Hermione was disappointed to find that there was nothing in the cargo transit room. Nothing, that is, except for the massive lift door on the other side, a pallet topped with a few empty plastic barrels, This, of course, meant that the voices had lied, or were never really there to begin with. It also meant that she was about to be berated by Jakuzure.
"You know, Curly, I've heard that they have really nice cells in Medical for people like you. The walls are very soft and they give you mashed potatoes twice a week!" cackled the girl.
Sanageyama was less abrasive in his sentiments. "Yeah, Mrs. Granger, I think we need to give this up. You're too stressed out. We'll report what we've found and let the rest of Regulations take care of it."
"You could put in a request for a few days off," suggested Inumuta.
"I can't take time off, not now- there's something… and if anybody else tried to… they'd… nobody's going to make it!" Hermione sobbed.
"The voice!" the witch yelped, looking around for the source, even though she knew it was useless. It was light and innocent and bubbly- it really did sound like Pinkie Pie, maybe not exactly the same, but close. Perhaps if Pinkie had an older sister. No, wait, she did have an older sister, and she didn't sound like Pinkie.
Hermione wiped the tears from her eyes, and drew running snot back into her sinuses. "Who are you? Why are you talking to me, and just me?"
"Curly, you had better stop that," warned Jakuzure, looking more concerned than spiteful.
"I'm… the only one who knows?"
"I… have?"
"So… I have all of the clues I need, or something? Can I figure out why Rei died?"
"I was interrogating Gendo… and looking for the weapons."
Inumuta lifted an eyebrow. "What's going on?"
"The voice… I think it's telling me that everything's… been connected. Is that right? Forty-Seven, Fifty-Three, Fluttershy, the weapons… this is all the same thing! Of course! The killer took the weapons, used them to kill Fifty-Three, visited Fluttershy, and released the creature! R-right?"
Hermione's mental elation died down, sinking her face back into a grimace. "Almost?"
The door behind them suddenly began to move along its tracks, until it sealed itself shut. The investigators scrambled their way back, and found the access panel had been crudely modified.
"It's been tampered with," explained Inumuta. "Hacked. And they've messed with the physical systems, too, I can't undo this."
"You mean, we're trapped?" yelped Jakuzure.
"Imaginary voices don't set traps," Sanageyama growled.
Hermione turned away from the door, looking up as if the invisible voice was really just some moth fluttering over her head.
"Are you doing this? Why are you doing this?!"
"The… fun part?"
"A FUN PART DOES NOT SOUND LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW," shouted Gamagori.
"Oh… bloody… hell," gasped Hermione. "It says… she says we're going to die."
"No… you don't mean," Breathed Jakuzure, "that the voice in Curly's head… was the killer?"
"I think it does," the witch whispered.
Just then, Hermione heard a sound she never wanted to hear again. It was not painfully intense, nor grating on the ears. It was simple, and instantly recognizable, with a source she found at once. Above her, running into the center of the room, was ventilation shaft. Something was moving inside of it.
"Oh… no."
"Curly, what's happening?! Tell us, right now!" Jakuzure screamed.
"Double X… one-twenty-one," she gulped. "She's right. We're all going to die."
The lights flickered ominously as the vents continued to be drummed on from the inside, like the beat of some awful, non-Euclidean Viking longboat's oars, paddling away on a sea of blood. The Elite Four were concerned, but resolute- Hermione could tell by the looks on their faces, they expected that whatever would come out of that vent would have a poor attitude, and after some tussling, would give up. They were not expecting, as she was, death itself.
The banging stopped, which meant that it was done travelling the length of the vent.
Hermione held her arms out to her side, and backed up slowly. "Get back," she whispered, even though she knew it would only delay the inevitable. A metallic series of cough-grunts echoed from the vent's outlet, and the boxy opening spat out a horrifying black droplet of liquid death. It collected on the floor into a lurking, waiting puddle.
Hermione heard some of the others call them bugs, but that was an immature, primitive way of looking at it. It really wasn't like a bug at all. One could argue that it moved like a bug, with slow, cautious movements; but it would more accurately be described as catlike. It was more like a catbug. No, that was something else, wasn't it? It certainly did not look like a bug. Its body, horrifically, was most like a human being, with limbs contorted and twisted into devices of pure evil. From its back, a double-pair of long, gently-curved stalks grew, steam subtly swirling at their tips. It was most probably exhaling from somewhere within its hellfire stomach, though Hermione knew they did not need air to live. Every part of its skeletal body was covered in tight ribbing, like some deadly rubber hose- or something else rubber. That was maybe the most disconcerting thing about them, and there was no way around it; they looked sexual. Every inch of its body looked like something you shouldn't talk about loudly in public. Obscene patterns were drawn into its grey-black shell, its shoulders covered by a bulbous, lobe-like collar, its terrible, eyeless, domed head stretched back into the most phallic shape possible. Eros, the ancient god of lust. Thanatos, the angel of death. Its steaming mouth dripped hot, grey saliva onto the floor as it sat, with its tail between its legs, like it was waiting. Hermione felt her chest tighten. She knew it was anxiety, but she remembered what had happened to Eliza, and her fear only caused the biting pain to increase, as if something really was chewing its way out.
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Inumuta continued to enter variables into his PDA. "But… if it was still in its tank at the Menagerie, how is it out here?"
This time, the boy's eyes widened.
"Did you hear that?!"
Hermione could barely tell what was going on anymore- she felt a little numb, except for her chest, which still sent out pulses of explosive pain. Everything was going fuzzy at the edges, and her ears were ringing.
"Y-yeah," stammered Jakuzure, no longer quite so resolute. "It sounds kinda familiar."
"Like… Pinkie… Pie?" grunted Hermione, finding her breathing more and more difficult.
"What? N-no! It sounds like-" Sanageyama was cut off by his own shudder.
"THE BLUE SCISSOR BLADE," began Gamagori.
"…and the Andalite Cube," Inumuta finished.
Hermione weakly plugged a few digits into her AEGIS, opening a communications channel.
"Regulations… we… need backup," she strained. "Pulse… weapons."
With that, the witch collapsed to the floor, gasping. Gamagori gritted his teeth and took a step forward, toward the still-waiting creature.
"JAKUZURE, GET MRS. GRANGER TO SAFETY. SANAGEYAMA, INUMUTA, LET US TEACH THIS CREATURE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE IRONCLAD RULES OF REGULATIONS ARE VIOLATED!" The pink-haired girl nodded and slipped her arms under their superior's shoulders, dragging her towards a corner of the room as the boys began to advance toward the alien.
"I was hoping you'd say something like that," smiled Sanageyama, drawing a thin grey cylinder from his belt. With a flick of his wrist, it unfolded its segmented sections into a long, narrow line, and a small guard appeared above the handle. "Come on, you monster! Nothing can stand before my shinai!"
Gamagori drew a similar device from his own belt, but it transformed in a different manner, extending into a long, coiled whip. Inumuta tapped a button on his PDA and clipped it to his uniform's left sleeve, as he began to furiously type into it.
"Enough talk!" screamed Sanageyama, leaping forwards with his shinai. "MEN!"
He forced the blunt tip of his sword forward, evidently surprising the creature despite his obvious calling of the attack. The strike hit the center of the monster's bulging forehead, causing it to stagger off the floor with its catlike grace. It tensed its body and prepared to charge, but Sanageyama was already beginning his second attack.
"DO!" he called, swiping his shinai into the alien's side. It let out a mechanical shriek and swiped a six-fingered claw down at the aggressor, only to have its hand deflected with a call of "KOTE!"
Sanageyama was about to move into his more rapid strikes, when he noticed a flicker of purple moving behind the creature. He barely had time to raise his own weapon to block the huge half-scissor that jumped out towards him. A grey-black tail was coiled around the handle, and the monster's leaking mouth shifted slightly, into something that might have been a smile.
"It's got the Scissor Blade!" he cried, though everyone else could see it.
The alien's mouth was suddenly jolted closed as something wrapped around its head. Against its will, it was drawn halfway across the room by Gamagori's whip. As the sliding beast approached, Gamagori wound up a punch that sent it back across the room, crashing through a pallet of barrels to collapse in a stunned heap.
"I THOUGHT THE KILLER HAD THE SCISSOR BLADE!"
Hermione forced her eyes open, finding a worried-looking Jakuzure crouched over her.
"Did you..."
"Perform CPR? Yep."
"But…"
"Listen, Curly, and save your breath. You're a terrible detective and you'll never be half the leader Lady Satsuki is. But that doesn't mean we don't care about you."
Hermione would have smiled if the situation was any different.
"The… voice… the cube. It's bluffing," she said weakly.
"Bluffing?"
"The Andalite cube… it's a quantum-space manipulator. It lets people turn into animals."
"So… that thing is a person?"
"No… it couldn't be," coughed Hermione. "Double X one-twenty-one has corrosive blood… morphs with the cube are unpredictable. If the blood changed before the veins… they'd die. It's not possible to morph one. Is that a maintenance access door over there?"
Jakuzure looked at where the witch was pointing.
"Yeah, but it's for the lift. We can't get out of here through there."
"If this works… we won't need to."
"I've calculated a weak point," announced Inumuta. "There's a sensory organ between its dorsal spires, just below its neck. Hit that, and we might overwhelm it."
Sanageyama repelled another one of its attacks, but knew that the creature was getting closer to hitting him each time.
"It's got claws at the front and the Scissor Blade on its tail. How are we going to get a hit in?"
"I know," called the muffled voice of Hermione. The alien turned from the young men as the massive lift doors at the back of the room began to grind open. Inside, heavy feet stomped toward the growing entrance. A tall, broad-shouldered figure trudged into the room, covered in bulbous armor plate. Its huge, robotic hands coiled their oversized fingers into fists, and it took the time to mimic cracking its knuckles. Hermione flicked a few switches in the open-air cockpit and checked the readouts on the hydraulics. "All systems, full power."
"An Egg Lifter," corrected Hermione, twisting her arms at the controls as the larger robotic ones followed her lead. A huge robotic hand extended and contracted two fingers to wave the creature on. "Get a load of this."
The alien scrambled toward the new, more immediate threat, but Hermione simply commanded the machine's massive arms forward, and caught the monster in mid-sprint. She carefully removed one hand from the beast, then brought it crashing down as a fist on top of the eyeless head. She followed with another punch, and another, before tossing away the battered creature.
"That was unexpected," stated Inumuta, typing a few new variables into his PDA.
"Are you okay, Mrs. Granger?" called Sanageyama.
"I just recovered from a minor heart attack and I'm staring down my greatest fear, yeah, I'm doing great," she hissed, charging ahead on the exoskeleton's heavy feet. The Xenomorph gracefully pounced upward, seemingly no worse for wear after Hermione's assault. It tangled itself over the exoskeleton's torso, knocking the witch off balance, and forcing her to the floor. The creature's boiling saliva rolled down from its twisted mouth as it hungrily stared into Hermione's soul. She would have none of that, and brought the exoskeleton's arms back around the creature, trapping it in a bear hug. The bulky mechanical legs pushed the Egg Lifter back off of the floor, as Hermione kept the alien locked in place.
"I've got you now, you little bastard," Hermione grunted, struggling to keep the writhing creature contained.
Much to her surprise, the alien stopped twisting around. It flicked its tail upwards, sending the purple half-scissor into the ceiling blade-first before becoming totally still.
"What's it doing, Curly?" shouted Jakuzure.
"I don't bloody know," cried the witch, throwing the creature against the wall. If it was up to something, she didn't want to be close to it. She stomped toward her allies, her heavy metal feet sparking against the floor as she pivoted to keep the alien in sight.
Never let it out of sight. Never ever.
"Why the hell did you throw it?!" cried the pink-haired girl.
"Because I didn't know what it was doing," Hermione hissed.
"It's getting back up," shouted Sanageyama, as the investigators readied their weapons again. The Xenomorph uncoiled itself from the floor, turning its terrifying head towards them.
The alien twitched and jolted in place, and much to Hermione's surprise, began to shrink.
"No…" she whispered. "No, that's not possible."
"Curly, I swear, if you can't learn to start telling us what's happening-"
"It's… morphing."
"The thing you said WASN'T FREAKING POSSIBLE?!"
"I JUST BLOODY SAID IT WASN'T POSSIBLE, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY ABOUT IT?!"
As Hermione watched the creature, she wasn't sure what exactly she would say about it. Slowly, sickeningly, the nightmare beast became less and less obscene. As it shrank, its skeletal frame softened. The ribbed patterns gave way to pink flesh, its metal fangs undergoing miracle orthodontia to become small, white squares. Its tail retracted back into its spine as its dorsal piping was sucked down into a flat surface. Its digitigrade stance changed as its elongated, clawed toes shrunk back into its feet. The horrifying, domed head collapsed down into a more familiar, human shape. New patterns began to emerge across its skin, folding out into a short, frilly dress; and long, voluminous pigtails.
"No, no, no, no, no," gulped Jakuzure. "No, no, no, no, no."
Sanageyama seemed equally concerned. "That… that better not be-"
"I DO THINK IT IS," cried Gamagori. Inumuta stopped typing.
Hermione was surprised by the reactions from her colleagues- there was something different about them. They certainly were not as resolute anymore, no, they were afraid. Perhaps just as afraid as she had been upon seeing the hole punched into Forty-Seven's head.
"So… who is she?" Hermione asked quietly.
The girl drew a line through the air with an index finger, and the Scissor Blade in the ceiling jolted down as if pulled by an invisible string. She caught it by the circular thumb grip and spun it around her arm a few times before resting it on her shoulder with a coy wink of a dark blue left eye.
"I told you," she smiled, "I'm the killer."