Spindle makes a strangled noise, half-sob and half-curse. I can see the guilt etched into every line of his drawn, haggard face - the weight of old sins and bitter regrets pressing down on him like a physical thing.

My gaze darts back to Daisy, lips curling into an instinctive snarl. She's still grinning like this is all some big joke to her. Another sad, broken little girl playing dress-up in a world she doesn't really understand. But I know the truth - know exactly what kind of monster lurks behind that angelic facade.

"Daisy." The name tastes like ashes on my tongue.

She spreads her hands wide, that awful smile never wavering. "In the flesh," she purrs, her voice dripping with false sweetness.

"I believe we have some unfinished business to attend to, girl," Pumice growls, cracking his knuckles with a heavy, grinding sound.

My innards clench, phantom pains lancing through my muscles and joints at the memory of that last, fateful encounter. The crunch of breaking bone, torn flesh weeping gore onto the frozen concrete. And I can hear the words as clear as day, echoing through the halls of memory like the tolling of a funeral bell.

Liberty Belle is dead. At the hands of a madman. A monster who is being kept alive merely to siphon off his radiation to power the upper classes and their decadent, wasteful lifestyles. While down here in the trenches people die.

People are dying. My city is being torn apart. My friends - the ones I decided to reject when the chips were down - are out there fighting for their lives and the innocents caught in the crossfire.

I am angry. So angry I can barely breathe, can barely form a coherent thought beyond the white-hot nova of rage exploding behind my eyes. It bubbles up from some dark, primal place deep in my core and it's the most cleansing feeling in the world to flex my fingers and let it out.

The world condenses down until all that remains is the psychopath in front of me and a target-rich environment behind her.

"You're gonna wish you stayed on the bench, meatbag," Pumice intones as Daisy makes a kissy face at me. I flip him off and he mock-gasps.

The grin on Daisy's face is a hideous, twisted thing, more a rictus of pure malice than any genuine expression of mirth. She leans forward, hands braced on Pumice's rocky shoulders as she stares me down with those flat, dead eyes.

"I know your secret, Samantha," she croons, her voice sing-song and mocking. "I know just how much you care about all these boring, stupid, powerless people."

She makes a grand, sweeping gesture, taking in the entire scene of carnage and destruction with one dismissive wave of her hand.

"That's why I'm not giving you the chance to save anyone," she hisses, eyes glittering with cruel delight.

Spindle staggers forward, one trembling hand outstretched in a gesture of desperate supplication.

"Daisy, please," he begs, his voice cracking with emotion. "This isn't what Patches would have wanted. She never meant for things to go this far,"

Deathgirl's head snaps around, her features contorting into a mask of pure, seething rage. "Don't you dare speak her name, traitor," she snarls, spittle flying from her lips. "You lost that right when you abandoned us."

Pumice rumbles in assent, his stony visage twisted into a grimace of contempt. "Should have known better than to trust a spineless worm like you," he growls, cracking his knuckles with an ominous grinding sound. "You were never one of us."

I reach back blindly, groping for Playback's hand... but my fingers close on empty air. He's gone, vanished into the chaos without a trace. Panic seizes me in an icy grip, my eyes darting frantically across the seething mass of bodies and rubble.

A riot cop stumbles into view, his armor dented and splattered with gore. He levels his weapon at Pumice with shaking hands, screaming something that's lost in the din.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," my towering stone opponent mutters as he brushes the policeman aside with a contemptuous backhand, the armored body ragdolling off a slagged husk of a car.

Daisy clears her throat loudly. "Anyway," she mimes a sniffle and pretends to wipe an imaginary tear from her eye. "Where were we?"

I turn my full attention back to the two psychopaths, baring my teeth in a snarl of pure, focused rage.

"You're terrorists now, you know that right?" I hiss, each word dripping with venom. "Actual, literal terrorists. When I kick both your asses, you're going away forever. Locked up in some deep, dark hole until the fucking sun burns out."

Pumice snorts, a harsh, grating sound like boulders scraping together. "Big talk from a little girl who can barely stand," he rumbles, lips curling into a sneer. I can still feel the phantom pain of his granite fists breaking my ribs to splinters, the knives crammed through my skin. The memories don't scare me. They enrage me.

Daisy regards me for a long moment, head cocked to one side like a curious bird studying a particularly interesting insect. Then, slowly, she nods, a kind of bleak serenity settling over her features.

"That's just fine by me," she says softly, almost contemplatively. "I can die happy knowing I made the person who got Patches locked up fucking miserable. And getting to ruin this shithole world while I do it. That's what Demon Lords do."

Her words hit me like a physical blow, a spear of ice-cold fury lancing straight through my heart. Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Revenge. Retribution for some imagined slight, some petty grievance blown up into a world-ending apocalypse inside her twisted little mind.

My blood boils, my vision blurs. I can feel my teeth shifting and grinding in my gums, new ones punching up, fresh and razor-keen. An entire body's worth of weapons.

I don't fight it. I embrace it.

The change ripples through me in a wave of agony and ecstasy, every nerve ending singing with savage, feral joy. Serrated fangs burst from my knuckles, jagged and gleaming. Flat, triangular teeth curve out of my skin in sparse rows, a flexing carapace of organic scale mail - nothing as comprehensive as a shark's denticles, but extra padding under the body-armor. Stiletto-like spikes of dense enamel protrude along my elbows and shins, each one tapering to a wicked, flesh-rending point, the longest nearly an inch long.

I am a living blade, honed to murderous perfection by rage and pain. I open my mouth in a silent roar, my throat lined with recurved barbs like an anglerfish.

I have never been this angry before in my life. Maybe I never will be again.

It feels good.

I take a step forward, tasting blood in my mouth, the screams around me turning into a hum of red static. Pumice shifts his stance, a low growl rumbling up from his barrel chest. Daisy's pupils are huge and black, swallowing up the murky yellow of her irises.

Movement in my peripheral vision. Playback is standing on an LRAD truck, using the loudspeaker as a makeshift platform. He has the microphone in one white-knuckled fist and the other hand pressed against the roof, fingers clenched so hard they tremble. His face is a mask of agony, blood gushing from his nose in twin crimson streamers as he sways on his feet.

And then, all at once, everything goes dead silent. The screaming, the gunfire, the wail of sirens and the crackle of flames - all of it just... stops. Cut off like someone yanked the plug on the world's most horrific surround-sound system.

In the sudden, preternatural stillness, Playback's voice rings out like a thunderclap.

"I know the NSRA are evil!" he shouts, his words strained and shaking with effort. "But this has gone from a protest to the target of a terrorist attack!"

He doubles over, coughing wetly, but forces himself upright through sheer force of will alone. He's gripping the truck's roll bar for support just to keep himself upright.

"You all need to run!" he screams, flecks of bloody foam spraying from his lips. "Survive to protest another day! Please! I love y'all but you need to go!"

For a single, eternal heartbeat, nobody moves. The entire world seems to hang suspended in amber, a snapshot of pure chaos frozen in time.

Then, the sound turns back on.

Daisy moves so fast she practically blurs, leaping down from Pumice's shoulders like a feral cat. She jerks her chin at Playback, baring her teeth in a vicious grin.

"Sic 'em, big guy," she orders, and Pumice obeys with a rumbling snarl of pure, bestial fury, charging across the square like a runaway freight train, carelessly wading through the crowd and throwing aside anyone even remotely in his way.

I start forward instinctively, every muscle in my body clenched tight as a coiled spring... but Deathgirl is suddenly there in front of me, blocking my path. She cracks her knuckles with a series of muffled pops, that awful smile still plastered across her face. "Spindle!" I shout, but he's already ahead of me, diving past Daisy and clattering around riot cops and fallen protestors to get to Playback before Pumice does.

"Not so fast, Bloodhound," she purrs, eyes dancing with malicious glee. "I believe it's time for some long-overdue payback between us girls."

My lips skin back from my teeth in an animal snarl. The rage is a living thing inside me now, a searing wildfire roaring through my veins. It consumes me utterly, burning away all semblance of restraint or mercy until only the feral core of me remains. A part of me understands that I could die today. It's freeing.

The monster in little girl's skin beckons me forward with a mocking curl of her fingers, an open taunt.

"Come on then, bitch," she hisses, pupils blown wide with eagerness. "Let's dance."