Deceit could only run for so long in her heels.

She stumbled, tripping over a stray tree root that had pushed itself up through the ground. Tair knew he had the advantage as she lay on the ground, trying to quickly take off her shoes.

He held out his palm, and the air crackled. It smelled like a storm was brewing as blue light shot out of his arm, in a long pole. A bright blue light danced in his hand along the pole, sporadic and leaping out at the edges. Trom had created a spear of lightning.

He stepped forward as he threw it, putting all the weight and power into it.

It sounded like the air itself was screaming in pain as it shot toward Deceit. She ducked and rolled as it struck the ground, and dirt went soaring into the sky. A crater was left where he had aimed, and Deceit knew she was in trouble without her children.

So she called for them.

“Come home to me,” she commanded. “I miss all of you.”

All the corpses in a mile radius stopped what they were doing.

Potential victims breathed a sigh of relief as the monsters all shuffled off into the woods to greet their mother. Gruesome had awakened as well, once Dexter had finally left far enough that she could wake up.

Hearing the call from her mother, Gruesome opened a portal and strolled right in, there to help.

Tair’s blue skin went dark at the sight of her. He was angry and wouldn’t have another potential meal taken from him, as his brother took the other.

“Leave and you get to breathe,” Tair told Gruesome.

“Too late. I can’t breathe anyway,” she replied.

With a blink of an eye, she split Tair right down the middle. Deceit squealed and hugged her daughter, proud of her.

“Oh I’m going to tell the others,” Deceit cooed. “They could learn from you!”

Tair’s body started to twitch. Gruesome knew that it wasn’t her mother that was doing it from the scared look on her face. “He died,” Deceit bellowed. “Stay dead!”

The left side of Tair’s body shook harder, and all the blood seeping out of it wound across the forest floor and into his other half. They stitched the body together, pulling back, a simple fix.

“Do you think that a god can die so easily,” Tair asked.

Gruesome promptly opened a portal and pushed her mother through.

Tair was impressed. “Even monsters have morals? How amusing.”

Still sitting on the forest floor, blood seeping out of his newly healed wound, Tair outstretched his hand, shooting out electrical volts.

Gruesome didn’t flinch as she created a portal right in front of her, the attack simply going through and out behind Tair. He didn’t feel anything, absorbing the electricity he had sent out.

Tair stood up and chuckled, as Gruesome was now almost out of ideas.

“I am the God of Thunder. Why would I be hurt by my own creation?”

The smell of the air changed again like it was about to rain. Their hair stood up from the static and Gruesome tried one final thing. She blinked and another glowing portal appeared behind Tair.

Tair let out volts of electricity right as she ran into him. They fried her skin and made her muscles spasm as she pushed into his body with all her might. It felt like pins and needles were piercing her eyes and tongue as she twitched all over the forest floor, black ooze dribbling out of her mouth and dripping down her nose.

Gruesome had sent Tair to Lake Sarai.

Tair had no idea where he was. At first, he was relieved once he looked upon the placid lake, but then he started to panic as he was too far from his brother. He would die, having not experienced more delicious meals.

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He ran as fast as he could, knowing exactly where he was, but Tair would not make it back in time. Instead, he was pulled back towards him, against his own will.

Confused survivors watched in the sky as a screaming blue monster sailed through the sky in an arc.

His brother Trom refused to go back. Their promise had been made, they had protected John, and now Levi wanted to come back. Nothing would stop him from finding Candice and frying her like Gruesome. Trom clung to the tree in which John hid inside. He dug his claw-like fingernails into the bark, bit down onto the tree with his jaw, and refused to leave.

Tair came crashing down, right into his brother, the force of his body creating a fine pulp on the sides they hit. John cried as he watched two halves of both of their bodies contort. The extra limbs fell off, and half of Tair and Trom became one.

The new body had two horns now. It was split down the middle, one side now yellow, the other blue. Their blood and Levi’s covered every inch of their body, and it fell to the ground.

The sounds of the frogs and crickets had returned now that no more maleficent forces could be felt. John cried even louder, and the tree tried to comfort him. He warily stepped out, and John could feel the leaves of the tree drop on top of him, the tree’s best attempt at a hug.

John sobbed even louder as the metamorphosis was still not complete.

A bulge appeared around the chest, and another around the stomach. It would go up and down, over and over. Eventually, something finally burst through. It was the top of Levi’s scalp.

Enough of his head was up so that he could see and the first thing he laid his eyes upon was John’s frightened face. With as much strength he could muster, Levi pushed his growing body out of his amniotic sac and took a deep breath of air as he breached, and John stood there, speechless, and Levi literally grew in front of him, a tiny child, and then a young adult, covered in blood and strange secretions.

His lungs burned and he shivered, naked and cold in the October air.

“Levi? Levi, are you a monster like them?”

Levi ignored his question and turned to the side. A strange substance slid out of his mouth, red and dark. There was unfinished food still inside of him that they had eaten.

Chunks of himself spewed out, and once he was done, he shuddered a sigh of relief and could finally speak.

“Yes,” Levi lied. “I’m a monster. That’s why you never see my ability often. I’m so sorry John.”

John was still scared but he knew without Levi he would have died in the forest. He didn’t want to be alone and come upon another child of Deceit and he definitely didn’t want to see another exploding body.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Levi whispered. “I’m so ashamed.”

John didn’t feel afraid anymore. He was sometimes ashamed of what his ability had done to his body. It had changed every aspect of himself, and even his body had become more ambiguous in gender, now having his own stamen and pistil.

He missed real food. He missed being able to talk to people and did not wish they were green and had leaves. He didn’t want his closest confident to be the cactus on his window sill anymore.

“I won’t tell anyone,” John promised.

“Really?”

“No. I too am ashamed… I don’t like being like this…,” John said. “I stay here because everyone is different here. No one notices me.”

“I get it,” Levi whispered.

He wobbled upwards and suddenly realized he was naked. Levi was grateful he was covered in blood so that John couldn’t get a clear look at anything and he waded into the water.

He cried, but no tears came out as she washed all the blood off of his body, never wanting to change again. For the first time in his life, Levi wished he was not like his peers.

Quickly he got out of the water, as the fish saw blood, and thought of Levi as their new meal, biting his toes and fingers. His clothes did not escape the rain of blood, and John offered him his.

They were a strange sight together.

A tall pale young man wearing only pants, and another green, wearing only blue briefs and the top half of his costume, a Victorian blouse, and a long pirate coat.

They said nothing as they walked down the road toward the Training Center, wanting to pretend that nothing ever happened, but now John was afraid of Levi.

John told himself that he was going to admit his feelings for Mary Jane, but now he worried if it would be safe to do so. He felt guilty that he harbored feelings for his friend’s girlfriend, but now he wondered if they were really friends, to begin with.

He didn’t think he could be friends with a monster.

Levi was relieved that John had believed his lie. He didn’t want to do what he did ever again and started thinking of how he could finally get rid of the cursed earrings that held Tair and Trom.

He didn’t want to pretend he was strong any longer. He knew he had to admit the truth.

That he had no ability.