Quaid mashed his fingers over and over on the controller buttons, sweating profusely, white bandages wrapped tightly around his head (he no longer needed to protect himself from the broken Sarika), a headset squeezed firmly around his mullet.

“Dude, due!” Quaid complained into the mic. “You gotta rotate! I’m trying to plant at B while you’re sticking a thumb up your ass!”

Quaid saw the grenade indicator on his screen a moment too late.

“Guys, get over here!” Quaid barked. “I only needed one more kill for my last Bloodthirsty-”

Despite the headset, Quaid heard water dripping from behind him. That was odd, because a long hallway separated his dorm room (a much-coveted single) from the eel pit he dug below the student apartments with help from Holloway’s gorilla-ninjas and AppletonCorp equipment. They assured him that the water would get nowhere near his gaming equipment.

Deciding he had enough time to sneak a peek, Quaid tilted his head back. His jaw dropped.

“Uh…gotta go guys,” he mumbled. Right as he threw his headset off Sarika slammed a sharp, thin brown spear right through his ribs, knocking him off his gaming chair.

Quaid roared in pain; his defense eels immediately exploded out of his ceilings and walls, converging on the form of Sarika. She jumped backwards out of the way, ending up on the other side of his room.

Quaid used the opportunity to rip the spear out of him, with an eel wrapping itself around him to stop the bleeding. As he collected himself, he sized up Sarika, who stood confidently before him.

“But…we broke you,” Quaid said in disbelief.

Sarika shrugged. “I got better.”

Sarika didn’t intend on losing to Quaid again. His room wasn’t color-proofed; the brown spear came from the color she stole from a wooden chair in the back. The room was quite spacious; a big square with the gaming desk and chair on one side and a table and window, giving them plenty of room to finish things once and for all.

Quaid wisely kept his colored eels close to him and only sent out his black American eels out at Sarika. She calmly walked forward; the eels rocketed toward her. Then stopped.

The eels poked their heads at her, slowly circling her, but unlike before, kept their distance. Quaid took a step back. “What…what have you done?”

“You gave some of it away earlier, down in the pit,” Sarika informed him. “Your eels don’t exactly smell fear. They smell the fear of fear.”

Quaid clenched his fist, willing to his eels to go forward, but none of them budged. Sarika stepped forward; the eels retreated backwards.

“Eels, to me!” Quaid commanded. The eels did as instructed and retreated back to their master. Sarika kept on walking, sliding her hand across the gray-colored wall, a gray sword emerging in her other hand.

Quaid closed his eyes; his skin turned a sleek silver color and his right hand turned into a sleek eel, his fingers morphing into huge jaws armed with a sharp row of teeth. Quaid seemed to grow larger and heavier as well, his voice taking on a murky quality.

“Just like the gorilla-ninjas,” Sarika supposed, sizing up her superpowered opponent.

“Eel manipulation is my natural Talent,” Quaid explained. “But Holloway helped me go even further. You either are eel, or aren’t eel. I wasn’t eel, but Holloway used his powers to help blur the line and turn the Isn't into Is."

Sarika tilted her head. “What’s with the eel obsession?”

“Can’t a man have hobbies?”

“The eel pit of death was your hobby?”

“I wanted to open up a chain of eel aquariums across the country,” Quaid explained. “But I had no money to do so. Holloway said he would fund my dream as long as I used this first eel pit for his purposes.”

“So you sold your soul for money,” Sarika surmised.

“Don’t stand on your soapbox,” Quaid said. “Everyone has their purpose, otherwise they have nothing. If given the opportunity, you’d have sold your soul to bring your sister back, too.”

“At one point, I would’ve,” Sarika admitted. “But a week down in the eel pit did me some good. You oughta spend some time away from it all, too.”

Sarika raised her sword. “Surrender now. I’ll give you this one chance for redemption. I’m moving forward, whether or not you’re in the way.”

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The eel-man raised his arm. “I guess I’ll just have to break you a second time.”

The eel-hand suddenly elongated, thrashing about, wide teeth threatening to sink themselves into Sarika. She deflected it with her sword, but the eel-hand kept coming at her. Sarika managed to block another blow to her stomach, but the sheer weight behind the eel threw her backwards, sending her slide across the white tile floor into the table legs.

“You think you’ve overcome your fear?” Quaid taunted. He walked towards Sarika, the other eels in his arsenal slithering behind him on the ground and walls. “What have you really done? Just swim? I’m the first human obstacle you faced. Look at you.”

Sarika waited until he was close enough. Then she slid a hand across the tiles, smoke immediately emerging into the air. Judging from the new appearance of his eyes, Sarika supposed tear gas wouldn’t be any good against someone lacking the necessary tear ducts. Thus, this new gas would need to be far more risky yet far more damaging: white phosphorus.

The eels all cried out as the smoke covered the room, thrashing and screeching from being burned alive. Sarika felt burning sensations all over her legs, but she kept her wits about her and used the brown from the table to throw up a crude wall in front of her. The wall wasn’t meant to shield her from the gas; it was only meant to shield her from Quaid long enough to dive out the window (she told herself a fall from the second floor wouldn’t be that bad).

Sarika scrambled through the gas, wheezing and burning, yet right as she arrived through the window, she felt something wrap itself around her leg. Quaid rumbled toward her, screaming from the heat, his eel-arm trapping Sarika in place. Sarika felt the breath get knocked out of her as he tackled her, the weight of dozens of eels behind him.

The two broke straight through the window and wall. Sarika felt her stomach lurch as they fell through the air; Quaid used Sarika to break his fall onto the grass field below the dorm.

Sarika groaned, temporarily seeing stars. When her vision got better, she saw white smoke drifting out of the broken wall of the dorm. But then she saw Quaid’s eel-fist smash onto her face.

And then he bashed her skull in again and again. “It’s over, Sarika,” he taunted. “Holloway said it best - we both know believing we could ever connect with anyone else is a lie. I found my purpose in eels. You found your purpose in death. Now, I’ll help you with that purpose.”

Quaid raised his eel-arm for the final blow; Sarika lifted her head and arm.

“Purpose this!” She jabbed her hand into his face, his own arms too slow. She then slid her hand across the white bandages, turning it into a cloud of white phosphorus directly onto his face. The heat came immediately; Sarika could feel her hand burn as she pulled it away.

Quaid started screaming, a white cloud covering his head. Sarika kicked him off of her then rolled away; however, despite the pain, Quaid charged right at her, knocking them to the ground again. His face was an angry red, skin peeling, arms flailing as he tried to claw Sarika’s face off.

Sarika stayed calm and focused. With one hand, she stole the green color of grass below her; with the other, she navigated through his hurricane of arms and grasped his throat. Sharp stems came out of her hand, pushing their way through the top soil known as Quaid’s neck.

The stems emerged out through the back, basking in their newfound freedom. Between the spear through the gut, chemical burns directly to the face, and now plant growth through the throat, Quaid finally went silent.

Sarika pushed him off her, this time for good. His body crumpled onto the grass.

She heard a large rustling noise coming from the apartment and elsewhere in the grass. Hundreds of surviving eels poured out of the apartment, joining their brethren on the grass.

All of them - all the colors, all the sizes, all the weights, all the anger and terror and viciousness or calmness - all of them raised their heads in Sarika’s direction. Sarika stood there, in acknowledgement of her own fear.

The eels ducked their hands and disappeared into the grass, slithering off into parts unknown.

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

Sarika limped toward the cul-de-sac in front of the student apartments, debating her options. Ruta was still in peril, but given her current condition, Sarika would likely need help with rescuing her, as much as she hated to admit that. But then, as she further thought about it, she realized she had nobody else she could reach out to. Her long period of self-imposed isolation rendered her without any other connections.

Sarika found a nearby bench to sit on. She ran a hand through her hair, her body still stinging from the chemical burns. Either way, she decided to return the dorm; maybe the security guard could provide help. She was the only person she talked to this whole time that wasn’t currently imprisoned, missing, or dead.

She hoped the fight and destruction would attract the police or the fire department; she could then hitch a ride back with them. Right on cue, Sarika heard the low rumble of an approaching car. She figured it would be a cop car, but when it emerged around a bend and arrived on the cul-de-sac, she saw that it was an unmarked van.

The van pulled up right in front of her. Sarika tilted her head as the window rolled down. The ninja inside tilted his head, as if not believing that Sarika had escaped. The two stared at each other in silence, a Breadystack Burger from the ninjas' snack run hanging awkwardly out of the his mouth.

Then Sarika dove behind the bench when ninjas from the backseat fired at her with submachine guns. The bullets whizzed overhead, and Sarika closed the gap between the bottom of the bench and the grass below by stealing the bench’s brown color and making a wooden wall.

The wooden wall wasn’t exactly impervious to bullets, but it would have to make do while Sarika thought it over. She was pinned down by gun-toting ninjas with the ability to literally go ape on her; her limited circle of friends (well, singular friend) and acquaintances were all incapacitated; she herself wasn’t doing so hot either.

Fortunately, while Sarika had nobody to reach out to at the moment, it was right then that she realized that she still had the good fortune of people reaching out to her.

Sarika heard the faint whoosh of the missile, then felt the heat and shockwave of an explosion. She peeked over the bench and saw the ninja van go up in flames, transformed into a huge fireball.

Three cars pulled into the cul-de-sac, all bearing the flag for El Marcos. One of them pulled onto the grass, sliding right to a stop in front of Sarika. An official looking man in black stepped out, followed by several students.

“Good, we weren’t too late,” a short girl with red hair exclaimed in belief. She stuck her hand out. “We’re the peanut allergy table. We’re here to rescue you.”

Sarika felt waves of relief rush through her, then took her hand.