Melissa didn’t hesitate, pressing her fingers on the trigger of both revolvers. Two shots coursing with pink and blue energy made their way towards Zarlaus, the nightmare ducking their head to avoid both shots. He charged at Melissa the second his body was clear of the shots, Lucy rushing forward in an attempt to stop them. She tried to swing at him with her stick, but she was too slow. By the time it would have connected with his body he had sped past her.

Drew made sure to not make the same mistake as Zarlaus tried to jump on his friend. A quick, powerful strike allowed the back of the frying pan to smash into the nightmares head. Zarlaus went flying, Lucy quickly stepping to the side so she wasn’t brought to the ground with him. With an opening, Melissa unloaded four shots into Zarlaus as he hit the ground, emptying both revolvers of ammunition. She swore as she heard the click from both revolvers, but the unmoving body of her enemy brought her some safety.

Drew relaxed a bit, more than comfortable in believing those shots had killed him. Melissa and Lucy had decent reason to not believe the same. This was not a creature from their realm, and considering how loosely Vee played by their rules it seemed unlikely that Zarlaus would be the same. While Lucy was ready for any retaliation, Melissa focused on her revolvers, feeling energy drawn into each slot in the cylinders and reloading her.

“Heh, such a pathetic display of control.”

At hearing Zarlaus speak up, the three humans tensed up. Lucy immediately tried to swing her walking stick over his head, only to watch as Zarlaus suddenly sunk into the floor and disappeared. That was followed by Melissa feeling a hand reach around her leg, the trans girl looking down to see Zarlaus’s head emerge. It went to bite her, but she used his grip on her leg against him, pulling him out from the floor and throwing him into the door next to her.

The blow was enough to cause Zarlaus to let go, but instead of a grunt of pain the nightmare just laughed. It quickly got back to its feet, Melissa pumping as many shots as possible into the creature. While they did seem to wound him, they shrugged the shots off without any concern. With all her shots once again spent and Drew and Lucy too far away to stop him, Zarlaus once again jumped at Melissa. The girl brought her arms up to defend the rest of her body, holding in the urge to yell as she felt the nightmare’s teeth sink into her arms.

“I had my doubts when Bael sent me to deal with you and Vee, but I see now how pathetic you are,” Zarlaus mocked as his weight caused Melissa to fall on her back. “You do not know the true lengths of the power you weil–.”

Zarlaus was promptly interrupted by Lucy slamming their walking stick into the nightmare’s forehead. The hit was powerful enough to hit them off Melissa, an additional hit by Drew’s frying pan straight to the jaw sending them flying across the room. One of Melissa’s revolvers dissolved as she grabbed her hand, noticing the blood dripping from it. She quickly looked away, instead turning her attention to Lucy’s stretched out hand. She took the assistance in standing up.

“Thanks, Lu,” She said as she got to her feet, doing her best to ignore the pain coursing through her arm. Melissa watched Zarlaus stagger back onto its feet. “Can’t tell if my shots… are doing anything.”

“Nightmares sure can take a beating,” Lucy commented, giving her friend a nod in the process. “Perhaps it is time to use those magral knight powers you got for more than just flashy clothes.”

Taking her friend's advice, Melissa watched her opponent carefully and pumped a bit of extra charge into her ammo. Zarlaus was as steady on their feet now as before, continual concussive force to the head clearly doing a number on them. Yet they did their best to shake off the effects, once again fading into the floor and out of sight. Lucy and Drew looked around to see where the nightmare would appear, but Melissa stood still.

She hadn’t realized it the first time but there was a strange sensation of some sort in the hall. She couldn’t figure out exactly what it was but she could feel it moving. She focused on it, reaching out with her now free hand to grab whatever it was. It was energy of some sort, similar to that of the dream energy that made up her outfit and weapon. Without thinking, she tried to morph it into something physical.

Instead it moved away from her, as if her touch was allergic. She followed it behind Lucy, watching as it started to form on its own will. It quickly hit Melissa that what she had tried to morph was not something, but someone. As Zarlaus’ head started to form, making itself look as if it had come out of the wall, Melissa summoned back her second revolver and pointed them both at his head. Believing that telling Lucy to cover her ears would take too long, she pulled the trigger.

Lucy only had time to swerve her head in an attempt to ask Melissa what she was doing before her ears were filled with nothing but ringing. Clutching her ear and falling to her knees, she looked behind her to see what caused her friend to fire. Her eyes would have gone wide at the sight of Zarlaus being blasted into the wall. Trying to ignore the fact she couldn’t currently hear much of anything, she hobbled a couple of steps away as she watched something drip from the nightmare onto the ground.

It was bleeding, or at least Melissa was pretty sure that the black substance that fell onto the floor could be considered blood. It hit her why neither of her earlier shots hadn’t done much: her bullets didn’t work like that of real bullets. She had only enough dream energy to form them, but they were more like toy gun darts at that point. No, she needed to pour even more in to make them effective. She wasn’t how much she had charged into them, but it had done a considerable amount of damage.

Melissa also couldn’t help but feel exhausted, something those around her saw visibly too. She wasn’t entirely sure why using dream energy was making her tired, but she knew showing weakness would do nothing good. Forcing a cocky smile, she kept both revolvers pointed at the nightmare before her. Zarlaus didn’t try to move, trying to hide its wound to the best of its ability.

“Thanks for the tutoring,” Melissa replied. Her voice was ragged due to the lack of energy she had. “Now you’re going to tell me what he is planning or I’ll see that the next shot hits your head.”

Lucy and Drew watched on, the former being helped to her feet by the latter. Instead of speaking, a solemn chuckle escaped Zarlaus’ throat. He eyed Melissa’s fingers, noticing how they didn’t lie on the trigger any longer. Even more than that, there was an ever so slight shiver in her hand. He shook his head as he chuckled again, and then sighed.

“If I lost to someone like you, then he was right,” Zarlaus said. “I am worthless. So worthless that a knight, green or not, who was so scared to hurt me and yet still beat me.”

Melissa’s gripped her revolvers hard at Zarlaus’ words. He looked away for a moment, and then turned back to her, and then away again. He shook his head, and then stood back up. Melissa tried to press on the trigger, but her fingers didn’t move to it. Instead, in fear, she moved a step back.

“Back away from her, fucker!” Lucy replied as she stepped between Zarlaus and Melissa. She pointed her walking stick at the latter as the former lowered their revolver. “Try anything and I’ll knock you out. Wouldn’t want this to be your last memory, right?”

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“Whether from you, from her, or your other friend there, it won’t matter,” Zarlaus said, tilting his head towards Drew as he mentioned them. “I’m gonna die, Though I don’t think any of you have the guts to do it. Both of you are all bark and no bite, I can smell it,” he let out a chuckle as he stepped away from them both and back towards Dragon’s door. “Funny. I heard that people like killing in this country. Yet before me are three kids unable to do just that.”

Melissa took another step back, her revolver and outfit both dissolving away and replaced with the clothes she had on before the fight. Drew’s head hung as Zarlaus’ words snaked through his brain. The only one who didn’t back down was Lucy, who instead took a step forward.

“What you don’t hear is that we are the ones on the other side of those horrid events,” Lucy said, not letting an ounce of fear enter her voice. “People like Melli, Drew, and I are the exact people they want to hunt down. Yet I have had enough of being their prey. I have had enough of being the submissive victim for the world's cruelest to use,” Melissa looked to her friend as she continued to speak. There was a spark in their eyes that she didn’t see that often. “So they can come hunting for me if they want. They will find I’m not gonna lay down and die.”

Zarlaus chuckled as he heard that. “Perhaps there is a little bite to you after all.”

He eyed each of the humans before him, and then chuckled again. He closed his eyes for a moment, nodded, and started speaking as he opened them again.

“Yes, you four are the kind of dreamers who can stop him. You’re not ready yet, but dreamers like you are probably this realm's best hope,” He said as he leaned against the wall across from Dragon’s dorm. “Listen then: now that one of you is a magral knight, Bael isn’t gonna let you all live peacefully. As soon as he has found out Deam and I failed, you are in deep danger.”

Lucy did not move from her position, but she did give Zarlaus a curious look. Melissa worked their way back to her side, silently summoning back the knights outfits she had created. Drew, on the other hand, noticed the other name Zarlaus had added alongside him. He looked to the stairs, and then back to his friends. They had completely forgotten about the second nightmare in the photo Dragon had sent.

“I’m leaving him to you two. I’m gonna check on Dragon and Akane,” Drew told them. Lucy gave him a thumbs up, and he headed off, leaving the two young women with a dying nightmare.

“You don’t have to worry about him,” Zarlaus told Lucy and Melissa. “The doll made sure he wouldn’t be back tonight. It was merely by chance that I wasn’t taken with him.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Melissa asked. Her voice had come out quiet and soft, something she corrected as she spoke up again. “You were here to kill us, right? Why are you now telling us these things instead of trying to tear me apart?”

“You almost sound like you want me to kill you, they way you are talking,” Zarlaus said. He pushed off the wall and started wobbling over to Lucy and Melissa. He stopped once he was only a couple feet from the tip of Lucy’s stick. “If you want to know, it’s a bit of pre-death reflection mixed with spite.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow at his words. “What?”

“Bael doesn’t care about me, and I doubt he cares about the rest of his subordinates,” Zarlaus said. His legs gave out from under him, collapsing to the floor and startling the two girls before him. Melissa reflexively summoned her revolvers back and pointed them at him. “Consider this an… apology to you and the doll, I guess. Now, do what any fairy tale knight would do and put down evil.”

Just like earlier, Melissa hesitated to move her finger from its position of the trigger to on it. Despite knowing that the creature before her had tried to kill her, and despite knowing more would come, it felt impossible. Her mind conjured up a point from years earlier, when she still thought she was a cis man. The words from the news broadcast, the shock and terror on both her and her mother, the police latter visiting them and her mother vehemently refusing to comment for the reporter that showed up too. She wasn’t sure if she could bring herself to kill something, innocent or not, giving all that had happened.

Yet somehow, she found a single line of thought that managed to bring her pointer finger over the trigger. She wasn’t doing this for the same, twisted reason that her father had hurt all those people. She was doing this in protection, self defense, and the safety of all of Earth. She was a knight doing what she could to protect her home, not a murderer. With just a little more confidence needed, she looked to Lucy. The french girl gave her a nod, and that reassurance was all she needed to finally do it.

Looking back to Zarlaus, Melissa aimed one of the revolvers at their head and squeezed on the trigger. The shot was clean, going through the front of the nightmares head and out the back. Following it, Zarlaus’ entire body started to show cracks as if it was made of glass. It was then followed moments later by them shattering completely, dispersing into nothing but pure dark energy. Melissa stumbled back, feeling her stomach churn a little at what she had just done.

Despite knowing Zarlaus was dead either way, despite knowing she would have to do it again, what she had just done didn’t leave the girl. She had just killed something. The life Zarlaus had lived, good or bad, had ended and she was responsible for it. A pat on her back brought the trans girl’s attention to Lucy. That pat turned into a gentle hug, Melissa unsummoning her revolvers and returning it. She gripped onto the back of her friend's shirt, doing her best to keep her breathing calm.

“You did it in defense,” Lucy reminded her. For some reason hearing the words spoken by her friend did more to calm her than telling herself that seemed to do. “It’s not easy to do, but you did it. Remember that feeling, and never forget the pain of it when the next nightmare appears.”

“Right, thanks,” Melissa said. While Lucy’s arms fell back to her side, Melissa held on for a couple seconds more. When she finally pulled away, she looked her friend in the eye. “You talk like you have experience with… hurting others.”

“I would prefer not to talk about it too much, but yeah,” Lucy replied, pulling out her phone. “Long story short, I was forced into being… let's say an ‘actor’, before I got adopted. Only way I escaped is by forcing a knife into my employer when he tried to drag me onto the stage one day.”

Melissa’s eyebrows lifted a bit as she heard her friend's story, moving to ask more but choosing to stop herself. It was clear Lucy didn't want to talk about it further, and she wouldn’t push them to answer. That, and her stomach felt like it had been flipped upside down. She felt like she needed to sit down, so she did. Her knight’s outfit once away replaced itself with her everyday attire, looking up at Lucy as she types away on her phone.

“Alright, Dragon knows it is safe,” Lucy said. She looked down at Melissa, immediately knowing what her friend was dealing with. “We should probably get you to the bathroom before you vomit in the hallway. It seems that killer's guilt thing they mentioned in Metal Gear is setting in.”

Melissa nodded, reaching a hand up as Lucy stretched a hand to her. After being pulled up, the two quickly rushed her towards the stairs and to the near bathroom in the dormitory.

----------------------------------------

Deam reached a trembling hand out to the cold beachside snow, pulling himself free of the water. The droplets clinging to his body caused him to shiver violently, the icy wind making it even worse than it already was. He was sure that he would have been dead from Vee’s gale had he been a dreamer, and part of him wished he was. Dying would be better than the pure humiliation that both he and Zarlaus had gone through.

He looked back at Lake Champlain, limbs tired from swimming and wishing to give out. He wouldn’t allow that, for while a part of him wished he had died, a larger part of him was glad he hadn’t. He had no idea just how far from the college he had landed, but taking out Vee and secure the knights pin took the back sea. Finding a way to get warm was more important, and that was to say nothing about how hungry he was.

He hadn’t feasted on a dreamer’s nightmares in so long. Bael only allowed those they found worthy to feed, and he and Zarlaus were starved. No, not just starved, though Deam could not think of a proper word to describe exactly how hungry he was. Combine the hunger with the fact he was freezing, and all he could bring himself to think about was how warm feeding would make him. He had been held from the sweet taste of nightmares for far too long, and as he climbed the rocks between the beach and the above docks, he knew exactly what would be sufficient.

He had always enjoyed the nightmares of children most, and it was time to treat himself.

“O-o-o-once I’m f-f-f-full, that p-pathetic doll won’t s-s-stand a chance,” Deam said, unable to keep himself from stuttering due to the chilly water on his body and icy wind hitting him. “Y-y-you better h-have saved some fun f-f-f-for me, Z-Zarlaus.”