of their wrist, the knife hovering a few inches away.

She lifted them off the ground and did a one eighty, throwing them across the platform. They forced their body downwards and wrapped their hands firmly around the handle of the knife, bringing it down into the wooden platform and using it to slow themselves down.

*How did you know they were going to do that?*

The Whispers kept their muffled whispering, Pinkamena wondered if they had even heard her, or were just ignoring her. She was about to repeat the question by mumbling under her breath, before hearing The Whispers pick up in volume.

*They’re using a hybrid of kali eskrima and tantojutsu, we are both impressed at how fluently they managed to combine them, and interested in where they learned such techniques. We’ve given you the knowledge on how to use them yourself and read others who are using them, but you haven’t quite...grasped how to implement them yet. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Until then, we’ll assist you, we don’t want you to die after all.*

Pinkamena found it amusing that despite the fact that they sounded similar to the collective chatter she usually heard in the lunchroom cafeteria, she didn’t have to struggle to make out the condescending tone in their cacophony of voices. She also noted that that was the first time they responded to her thoughts rather than something she said out loud, contradicting the fact that they said they wouldn’t be able to read her thoughts, she was going to make sure to bring that up later.

She peered down at her clothing, her body didn’t feel any weaker and the dull pain in her body from the stab wounds didn’t hurt as much as they should. She could see that the spots she was stabbed were stained with her black blood, since her hoodie was gray, they resembled ink blots. She didn’t sense that her body was any weaker, but that could have been because of the endorphins, it was hard to tell how much blood she’s even lost so far.

Pinkamena brought her head back up to TSK, watching as they got back to their feet. They tilted their head to the right and flexed their wrist, spreading their legs out again as they took up the same stabbing position they had before. They must have assumed that Pinkamena catching them was a fluke, and it wouldn’t happen again.

They changed their stance a bit, leaning their body down with the back of their feet upwards and pressing down on their toes. They jumped forward once more, moving faster and a tighter grip on their knife.

*They’re going to be jumping up and going from your right, likely going for your jugular. You catching them before rattled them and now they’re trying to finish this sooner.*

Pinkamena listened to them, falling with her back on the platform. As soon as they were above her, she pulled her knees to her chest and sprang her legs upward, slamming them into their torso. A sensation similar to hitting a ball with a metal baseball bat reverberated through her as her legs slammed against their body armor, only barely managing to stop them and doing little damage. She used the strength left in her legs to toss them behind her, getting to her feet and running towards them as soon as they hit the ground.

They were just getting to their feet when she reeled back her right leg and belt them in the stomach with it, sending them soaring off of the platform with a gasp muffled by their mask. Pinkamena didn’t bother checking to see if there was another platform below her, jumping after them.

They landed on another platform, Pinkamena landing a few inches across from where they did. She raised her right hand over her head, spreading her claws and bringing it down like an executioner’s axe. Moments before her killing instruments sank into their mask, they pulled out another knife from somewhere, slicing vertically and perfectly slashing off four of her fingers, her blood splattering onto the wood along with her removed digits.

Pinkamena let out a strained scream as she felt the excruciating agony of losing appendages, blood spurting out from where her fingers were, the remaining bone still visible. She tried to cover her hand with her other one to stop as much of the bleeding as she could, her left hand quickly becoming slick with her own blood as she experienced a wave of nausea come over her. She was suddenly somewhat lightheaded, trying to focus on her breathing to ignore it.

She glanced at the spot where her fingers landed, trying to ignore the stream of steam coming off her hand as it tried to heal it, furrowing her eyebrows as she noticed what was happening to them. There was steam coming off of them, but it was evaporating into the air above it. The skin of the fingers also began to melt, revealing the stark white bone beneath. Like a cigarette, the bones began to degrade into ash like powder, which was carried away into the air by the sharp wind. In a matter of moments, the fingers were gone, the only evidence they were even there in the first place was the pool of blood.

“Huh. So that’s what happen if-”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her remark, her words catching in her throat as she was thrown off her feet with TSK, falling off of the platform. There was another one a few feet below her, but her head hit it hard enough to where her vision was blurry and she was seeing two TSK’s. She slowly got to her feet with a groan, glancing down at her hands. The fingers on her right were starting to grow back, nothing more than small nubs, resembling baby fingers more than anything else.

Pinkamena reluctantly got to her feet with a groan, her head was throbbing and the rest of her body wasn’t doing the best either. She tried to ignore the groggy sensation through her body, shaking her head as she tried to refocus her vision. It was still blurry, she was just barely able to make out TSK standing on the edge of the platform above her, holding a knife in their left hand.

It wasn’t until she could see properly again did she realize it wasn’t a knife.

It was a syringe, the same syringe Michael gave her. She could see from where she was that it was still half full with imperium, the thick red liquid in there, the glass not cracked enough for any of it to seep through. She watched as they brought it to her neck, from the way they were peering down at her and how agonizingly slow they were moving their arm, they wanted her to watch.

*Stop them. Now.*

That familiar pressure on her mind that came from The Whispers dropped down onto her, however, it was different this time. It wasn’t limited to just the inside of her head, now it was all over her body, similar to when she was under that waterfall in front of the cave and tried to push against it. Except now she couldn’t give in to it and let her body give out, some other force was preventing her from collapsing to her knees. Pain wasn’t quite the word for it, intense suited it a lot more.

Along with the overbearing and intangible poundage, came a sort of...directive. The Whispers words reverberated through her mind as if someone blasted two speakers directly into her ears, and she knew the only way to get the pressure to stop would be to do what they say.

Pinkamena felt the pressure ease up, retreating back to the recess of her mind and waiting for when it needs to be called upon again. She grit her teeth and crouched down, but even if she put everything she had into jumping up there, she wasn’t sure if she was capable of it. She was strong, but that was a big distance to jump, vastly different from the free running she usually did.

Right as her hands almost reached the platform, the muscles in her legs tensing as she prepared to shoot her body upwards, they suddenly sped up and jammed the needle into their neck, piercing through their bodysuit. They then placed their thumb on the plunger and pressed down, injecting the Imperium into them without a moment's hesitation.

The moment the last of the dark red liquid invaded their bloodstream, their entire body relaxed and then tensed up, the syringe falling out of their hands and rolling off the platform into the dark abyss beneath them. Then they began to feverishly shake, bringing both of their hands to the side of their head, clutching it where she guessed their ears would be. Their figure was trembling, quickly collapsing to their knees as it only got more violent.

As soon as they injected it into them, she could sense another onslaught of agonizing pressure coming from The Whispers, gritting her teeth as she prepared herself with it and likely a brain aneurysm. Instead, when she saw the reaction TSK was having to the custom made battle drug, they halted. The distinct notion of curiosity and intriguing rise up, a mixture of her own and theirs. While she could see their body began to unnaturally bulk up in some places, their legs, arms, and torso specifically, it still seemed off. The way they were shaking would suggest some kind of intense pain in their body, or concentrated in their head, which shouldn’t be happening. The drug should numb out their sensory and nervous system, dulling not just pain but nearly everything, to the point where it was negligible and easily ignored.

TSK was having a different kind of reaction, almost like their body was trying to reject or couldn’t handle it properly. Maybe it had something to do with only taking half of it? That wouldn’t explain it either, she also only took half. Then again, her body was anything but normal, so it could be the reaction they were having was the one that is supposed to happen.

Her pondering abruptly stopped an interval after their vicious quivering did, their arms falling lifelessly and slumping against the platform. It was more than just their shaking that had stopped, it was any of their movements. They sat there as still as a statue, the only sign they were alive was very shallow breathing, she wasn’t even able to make out their heart beat for a reason she didn’t understand.

Pinkamena then heard a vivid creaking noise coming from their body, what was unquestionably their bones as they moved. They lowered their body and leaned forward, placing their hands on the very edges of the platform with an iron grip. They then brought forward their right leg, placing it on the edge of the platform in between their hands, their other leg pushing behind them and scraping against the platform. They lowered their body further, their head almost against the ground and their spine almost perfectly straight, it reminded Pinkamena of the positions runners would take at the start of a race.

*MOVE!*

The Whispers shouted like a drill sergeant giving out orders into her brain, their condescending tone replaced by an almost panicked tone. She bit the inside of her cheek and flinched at the blaring sound, only being able to compare it to a horn blasting directly into her ears but without the noise. Instead of questioning why they were warning her, she heeded their remonstrance and jumped to the side, far enough to her feet were off the ground for a moment and it felt like when she free ran.

In sync with when her feet left the ground, she heard something akin to a plane taking off, but more...compressed and on a smaller scale. She glanced at the only thing that could have done that, finding that TSK wasn’t on the platform anymore. They had launched themselves off it, their body was barely more than a blur that Pinkamena wouldn’t have even been able to see if she weren’t superhuman. She managed to follow them for about half a second, before they smashed into the spot she had just been in moments ago, as if she were a missile locked on to their target.

There was a crunching noise as their fist punched through the hardwood platform, the wood breaking and bending around their arm. Pinkamena landed on the ground a few feet away from them, her shoes skidding against the ground in a loud screeching noise. Her eyes widened behind the mask as she saw how much raw strength they had gained from that injection, maybe even matching what she was capable of.

They slowly turned their head to face her, pulling their right arm out of the platform with ease, bits of the wood still on them. They got to their feet, their movements were carried with pure strength, like they already knew they’d won.

“Wh-”

If Pinkamena had had a rough idea of how fast they suddenly became, she would have at least been able to to protect herself. She was caught completely off guard when they dashed forward, standing in front of her, ducking down low and reeling back their left arm. She felt the impact against her stomach before she actually saw it, one moment their arm was at their side primed to punch, and the next it was pushing so hard against her stomach she was sure she actually felt some of her organs shift around.

It was also a very new and...unique sensation to hear bones breaking before feeling it, Pinkamena didn’t even think it was possible to experience new sensations anymore. Any other time she had been hit in the stomach, she had some sort of protection like her scales, so only a few ribs were broken. The force behind this was so strong and she was so unprepared that all of her ribs were broken through brute force the sickening crunch of her ribs caving in was the only thing she heard.

The only thing preventing her from making any kind of vocal noise was when blood entered her lungs and forced her to cough it up, luckily it wasn’t more than a few splatters on the inside of the mask. The force behind the punch was also enough to lift her body off the ground by a few inches, before she even had the chance to react in any kind of way, they grabbed her by the collar and dragged her down. They threw her over their shoulder with more vigor than before, her body bouncing a foot off the ground before gravity pushed her back down.

She felt several vertebrae break and a wave of whiplash going throughout her body, causing her to let out a shrill yelp. Before she had a chance to collect herself, there was a deafening thud in her left ear that was synchronized with the sickening crunch of her hand being smashed by their combat boot.

During all this, she was also getting the worst sense of deja vu.

“So, I’ve got a quick question, doubt you’ll actually answer it though.”

Despite being in an incredibly heightened and sharpened state of mind because of Disord’s own custom made battledrug, they still had that casual tone in their voice, talking to her as if they were having an everyday conversations. They placed their left arm across the knee of the foot that was crushing her hand, their head dropping down to look at her. Regardless, they weren’t looking at her exactly, but at a spot just above their head. They were tilting it to the left, like they were examining it.

“What’s with the...black smoke stuff coming out of your head? It wasn’t there before and it’s...kind of freaking me out a bit, not gonna lie.”

Pinkamena had almost forgotten about that little caveat of Imperium, her conversation with Michael felt a much longer time ago than earlier that day. It also reminded her of the tumultuous silence from The Whispers, other than the background chattering anyway. She expected they would be saying something or at least give off some kind of pressure, but instead they were remaining quiet.

She responded by trying to punch them with her non crushed arm. She was hoping she was wrong, but their reaction speed was as fast as the rest of their other movements, their buff in strength allowed them to stop her by grabbing her wrist.

“Figured.” TSK said blatantly.

They casually broke her wrist, eliciting another hoarse yelp from Pinkamena. TSK then let go of their wrist, raising their foot and reeling it back like a soccer player, kicking her in the side hard enough to send her off the platform. Her ribs, which had just started the healing process, were stopped when her body collided with a platform on the way down. She crashed onto the edge of another platform, and then finally landed on one.

Steam was coming off almost every part of her body, from both of her hands as they lurched, the bones being reset with muffled popping noises like wood in a fire. Her lower body had a fist-shaped hole in it that revealed her pushed in ribs, they were shifting around and pulling out of any organs that were punctured, accompanied with sounds similar to when dents are put into plastic frames and bounce back. Steam was coming out of the hole as the ribs fixed themselves back into place, combining with steam from under her as her vertebrae healed. Steam was also coming out of her mouth from her internal organs that were healing, coming out of the sides of the mask.

*Stop getting your ass kicked and stand up, Blake taught you better than that.*

The Whispers said, their tone condescending again but now also bitter. It didn’t help the already present anger and frustration inside her, not like she needed further motivation. Pinkamena got to her feet, observing that her clothes were so stained with her own blood at this point, it would have been easy to just think that her clothes were naturally that color. She felt another strong wave of nausea and found it difficult to keep her balance, but she pushed through it, she’s been through much worse than this.

*Thought you guys went radio silent, why are you so moody today?*

She didn’t get a response, not like she actually expected to. When she managed to keep her balance enough to stand properly, she heard a loud thud, already knowing what it was without having to turn around.

TSK had jumped down, for whatever reason, having done so in the ‘superhero landing’ with their left knee and right hand against the ground. As soon as they rose up, they brought their hands hovering in front of them. The exact same boxer fighting style as the start, but now they were bouncing with somehow more vigor than before.

“Come on, make this fun for me.”

She knew that TSK was provoking her, but it didn’t make too much of a difference. On the offensive or defensive she was at a disadvantage, she wasn’t going to be able to heal fast enough, and TSK was now on superhuman levels of strength and speed.

“Fine, you asked for it.”

Pinkamena vaulted towards them, forcing her body to move as fast as she could make it and pushing through the pain. She didn’t have time to think and analyze them, she knew they wouldn’t give her that chance, she would just have to rely on instinct .

On the first swing, they blocked it with their upper arm by her wrist, Michael having been the only other one who had the raw strength to do so. As soon as the blow was stopped, they used their opposite arm to punch her in her stomach the same spot they had earlier. Halting the healing process and making it worse, causing more blood to spill out. Each hit made her next one slower and her body movements more sluggish, which likely made it even easier for them to keep blocking. It didn’t make much of a difference whether or not she tried to slash them with her claws or punch them, her movements were so predictable either way.

Being unable to land even one hit exacerbated her frustration, forcing her to become reacquainted with the feeling of being weak and helpless, unable to do anything. She let out a frustrated, almost desperate grunt with each attempt. Eventually, TSK slowed down and stopped bouncing, just standing in place and waiting for each attack. She couldn’t see their face, but she could tell that they were bored with her.

On the last one, they ducked under it, twirling around in a circle and extending their right leg outward. It was identical to what Pinkamena did earlier, something she was sure they were doing intentionally. Their sharp kick dug into her side, they put a lot of power and velocity into the hit, knocking her once again off of the platform.

The difference being that this time, instead of another platform to land on, there was a bundle of beams hovering in the air, being held by a large crane just on the outside of the site. Her body slammed into it, causing them to come loose and fall both under her and on top of her. Her vision and senses were filled with the giant metal beams, crashing onto a platform with some of them spread about, most going deeper into the building until landing on others. As soon as her back slammed into some of them, a handful of them smashing with an echoing clash of metal onto her body, breaking most of the bones in her lower body.

Pinkamena tried to scream under the weight, what came out sounded like something from a dying bird instead, coughing up more blood that splattered the inside of the mask. Only two of the beams landed on her body, one on her torso and the other on her legs, completely pinning her down. She could feel basically every bone in her torso break under the pressure, her legs were in slightly better condition as some of the bones hadn’t completely given out. Most of the broken bones were at least poking her organs, her heart was the only one relatively unscathed, she honestly didn’t even know how she wasn’t dead.

Luckily, she could still move her arms, which weren't injured at all. She tried to lift the beam on her body off of her, her arms shook as she used her remaining strength to lift it.. She got about halfway before a third wave of nausea, this one stronger than the previous two and caused her to abruptly lose her grip on the beam. The dizziness was so strong she had to force her eyes close and drop her head back down, an agonizing pulsating sensation in her head that bordered on migraine.

Darkness overcame her vision as she felt herself losing consciousness, similar to when she passed out from hypovolemic shock. The problem was, she hadn’t lost nearly as much as back then. A significant amount yes, but not enough to pass out. It would appear that TSK put a poison on their knives that would slowly make her weak, but that didn’t explain why they didn’t just kill her.

The last thing she heard as she slipped into unconsciousness was the familiar thud of TSK landing on the platform, a sharp noise as they unsheathed another knife and began walking towards her.

**********************************************************************************************

Falling.

Pinkamena was falling, in a current constant state of vertigo.

She only knew she was falling because of how her body felt, air pushing against her back and her hair blowing in her face, yet she wasn’t tense in the slightest. No adrenaline pumping through her veins, no stomach dropping or chest tightening as panic set in, her body was completely relaxed. Which was made even stranger by the fact that her emotional state was similar. There was a distinct dullness that overwrought everything else, it was comparable to the groggy sensation whenever she first woke up in the morning before becoming fully conscious, when emotions didn’t quite register.

She couldn’t move anything either, not even so much of a flinch of the finger or a wiggle of one of her toes. She was laying completely straight as if she were on the ground, her head stuck staring upward at the void she found herself in. Pinkamena also recognized the place as where she usually went when she fell asleep, the black smoke was so thick she almost didn’t see any of it move around.

She was in The Dark Room, a simple yet fitting name for this abyss she kept ending up in.

“Not doing so hot out there, huh?”

She couldn’t actually move her head at all, but she could shift her eyes around. She looked to her left, noticing that while she couldn’t feel it, her mask had come with her, for whatever reason. The source of the voice was to her left, she recognized it as Alice near instantly. Alice was casually standing beside her as if she were standing on solid ground, while she was stuck in a stasis of free fall.

Her expression was hard to read, which wasn’t anything new. Her jaw was tight giving away that she was angry about something, yet her lips were curved in something between her usual sardonic smile and a disapproving sneer. There was an almost unnoticeable light in her tsavorite eyes that was a step up from the usual hollowness she carried behind them, her hair draped down the sides of her face like curtains, similar to her own to the extent that it almost seemed mocking. Her eyes were also narrowed and her eyebrows lowered as she was staring more through her than actually at her, vaguely reminding her of a detective in those black and white movies she used to watch when they would stare down a suspect and have an internal monologue explaining how they were sure he did it.

“Am I dead?”

Alice made a scoffing noise that came from the back of her throat, but barely left her lips as anything more than a sharp exhale. She turned her head to Pinkamena’s body like she’d completely lost interest in staring into her eyes, raising her right arm and placing her pointer finger against Pinkamena’s chest, tracing it down to her belly button and then back up as if drawing an invisible line. Pinkamena could not move her head down to observe it nor feel it, which was...unnerving to say the least.

“No, but you will be if you don’t stop.”

She waited for Alice to say something else, but from the way she was absentmindedly running her finger against Pinkamena’s torso and humming some tune she didn’t recognize like a mother preparing dinner for her children, that she wasn’t going to until prompted.

“Stop what?”

Her expression dropped into a scowl, abruptly stopping tracing and glaring at where she stopped as if she were a painter that had just noticed a blatant mistake in their art near completion.

“Stop lying to yourself and holding yourself back.”

Pinkamena tried to make a disgruntled expression, but under whatever trance she was unable to summon any actual emotions, it felt like an imitation, and was also pointless with her mask on. “I’m no-”

“You are. You have been for the past couple of days. We weren’t going to say anything, but now it’s put your life in danger, so we can’t tolerate your little dilemma anymore.”

Alice retracted her hand, placing both of her hands behind her back and walking around her akin to a dictator looking upon his army, the distasteful scorn on her face a stark contrast to the perfect princess photocopy of Cinderella’s outfit she was wearing.

“Do you remember your fight with Michael? Your first real fight since you killed dear old daddy? When you just completely let go of all your reserves and just tore into him like the feral animal you are? When the only thing stopping you from ripping him apart like a build-a-bear was Starlight?”

While she phrased them as questions, it was obvious it was just to make the memories salient and that she already knew the answer, which it did. It took Pinkamena all of a few seconds to bring forth that fight, when she unleashed herself onto him without even the slightest inclination of self-preservation. If it weren’t for her near regenerative healing factor, she would have done much more damage to herself than him.

“Vividly.”

Alice suddenly leaned over, standing behind her and with her face inches away from Pinkamena’s. Although her face was flipped from her perspective, she could distinctly make out the manic grin that showed every individual tooth she had. Her eyes as wide as saucers, so deep she could lose herself in them.

“How about how good it made you feel?”

If she wasn't in a state of near full body numbness, she was sure she would have felt her throat get dry at Alice’s words, and her stomach dropping as guilt rose inside of her at the fact that she was right. Her face relaxed into a blank expression, once again walking in a circle around Pinkamena with her hands behind her back, albeit now a bit more lax.

“It was exhilarating, wasn’t it? Don’t bother lying. You might be good at it, but that’s not going to work on us. You love that high you get when you just let go, giving in to your instincts and your bloodlust, becoming the beast you are, embracing your darkness, so to speak.” She suddenly stopped at her feet, biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to where it was visible and making a tsking noise. “However, ever since your little scrap with the jacked cyborg, you’ve lost your nerve. You’ve been holding yourself back, subconsciously or not, in every encounter you’ve had. You got close when you injected yourself with Imperium, but not quite. You just don’t let go like you did then. You still have reserves about killing, you still try to fight while pushing down your bloodlust, you ignore your emotions instead of letting them flow through you like before. It’s...sickening, pathetic, and just downright wasteful. Tell me something,”

Alice halted, standing to the left of Pinkamena the same way she had at the start. There was no expression on her face, her eyes devoid of that small flicker of life they had before, blankly staring down at her in utter disinterest. “Why do you think that is? What could have happened between then and now that made you hesitant to flick that switch in your mind?”

Pinkamena had no doubt that she already knew the answer to that, her snarky tone was just another giveaway. There were various things that happened after that that could have caused what she was talking about, but the one that came to mind first was her recent conversation with Maud, bringing to light something she had already been trying to deal with.

“I’m...afraid of losing control.”

“Oh, but on the contrary, it is quite the opposite actually. When you were fighting him, you were more in control in that moment than you had been for quite a while, I dare say maybe even your entire life. That raw power you experienced when his life was in your hands, the blood pumping through your veins, your teeth on edge and moving like a free animal, that is being in control. No, let me explain to you what losing control is.”

Alice lowered her body and gently placed her hands on Pinkamena’s body, one on her chest right where her heart was and the other directly on her stomach. She glared at Pinkamena as if she were completely inferior to her, pressing down with slight pressure on her body. She suddenly began to fall much faster, a sensation like a much heavier weight had been slammed on her body, making it very difficult for her to breathe.

“Maud brought up a valid point that will remain relevant for quite a while. You have to be able to suppress your impulses in scenarios like that hostage situation, your feral urges will always be there, you just have to learn when to use them. However, the impression you’ve gotten from all that isn’t control, it’s suppression. You are trying to suppress it, ignore it, pretend it isn’t there. We’ve seen it happen to others before you and we watched because they wanted to keep their freedom to make poor choices, we’re tired of it. Not this time, not with you. So, little miss independence, we’ll tell you what’s going to happen if you don’t stop.”

Alice pushed down harder, and while Pinkamena couldn’t feel their hands directly, she could distinctly make out the drastic increase in force. It no longer resembled falling, she was being pushed downward, or maybe thrown would be a better adjective. The tightness in her chest got worse, to the point where she was unable to breathe, gasping desperately for air. Her attempt to inhale any air was halted when Alice blocked her vision with their face, making her unable to see anything but her eyes.

“Yes, you can keep pushing it down for a few days, maybe two weeks. Eventually, it will build up, you’ll find yourself more easily agitated and aggressive. You think it’s bad now? Imagine after a few days of trying to pretend it’s not there, like an itch you can’t quite scratch. It will get to you, and when it does, you won’t be able to pretend it isn’t there anymore. You will be so overcome with bloodlust and rage you won’t be able to think of anything else until you let it out, and then you won’t have any control. I can promise you that if you don’t start indulging, you will hurt someone you care about, and no one but yourself will be to blame.”

Alice hovered in that position with tense silence, her eyes half closed as she glared down at her like a teacher scolding her student for misbehaving. She didn’t even seem to notice, or care, that Pinkamena was struggling to breathe. Despite the fact that she couldn’t get any air into her lungs, it was near impossible to focus on anything other than Alice and what she was saying, it sounded like her words were echoing in her mind in sync with when they were leaving Alice’s lips.

Without warning, Alice pulled back, letting go of Pinkamena’s body as her arms dropped limply to her sides. Simultaneously the pressure on her body completely vanished, not even the amount before Alice touched that was causing her to be stuck in a state of falling. Now her body remained still, hovering and no longer falling endlessly. She gasped as she finally caught her breathing, taking long, desperate inhales and exhales.

“I know the reason why, it’s the same as the thing you're scared of more than anything else.”

Alice’s cold words were dangerously close to making her lose her breath again, the stern and abrasive tone in her voice sent shivers down her spine and filled her with a heavy sense of dread. She opened her mouth to try to say something, but closed it and realized saying anything would have likely just pissed her off more.

“It’s not of turning into a monster, which is the obvious one. No, despite what a select few have been trying to convince you, you already feel that you are a monster. A reality you have yet to consciously accept, but once you do, everything will be less of a struggle. What you’re truly terrified of, right down to the very core of who you are,” She slowly closed her eyes and relaxed her face into a more empty expression, her arms rising as she crossed them across her chest. “Is being alone. You want to be close to the people you care about to try to make up for the lack of intimacy when your parents neglected you, I’m sure Starlight see’s that and that’s why she’s reaffirmed so many times that you can trust her and that she’s there for you. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s just as afraid of being alone as you are, albeit likely for very different reasons.”

Alice was right, of course. Ever since the revelation she had thanks to Starlight about why she used to be so obsessed with making everyone happy, it uncovered her deep rooted fear of loneliness. She was too rage focused and busy just trying to survive for it to bother her, but now that she had much less distractions, it was always in the back of her mind like a growing cancer. She was ashamed to admit it, but part of the reason she wanted to tell her friends everything was because of how lonely she was becoming, as selfish as that was.

“I-”

Pinkamena was about to ask about how Alice was so sure about Starlight, but Alice opened her eyes and gave her a death stare as soon as Pinkamena tried to say something.

“Don’t interrupt me. Anyway, this is relevant because you are obscenely worried about what the people close to you think. Maud, Starlight, Discord, these are just a handful of the people who are the closest to you in your life right now. They prevent your fear from becoming a reality, so no matter how you might justify your behavior, you care what they think about you. You want them to see you as a person, now whatever you are. So, your reluctance to cut loose is because you don’t want them to be afraid of you. You believe that if you start acting like the monster you think yourself to be, they’ll become afraid of you. While you’re right, allow me to clarify something for you.”

Alice uncrossed her arms, bringing her right hand above Pinkamena’s head and extending her pointer finger, slowly lowering it to the spot between her eyes like a pencil to paper. “They. Aren’t. Here!” She said with heavy emphasis, poking her sharply with each word, which startingingly did not elicit any pain.

“If they were around, I could get it, but they aren’t. It’s just you and TSK, nothing holding you back but yourself. Not to mention that if you keep refusing, it won’t be just your life in danger, it’ll be theirs too. Did you think that if they killed you, that’d be it? Whatever vendetta they have against The Syndicate has clearly set them on a warpath that we don’t know when it will stop, but I can assure you it won’t be with you. They’ll keep killing members of The Syndicate, which includes The Council, and Maud isn’t out of the realm of possibilities either. So you need to make a decision, you cannot afford to die here.”

Alice’s voice was much more authoritative and callous than usual, her icy stare and lips curved into a sour scowl furthered this. The thing that really bothered Pinkamena was how unreserved she was while speaking, even before when they’d lecture her about something, they always had this air of composure and calmness. Now? They seemed genuinely worried, which deeply scared her.

“What…” Pinkamena gulped as the reality of what Alice was saying began to set in, no matter what she thought of, there didn’t seem to be any other option than to accept whatever help Alice was offering. “Are you suggesting I do?”

“Simple,” Alice’s sudden shift to a sickeningly sweet voice made Pinkamena’s stomach churn, her expression drastically changing to one she could only describe as ‘sultry’ as her finger traced down her mask to her neck. “We held up our end of the bargain and allowed you to talk about us with Starlight, now we’re asking you to pay the piper. You embrace your darkness, let out everything you’ve been pushing down. Even with them pumped full of that disgusting liquid, you have more than enough ability to kill them. Your body is willing, but your mind isn’t, yet.”

The suggested tone in Alice’s voice only made her further unsettled, and wouldn’t have fit if she truly were a young girl. Pinkamena hated having to let Alice have her way, but while she couldn’t feel it with the state she was in, she knew that even the thought of anyone else she cared about dying because of her would have come with immeasurable guilt.

“What’s the catch?”

Alice’s grin faltered for a fraction of a second, more out of surprise than disapproval. “You’re catching on, that’s good. Life lesson number one: True altruism doesn’t exist.” She brought the finger that was resting on her Adam's apple towards her shoulder, instead of tracing an imaginary line like before, it was more like they were moving towards something. “We’ll make things easier on you and release all your pent up rage for you, plus it’s just faster that way. However, the caveat is that you’ll be ‘blind’, in a sense. You won’t be able to ‘see’ again until you find some kind of catharsis, in this case, killing someone.”

Alice’s finger stopped on the center of her hand, pressing it into her skin as it collapsed in on itself around it. A sharp tingling sensation started from that point and began to spread up her arm, abruptly stopping at her shoulder. The fog-like feeling that had spread throughout her body faded away from her left arm, she testingly tried moving her finger, which stung to move but did obey her commands.

“I think we’ve come to a conclusion then. When you awake, take off your mask. It is much easier for us to correlate it with an action of some sort.”

Alice’s words began to sound very distant as it faded away, only vaguely able to feel her grab her arm and lift to her face, not bothering to resist as she placed her hand on her mask. All of her senses were dulling, she couldn’t even tell if her own body was still there, a massive weight dropping on her eyelids and forcing her to close them. For an amount of time she was unable to tell, it was like she did not even exist, unable to see, hear, or feel anything!

The last thing she heard was Alice’s raspy voice whispering something into her ear, the tone of her voice was suddenly thick with a heavy german accent.

“Es muss sein.”

**********************************************************************************************

A sharp sound like a siren filled her ears in intervals, rising and falling as if it were coming from an instrument and the player was switching between high and low notes. It was impossible to portray it as its own sound, Pinkamena was only able to describe it as something between wind blowing and a helicopter taking off.

Just as abruptly as it started it stopped, causing her to snap her eyes open as she saw she was back at the construction site, still trapped under the steel beams. She remembered her conversation with Alice well enough to write out every detail if she needed too, which shouldn’t have surprised her as much as it did. She raised her head and looked forward, seeing that TSK was standing at their feet, staring at them cautiously as they pulled out a knife from a sheathe on their chest.

*No more than a few seconds have passed I think. Strange, have they always been able to do that?*

Her perception was attacked by a...compulsion to take off her mask, it was an unmistakable difference between when she had the desire to do something, it was like an external source from inside of her was commanding her to do so. She knew better than to try to resist The Whispers, so much as go back on a deal, so she obliged. She brought her left hand up to her mask, her claws having retraced into claws so she could grab it by the eyeholes and take it off.

As soon as the mask was off, the cool air blowing against her face, a fire sparked deep inside of the core of her body, it’s burning heat coursing through her veins. Unfiltered rage spread throughout her like when she injected the Imperium, however it was much more raw and pungent. The balmy heat filled every part of her, even right down to her bones, so intense that they felt like they would melt.

Yet, she couldn’t help but smile. The energy pulsating through her in sync with her heart beat could truly only be described in one word: Power.

“I’d...like to apologize to you.” She said with a gritty tone, her voice getting deeper and reverberating, sounding less and less human.

She could hear and feel her body bulking up, her torso, arms, and legs in particular got noticeably larger as the mass and density of both her muscles and bones increased. The sudden surge of strength caused her to clench her left hand, crushing the plastic mask like it was glass, the small pieces of it began to fall through her fingers.

“For letting you think you had a chance to win!” Pinkamena growled, using her other hand to lift the metal beam across her body with relative ease, flipping it over as it smashed into the platform with a deafening, metallic thud.

There was a distinct ripping noise as the fabric of her hoodie ripped in some places as her body grew. She wasn’t quite sure why it wasn’t holding now like when she fought Michael, it must have had something to do with the amount of holes in it and how drenched it was in her own blood, but she didn’t really care.

Her ears picked up the familiar crackling noise of her skin cracking, turning a dark red as the texture changed to something much more reptilian, Pinkamena tried to ignore how similar it sounded to Rice Krispies. Even the skin on her hand changed, her nails extending into claws like blades, sharper and more animalistic than usual. She could tell that every part of her body changed like this, with the exception of her face, stopping up to her neck just under her chin.

“You wanted me to take my mask off to see my face, right?” Pinkamena asked, putting both her hands under the second metal beam on her legs. She lifted it up and tossed it behind her as if it weighed nothing, it fell into the darkness of the construction site, the echo of it hitting the ground following moments later.

Despite her legs having been crushed from the weight of the beams not even minutes previously, Pinkamena stood to her feet without so much as a shamble. An unnatural amount of steam was coming off of every part of her body, making her appear like a living engine. She fully opened her mouth as a cloud of steam erupted out of it, her jaw growing as her teeth extended into something inhuman.

She shook her hand as the rest of the pieces of the now crushed mask crumbled to the floor, bringing it up to her hood and taking it off, releasing her black and pink hair as it flowed like silk in the wind. Then she placed the same hand on her forehead and pushed her head back, raising it and leaving it completely uncovered.

The color and shape of her pupils no longer resemble anything human. The color had changed to a crimson so dark it was almost black, the shape shifting to a slit similar to a cat’s or a snake’s. The veins around both her eyes were pulsating violently, completely in sync with her heartbeat. She had an almost cheshire smile that stretched from ear to ear, a manic undertone to it that gave her a demented expression.

“This...is the face of the woman who’s going to kill you.”

TSK had stood there in horror and watched what was happening, trying to comprehend the sudden shift in personality and appearance. However, when Pinkamena revealed the entirety of her face, they let out a very audible and sharp intake of breath, losing their grip on their knife as it clattered to the ground.

“Pi-”

They didn’t get a chance to finish whatever they were saying, as in that brief moment of their guard lowering, Pinkamena leaped forward at a much faster speed than TSK was expecting or prepared for. She had wrapped her hand around their face, purposely placing it to where their eyes were uncovered and they could still see. Their vision was filled with Pinkamena’s face, an unhinged smile and constricted pupils showing how deranged she had become.

“Let’s take this to another level!”

TSK grabbed her wrist with both of their arms and tried kicking her chest, but Pinkamena’s iron grip only got tighter. She lifted her off the ground with just one arm, and then smashing her into the platform headfirst like a ragdoll. There was more than enough force behind it to break the platform, the wood cracking under as she broke a hole large enough to send them through. If it weren’t for the helmet on their head, their skull would have shattered.

TSK fell a few seconds before slamming into another platform below them, they took the brunt of the pain since they had little armor on their back, causing them to yelp out and briefly shut their eyes. When they opened them again, Pinkamena was soaring down towards them through the hole they made in the platform above, her arms above her head and her right foot first.

TSK managed to roll out of the way, hearing a loud crunching noise as the wood broke around where she landed. They stood back up and looked at Pinkamena, seeing a small hole was made and her foot was stuck in it. Pinkamena reached down and wrapped both her hands around her leg, pulling it out with relative ease. Then she glanced at TSK with her left eye through her hair, causing TSK to freeze up like a deer caught in the headlights.

She turned towards them, a malicious smile on her face that showed each of her carnivorous teeth as she prepared to pounce, but stopped. She cautiously examined, noticing something...off. Before, their stance was solid and didn’t waver in the slightest, they had resolve. Now they were almost shaky, she watched as they fumbled to stand up and to to pull out another knife from a sheathe on their knee, though they didn’t take up their fighting stance nor was their grip on it nearly as firm.

Something about them had changed, it was like they were scared or shocked by something. Which would have made sense if it were a normal opponent, but TSK wasn’t, they were someone hell bent on vengeance for something. Someone with that kind of mindset wouldn’t be so shaken up so quickly, so what happened?

It didn’t make much of a difference, nor did she get any more time to think about it as TSK took a stab at her. There was no precision or real thought in it, it was like they weren’t even trying to hurt her, something had thrown them off. Pinkamena smirked as she had an idea, raising her left hand and blocking the knife as it pierced through the center of her hand, poking out of the other side. Instead of flinching or reacting to the pain at all, she clenched her fist around the knife and onto their knuckles, her claws digging into them enough to where it was difficult to escape their grip.

“I think it’s time I got a little payback!” She said sadistically, pulling back her right hand and clenching it hard enough for it to crack.

Her punch was as fast as a bullet, landing at the elbow right where the forearm and upper arm connected, a sickening crunch and a shriek of pain from TSK followed. The padding around their arm was thick enough to where the break wasn’t too bad, from the way it was bending and how shrill their voice was, it was painful.

Pinkamena let go of their knuckles and retracted her left hand, the knife now coated in a thick layer of black blood. She raised her right leg and kicked them square in the chest, knocking them back into a metal pillar. Instead of attacking immediately, Pinkamena decided to give them a few seconds, she wanted to test something.

She struggled to watch as they stood there, holding their broken arm to the side like an injured animal, standing there and staring at her. It wasn’t like before where they were daring her to make the first move, it was much more like they wanted her to make the first move because they didn’t know what to do, like they were scared.

Pinkamena, much slower than she was capable of, sent another punch flying at their head. Despite the fact that she had made it intentionally easy to dodge, TSK still struggled to avoid it, just barely being grazed by the blow that was powerful enough to put a sizable dent in the pillar behind them. They jumped to the side sluggishly, almost slipping and falling down, their gaze locked onto her face like they couldn’t look away. Pinkamena stayed in that position for a few moments, leaving herself open to attack.

Yet they did not advance.

Pinkamena grit her teeth in frustration as she pulled her arm back and turned towards them, clenching both of her fist, her claws digging into her palms and causing blood to drip onto the ground. She still had so much power and bloodlust coursing through her, her teeth were on edge and it was taking every ounce of her willpower not to give in to her instincts and tear them apart, she wanted to give in.

The problem was, however, that she wanted them to fight back! It wasn’t enjoyable if they laid down and took it, then she wouldn’t have been able to prove how strong she was! Them refusing and remaining pacificistic not only made her more enraged, it added an element of agitation she didn’t like.

“I don’t wan-”

She already knew what they were going to say, but she didn’t want to hear it. She jumped forward and lifted them off the ground by their throat, an unsurprising amount of little resistance. She reeled back her arm, letting go of them and then launching forward in an arc, smashing against the side of their head as they fell, slamming them into the platform they were standing on. She heard a muffled crackling noise when they hit the ground, though she couldn’t tell if it was their skull or the mask.

Pinkamena didn’t give them the chance to do anything, grabbing them by their body armor and reeling back their arm again, putting all of her strength into each punch.

“Why.”

The second punch landed as their body jerked in response, a louder crackling noise followed as she could see her punches were starting to break their mask.

“Aren’t.”

The mask was cracking and falling apart like a mirror, the parts that were broken fell and revealed parts of the face beneath. Pinkamena could only vaguely make out some of it thanks to her enhanced vision, but little more than that their skin was blue.

“You.”

Most of the right side of their face was revealed to her, and she could tell by their features that they were a woman, which surprised her a bit.

“Fighting.”

Some of their hair became visible, she noticed it was relatively short, and somewhat unkempt and raggedy. It was hard to tell, but some of their hair even appeared to be multicolored. Pinkamena played that off as a trick of the light, ignoring the oncoming sense of dread inside of her.

“Back…” The last hit packed much less of a punch, her voice died down as enough of the mask broke apart to reveal who was beneath it.

She didn’t believe it at first, even when it was staring her in the face. It wasn’t until there was a flash of light from nearby lightning that she was forced to face reality, the storm she noticed earlier had finally reached them, rain heavily poured down on them. She knew as soon as she saw the magenta eye who it was, as much as she wanted to deny it.

It was Rainbow Dash.

“No...no you...can’t…” She dropped them and took a few steps back until she hit a pillar out of shock, her expression of manic glee shifting to pure disbelief. “You’re...dead, you died looking for me….didn’t you?”

She waited for what felt like an eternity, she questioned whether she had beaten her into unconsciousness. Her unasked question was answered when they picked themselves up, their movements slow.

“In a way...I guess I did.” Rainbow said with an almost sardonic tone, reaching up to her face and pulling off the rest of her mask with her other arm. The broken arm hung limply to her side, she didn’t show any signs of the pain bothering her from it. “After I heard what happened to you, things...changed. When it didn’t look like any progress was going to be made with Sunset and the rest, I set off on my own to save you. I did some...terrible things, but seeing you here alive makes it all worth it.”

Her voice was sorrowful but had some joy in it at the same time, carrying a heavy solemn tone. Rainbow’s head was dropped to where her eyes were covered by her short bangs, which had grown noticeably longer since Pinkamena had last seen her. She could tell that the right side of their face was heavily bruised from the beating they gave her earlier, and the rest of her face didn’t look much better.

There were various battle scars on her body, showing how many rough encounters she’s actually had, though there was one in particular that stuck out. There was a perfect gash on her left eye, it started right above her eyebrow and ended a few inches below, though her actual pupil and sclera seemed unaffected. The scar was so straight it seemed almost intentional, it was strikingly similar to Tempest’s.

It was also clear that Rainbow hadn’t been taking very good care of herself. There were dark bags under her eyes that spoke of many sleepless nights, her cheeks were a bit sunken in showing that she hadn’t been eating very well. Seeing her so physically and emotionally distraught was like a stab straight to her heart, only made worse by the fact she knew she was the cause of it.

“I’ve…” The corners of her lips shook as she struggled to smile, evidently having been so long since she’d done so she’d almost forgotten. It was painful to watch. “Been so lonely without you.” Her voice broke as she held back a sob, her eyes tearing up as a tear rolled down her right face from her swollen eye.

There was sadness in her voice, but more obvious was the immense relief and happiness she was feeling. Pinkamena didn’t know when exactly Rainbow went off on her own and began doing this, but it must have been around two months at least. Two months of working by herself, the only person she was with was Scootaloo, who she couldn’t confide in. Two months of killing criminals, of trying to find her friend, when she wasn’t even sure if they were alive.

No wonder Pinkamena didn’t recognize her until it was literally looking her in the face, those two months had changed Rainbow the same way the three months with The Syndicate changed her.

“I...Rainbow I don’t…” She tried to stutter out something to say, so completely overwhelmed by a plethora of emotions. Yes, she was relieved that Rainbow was alive. At the same time, it changed everything! She had been blaming herself for Rainbow’s death, and while it was weight off her shoulders, she was TSK! That meant she either had to kill her, or do something to convince everyone at The Syndicate that they were dead, neither sounded particularly easy.

Her conflicting thoughts and emotions only plagued her mind for a few brief moments, the rage and bloodlust repressed by her were overwritten by them, only to return with a vengeance. She lurched over as she felt The Whispers release them again in their entirety, much more potent than before. She wasn’t quite sure whether to chalk that up to them holding some of it back earlier, or they were amplifying it.

“Pinkie?”

Pinkamena raised her head at Rainbow’s worried voice, keeping her arms wrapped around her body to hold herself back. Her entire body trembled with what felt like an unquenchable rage, with no outlet. As soon as her eyes met Rainbow’s, all of her murderousness zeroed in on her, unable to focus on anything else. Blood colored red began to bleed into the corners of her vision as her eyes moved to Rainbow’s now unguarded neck, unable to turn her gaze away from their jugular that she could hear pulsate with every beat of her heart.

“Y-You…” Pinkamena bit down hard on her lower lip, causing her sap like black blood to dribble down her chin and steam to come from the wound. “G-get away from me...if you don’t...I’ll…” She began to dig her claws into her sides, using pain to prevent herself from tearing Rainbow apart. “Kill you.”

Rainbows eyebrows furrowed into a confused and concerned expression, discarding the broken mask and throwing it to the ground as she walked towards Pinkamena. With each step, Pinkamena’s heart beat got louder, or what she thought was her heartbeat. She soon realized that it was Rainbow’s heart, she shut her eyes and slammed her forehead against the platform to try to drown it out, but it only got louder. It was now the only thing she could hear, Rainbow’s heartbeat like war drums in her mind that only got louder.

She wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination or not, but she swore she could hear the word ‘kill’ being said with each one like a war chant.

Once Rainbow got within a few feet of her, the sound and urge to kill became too strong. She lifted both her arms over her head, clenching them as tightly as possible and slamming them against the platform as hard as she could. The pain hardly even registered, even after the sound of the wood breaking and splinters stabbing her in the face, it did little to distract her from her libido for death.

“STOP!” Pinkamena bellowed in an almost inhuman voice, yet unable to hide the desperation behind it. She slowly raised her head to see Rainbow, the veins around her eyes pulsating rapidly and violently. Blood and steam came from her lip as she bit down on it, wrinkles all over her face as she strained to prevent herself from making another addition to her list of regrets.

“I’m...losing control, if you don’t leave right now, I will rip your throat out with my teeth!” She said the last part as she slammed her head against the platform,her voice somewhere between normal and demonic.

The longer that Rainbow was there, the harder it was to keep herself in check. The drum of her heartbeat got louder even when Pinkamena didn’t think it was possible. The red in her vision was beginning to spread as her bloodlust ate away at her willpower, if this was truly all of her repressed rage now, what would have happened if she kept trying to ignore it?

“No! I’m not leaving you! Especially not wh-”

Pinkamena pulled her arms out of the platform, bringing her hands to the sides of her head and began to stab into them with her claws like she was trying to dig the urges out of her mind. Her body rose once more as she took a deep breath.

“GO NOW!”

Nothing about her voice sounded human at all, which only amplified how truly terrifying she was in that moment. Rainbow recoiled, both now afraid and hurt, her expression torn between confused and horrified. Hesitantly she complied, going to the edge of the platform and standing there, looking for another to jump down on. She glanced over her shoulder at Pinkamena one more time before leaving, from the way her heart beat got farther away, she jumped down platforms until getting to the bottom and left. Rainbow struggled a bit to do so now that one of her limbs were non functional, but she still seemed to manage. Though it wasn’t until she was significantly far away until Pinkamena couldn’t hear her heartbeat anymore.

When the drums finally died down, she could finally hear the heavy rain that was hitting around her. She had been right, it was a big storm. Blood ran down the sides of her blood and her chin, and yet she couldn’t get her mind off Rainbow's. Thinking about biting into her throat set Pinkamena's teeth on edge in a way almost nothing else did, the more she tried not to think about it, the more graphic the imagery became until it was more like a memory than a fantasy. Her breathing was so heavy it was almost like she was hyperventilating, she began to whimper like a wounded animal as she could feel she was losing, her monstrous urges ebbed away at her last scraps of sanity.

There was an almost audible sound of string snapping as she finally broke, her whimpers turning into chuckling, then shifting to raucous laughter. The red completely encompassed her vision, the bloodlust took over as she entered a near feral mindstate. She got to her feet, her arms down at her sides and hands drenched in her own blood. She abruptly stopped laughing as her head snapped towards a random direction, her snake-like eyes shaking violently and continuously shifting between constricted and dilated, unable to focus.

Her face expressed how completely mad she had gone, a toothy grin and a slight tilt of her head like she was watching something, her head spotted with her own blood, both dry and wet. Any bit of rationale or sanity had vanished, forced to lose herself entirely. She walked towards the edge of the platform, crouching down and grabbing the edges, not once moving her gaze from whatever she was staring at.

She closed her eyes and sniffed the air like a bloodhound, though her head barely moved, her expression blank in concentration. Pinkamena stopped when she locked onto the scent, the corners of her lips curved into a sadistic smirk, her eyes snapping open with her eyes much more rapt.

She coiled her legs and pounced off the platform, landing on one of the horizontal metal beams with surprising nimbility and stealth, repeating the same movements with absolute accuracy until she reached the bottom. Once she did, she ran out on all fours, latching on to the nearest building and climbing to the top with her claws. Soon she was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, getting closer to her prey.

**********************************************************************************************

Pinkamena should have expected that Rainbow would go back to her apartment, where else did she have? It didn’t take her more than ten minutes to get there, straggling just a few minutes behind the multi colored vigilante herself. The closer she got, the less she was able to concentrate, their ever approaching scent and the anticipation she got from knowing she was about to sate her need for blood was intoxicating!

Once she got there, she was no longer to tell exactly where she was, her senses dazed by the mist of her bloodlust. She was standing just outside the building on the sidewalk, it was late enough to where no one else was around, the streetlamps nearby dull and would flicker every few minutes. Rainbow’s scent was coming from the entire building, though she could only really be in her apartment room Pinkamena had visited before. It was raining fairly heavily, she was drenched in it and some of the blood had washed off, various puddles were spread out on the ground.

She was about to enter before her ears flickered, detecting movement coming from the alleyway to the left of the building, likely a trashcan or something being knocked over. She tried to focus her hearing, able to discern a heartbeat, a human heartbeat. She could tell they were standing in the middle, waiting to see if anyone had noticed them. Pinkamena didn’t need to check if it was Rainbow or not, who else would be out this late?

She should have suspected Rainbow wasn’t fast enough to get back in her building before Pinkamena could catch up, she is just a human after all.

Pinkamena leaped into the alleyway, her bloodied vision and urge to kill could no longer be suppressed when her victim was in front of her like this. When she reached the entrance, she got to all fours, digging her claws into the ground as her limbs coiled like a spring. The street lamps turned off for a few seconds, they turned around to face her, which is when she pounced.

She closed the distance between them in an instant, a sickening squelching noise that filled her with a disturbing satisfaction as her hands broke through her ribcage like a knife through butter. It came out the other side, the still beating heart in her hand, she was very familiar with the warm wet feeling of it. Most of her forearm was now covered in fresh blood, she heard them weakly gasp and then make raspy breaths.

Her bloodlust was quenched, a euphoric sense of relief washed over her as she felt her rage release, the red in her vision receded until she could see normally again. She began to notice some things that she hadn’t before, like their stature and figure. They were much smaller up close, maybe half her size. Their heart wasn’t the same size as an adult’s, almost like it wasn’t fully developed.

It wasn’t until there was a flash of lighting, briefly illuminating the alleyway, did she realize in absolute horror that it wasn’t Rainbow who she had just killed, it was Scootaloo.

As the street lamps buzzed back to life, she could now see the look on the preteen’s face. It wasn’t one of pain, but instead shock or disbelief, like she didn’t quite understand what was happening. Her gaze dropped to Pinkamena’s arm, raising her own and placing them on her elbow, attempting weakly and futility to remove it. Then she raised her head to look at Pinkamena, coughing up blood that splattered across her face.

The look of total betrayal and hurt in Scootaloo’s eyes as the color drained from her face would haunt Pinkamena for the rest of her life, along with her last words as her body slumped and her eyes closed.

“W..h..y?” Scootaloo whispered as her body gave out. The last bit of life in her was gone, the only thing holding up her corpse was the arm that had taken her life.

For a minute, Pinkamena did not say anything, not knowing how to respond. She simply pulled out her arm and got on her knees, laying Scootaloo’s body on her lap and trying to place the heart in the hole in her chest, as if doing so would somehow bring her back to life. She felt empty doing this, her everything was completely numb and her mind tv static. Her motions had no meaning to it, trying to place the unmoving organ in her broken ribcage again and again like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

“No….no, no, no, no, no.” She began to mutter to herself incessantly, hot tears running down her face that blended with the cold rain. Her eyes faded back to normal and her claws retracted until she was human once more, desperately trying to fix her irreversible mistake.

Killing had felt good, for a very brief moment. Now that it was gone, however, that left her with the unbearable guilt of her actions and a tidal wave of emotions. There were no words that could express what she was feeling, so much agony, regret, and anguish blended together so well it was like a new blob of pain she had never experienced before.

She couldn’t stop the tears.

She couldn’t hold back the pain.

She couldn’t bear the burden of this sin.

She couldn’t control herself, and now she had murdered an innocent child.

She would never forgive herself for this, nor would she ever allow herself to forget it.

Pinkamena stopped fumbling with the heart, leaving it placed on Scootaloo’s chest and placing her on the ground. She then turned around and hunched over, placing her hands against the ground and began to rock her body back and forth as she sobbed from the back of her throat. Her sobbing got louder and louder as she banged her hands and head against the ground, trying to use physical pain to distract her from her intense bitterness towards herself.

The sobs were drowned out by the heavy rain, her hands and head bleeding profusely but the wounds healed just as quickly. The harder she tried to ignore it the more it bounced back.

Then she started screaming, screaming until her throat was sore, and then screamed more until her throat bled.

Once more, Pinkamena was broken, now done of her own volition. This night would change her in ways nothing else would. Also, if possible, push her to loathe herself more than anything or anyone else.