Anisa's hands felt chilled to the bone, her vision distant and dark, the brutality she had seen to this point leaving the bitter taste of bile in her mouth. She could feel her body shaking with every step, dread clouding her vision as she almost wished she wouldn't see what Sasori had in mind next. As she walked she heard the distant voice of Magnifico, the luchador who once trained her.
You are being hunted. And it is by ghosts but not real ones. You are scared.
She took a few more heavy steps, realizing just how right he had been. She had known all of these things. Not ghosts of the dead but a ghost of herself. A vengeful phantom that shadowed her every step. A hungry beast that she dared not feed that was living deep in her heart. That darkness in his eyes as he told her the truth she could not and would not admit to herself.
There is one thing ghosts hate and that is to be ignored. It makes them furious, but one cannot fight while being hunted.
Was that her mistake? Sasori was that ghost and she had not just been passing her by but actively ignoring her. Was this just another part of the hunt? As she approached an unfamiliar door, she stepped through and found herself taken against her will as a passenger in a memory that was not her own. She was being pulled by the hand by a Tak'Nasi into a sterile lab that Anisa didn't remember from her time on the planet. The clone laughed playfully and lead the confused Villainess through the halls until they eventually stopped in one of the offices. The clone seemed overflowing with energy, saying with unbridled glee, "We haven't had a chance to interact with a Proktota for a few decades, let alone one with your situation."
Sculptura sighed, "Yeah, well I have never had a host put up this much resistance. I assumed that your similar biology and scientific curiosity could help find the unique factor that allows her this level of resilience." The clone nodded and ran over to a machine that ejected a needle with an odd substance. Walking over and injecting Sculptura without elaborating, the parasite gained the oddest expression. She stammered as she felt her vision begin to fade, "Wh-what did..." when the parasite faded, Anisa felt her agency return her body falling limp in the chair from lack of practice. At first she thought that this was some kind of actual dream, but when the clone came over and lifted her chin to examine her eyes, Anisa began to realize that even in this memory Sasori was forcing on her, she had some form of control.
Anisa asked, "How did you do that?' she could feel that she had said this before. That back then it was in relief to someone she believed her savior. In light of what she had seen on this internal journey she knew it couldn't be that simple.
The clone shrugged her shoulders and explained, "Your biology isn't dissimilar to our own and as a part of our experiment we use similar areas during the cloning process. Sedating the parasite was just a gamble so I could talk to you." She stopped her assessment and walked across the room. Speaking with a gleeful tone she said, "After all, I need to get good readings on where to investigate when we dissect you to get better information. Can't do that with the Proktota giving so much resistance." Anisa was chilled and wondered if she was joking, but quickly realized that she wasn't.
Anisa could feel the adrenaline begin pumping through her body. Moving without thoughts beyond survival, Anisa leapt from the chair and drove Sculptura's claws through the brain stem of the clone, instantly and permanently paralyzing her. Removing her claws and seeing the look of confusion on the girl's face, she was horrified as she watched the light slowly fade away. Not hearing the parasite in her head and not wanting to stay to be dissected, she remembered that Shawn had come here chasing her captor. If she could get out of this building, she could probably find him. Running full speed down the halls, hoping she remembered the right ones she came in through lead her to a random office. Not knowing how long she had before Sculptura woke up once more, Anisa hoped her carapace was strong enough to deflect glass and absorb the impact of the uncertain fall as she threw herself through the window. It shattered effortlessly and she cried out as she fell five stories onto her back, The wind was knocked out of her and she was light headed but the light filtering through the dome was the sweetest sight she had seen with her own eyes in a long time. As a few Tak'Nasi gathered around her, she laughed weakly.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
One of them had a look of genuine worry and concern, "Poor woman! You look like a total mess. Are you okay? What happened?"
She couldn't help but joke at a time like this, so thankful for this brief moment of liberation, "Oh, the usual. Throwing myself out a window of a secure lab to escape a mad doctor. How are you?"
The expression remained compassionate until the word lab left her mouth. It then grew oddly distant and cold. She smiled at Anisa and said, "Absolutely fine. Give me a moment to get some help to carry you inside." It was here that Anisa's memory snapped back. She remembered what happened next and forced her body to her feet. She needed to move. She needed to run. To escape what happened next to ignore what happened next. But Sasori wasn't about to let that happen. As she ran, Tak'Nasi after Tak'Nasi poured out of their homes, all with vacant eyes and various improvised weapons. Every one of them she locked eyes with she saw flashes of kind and happy eyes. All clueless to the puppetmaster. All blind to the hunt they had been sent on by a trigger buried deep in their minds.
She knew there was no way out. No escape. Sasori spoke in her mind, her influence overtaking Anisa like a layer of warm honey, "I know. You are scared. Terrified of what we did. But you can't deny you did it. They were asleep. You can explain to anyone why you did what you did, but it doesn't remove the blood on our hands. The sheer amount of lives we took." Sasori grabbed one of the Tak'Nasi by the collar and throwing her into the baker's massive furnace. She effortlessly lashed out with another assailant that hit her chin so precisely that her body snapping back impaled her on a nearby fencepost. "It doesn't cleanse us of the sociopathic efficiency we took in liberating their lives." She pierced the veins in the woman's throat before throwing her slowly draining corpse into the face of one of her sisters. Standing on the two prone forms, suffocating the healthier of the two with the cold shell of her sister. "The same way we did Permiso. The same way you were willing to do with your cousin." The more lives she ended, each with their own smiling faces, their happy routines, their own stories buried by The Original and her own murderous intent, the more her heart broke. By the time the vision ended, she looked down at her bloodied claws and the sea of bodies. As it faded, she felt Sasori's arms wrapped around her, trying to comfort her but the monster was unable to hide her glee at the act.
Anisa stared in horrified disbelief at her own hands, her mind drifting as she did so. "There is no coming back, is there? That taste of death that burns on the tongue of my mind. There is no swimming in this sea of blood." She felt herself crying as her arms drifted to her shoulders, hugging herself. "I can claim whatever reasons I want, but no one would ever put weight on that. Not with how easy it was."
Like you were just waiting for an excuse.
"No, I'm not like that! I was trying to protect myself. Protect others!" she shouted into the ever darkening void of her mind, Sasori's laughter closing in around her. "I would never kill if I didn't have to." She knew it was a lie. She didn't need to kill Permiso. "I don't want to hurt people." She could feel it was another lie. She enjoyed making evil people suffer. Even her own family was not immune. She dared not say that she doesn't kill innocent people as so many of those Tak'Nasi deserved so much better than the gruesome death they met at her hands. As she curled up in the darkness, feeling truly alone.
His voice was a gentle rumble, like thunder just over the horizon. Where is your mask, Nina? You know why it is there.