Hermione stepped backwards, a simple, small action turned into a clunky caricature by the exoskeleton. Now that she had the information that had eluded her, it was very simple to put two and two together. This girl, whoever she was, had stolen the Scissor Blade and Cube. She had then used the Blade to kill Fifty-Three, and acquired her form. She then disguised herself as Fifty-Three, infiltrated the Menagerie, overpowered Fluttershy, and tampered with the Pegasus' mind. Against all logic, she somehow acquired XX121 as a morph and used it to skulk about in the ventilation systems until she could kill Forty-Seven and steal her access to Research and Development. The motive was still a mystery, but the method was now clear. What that told her is that this girl was one bloody good schemer, and far less innocent that the frilly dress and bows implied.

"You know, it's been a long time since I saw these clowns," she giggled, taking a step towards them. Hermione heard Jakuzure swallow a gasp of fear.

They really are just as scared of her as I am of the Xenomorph- is she really just as bad?

"Is that so?" asked the witch, folding her exoskeleton's arms.

"Yeah," grunted Sanageyama. "We've dealt with her before, but we had Life Fiber uniforms. Without them, we don't stand a chance."

"Nice to see that everyone's staying positive."

"Oh, shut up, Curly. You're the one afraid of a pathetic excuse for a monster with a stupid-looking head. This is something worth being concerned over."

"You're right, Nonon," cooed the killer. "But you won't need to worry for long. Because soon, you'll all be dead, starting with the old lady you keep dragging around."

She darted forward, and the Elite Four moved to intercept, but it was no use. The girl dodged past each one like a drip of mercury before arriving at Hermione's exoskeleton. Hermione raised an arm in defense, but a lightning-fast whip of the Scissor Blade severed the hydraulics, causing the heavy metal to drag the witch's arm down to her side.

"No, no!" she cried, quickly moving her still-functional arm towards the other in an attempt to free her actual arm from the straps that bound it to the exoskeleton. A pink blur destroyed that possibility by slicing through the hydraulics on that limb as well, the exoskeleton now doing her more harm than good.

"See, I want to deal with these idiots alone, so I need to get rid of you, non?" laughed the girl, leaping in front of the immobilized Hermione. "I know you won't mind, since you're pretty close to dead anyway!"

She jumped forward, primed to drive her Scissor Blade through the front of the exoskeleton and into Hermione's chest, but fell short with a violent snap.

"YOU WILL NOT HARM MRS. GRANGER, HARIME!" roared Gamagori, yanking the whip that had coiled around the girl's leg back. He caught ahold of her briefly to throw her further away, and quickly snapped Hermione's arms free of their restraints.

"Thanks, Ira," said the witch, prying her feet out of the now-useless exoskeleton and drawing her wand. "I don't care who she is, we can't let her get away."

"Nui Harime is an extremely dangerous threat," explained Inumuta, dialing away at his arm-mounted PDA. "Incapacitating her will require a great deal of teamwork."

Hermione watched the girl in the pink dress pick herself up from the floor. "Well, we've got a team, let's get to work. Ira, Uzu, lock her down."

"R-right, Mrs. Granger," stammered Sanageyama, charging ahead with the hulking Gamagori at his side. His collapsible shinai crashed against an extended Scissor Blade, daintily held by a grinning Nui.

"So how have things been for you lately, Monkey? I see you've all ditched those tacky Goku Uniforms. That's really smart, it'll make this so much quicker for me."

Sanageyama used every ounce of strength he had to keep the blade from slicing through his shoulder, despite the fact that the girl gripped it with only one hand, pinkie extended. "Dammit, Nui… how the hell are you here?"

"I crawled through the vents, didn't you see me earlier?" she said with a coy grin, increasing the pressure on Sanageyama's training sword.

"That's not- ngh!-what I meant," grunted the young man, his legs buckling. Fortunately for Sanageyama, Gamagori's whip wound around the purple weapon and tugged it backwards, relieving enough pressure for him to rush into a series of rapid Men-Dou-Kote strikes. Momentarily stunned, the girl was dragged backwards into Gamagori's waiting hands, to be repeatedly slammed into the floor.

"She can just take all of that abuse?" asked Hermione. "What is she?"

"A human-Life Fiber hybrid," explained Jakuzure. "With Lady Satsuki, you've seen what wearing Life Fibers for long enough can do to one's body… but monsters like her are made with them. Pretty much indestructible."

"We'll see about that," the witch huffed. "Ira, Uzu, get back!"

The young men did as told, as Hermione spun her wand in a wave-like pattern. "Incendio!" A jet of flames raced forth from the wand's tip, swallowing the weakened Nui. Hermione felt some sense of justification, knowing that her greatest nemesis' fear could also harm her current opponent. She would have felt even better about it, had Nui not leapt from the fire, her body wreathed in flame, to swing her Scissor Blade towards the vulnerable witch.

"Oh, bloody-"

A burst of sound cut Hermione short, created by Jakuzure, who had placed herself between the killer and her superior. The girl stood with her legs and arms stretched apart, surrounded by a shimmering spherical field, against which Nui's Scissor Blade had come to a halt. Hermione found that the field was easier to feel than to see- it was vibrating her guts into different locations with its sheer volume.

"JAKUZURE SOUND BARRIER!" declared the girl, somehow audible over the field. "INUMUTA, COUNTER!"

The boy plugged a few more digits into his PDA before pressing his way into Jakuzure's barrier. The field then disappeared, and he caught the falling Harime on several well-placed open-handed strikes.

"Ack!" she wailed, collapsing to the ground, both of her eyes rolling in their sockets.

"I calculated those pressure points to within three millimeters," noted Inumuta. "But even I'm surprised it went that well."

Sanageyama scratched his head. "Is anyone else weirded out by the fact that she's got both of her eyes, now?"

"A LITTLE," replied Gamagori.

"Nice teamwork, everyone," smiled Hermione. "Even if my ears are still ringing."

"We can't stop now," Jakuzure grunted. "It'll take a lot more than that to put her down for good."

As it happened, a lot more than that chose that exact moment to appear, materializing ten armored Reis clad in Regulations colors, each with a pulse-action rifle in hand, in a large-scale AEGIS burst. They silently established a formation around the Elite Four, Hermione, and the stunned Nui, lowering their weapons.

"Command, this is Romeo Five," said one of the Reis softly, evidently addressing some sort of microphone inside her helmet. "We have arrived at the coordinates. Awaiting further instruction."

"It's her!" gasped Hermione, pointing at Nui. "Get her, or-"

"Madam, I need you to calm down," the same Rei interrupted. "Are you saying that she is responsible for the homicide that occurred-"

"I am indeed," giggled Nui, hopping to her feet. Her burns were now glowing as small red strands bridged the gaps between damaged tissue. Instantly the Reis focused their rifles on the girl, who raised her hands above her head, dropping the Scissor Blade to the floor. She closed her eyes with a smile, cocking her head sideways. "You can arrest me if you'd like."

"She's just… turning herself in?" asked Hermione as Nui walked into the center of the formation of Reis.

"Yeah, I am," the girl laughed. "Though I will say, I learned some very interesting things while I was in the vents. Do you wonder why I asked you to meet me here?"

"She's up to something," whispered Jakuzure.

Hermione's grip on her wand tightened. "B-because it was close?"

"No, silly," said Nui with a wink, as the floor shook beneath them, and the lights flickered out. At first, Hermione stood her ground, attempting to let her eyesight adjust. But she began to remember the last time she had felt this way, and blind fear began to seize her. A faint scream, no doubt emitted by one of the Reis, was enough to confirm this fear. She fell to the ground, curled into the fetal position, and wrapped her arms around her head, as if that was enough cover to save her from the monsters that could be lurking in the dark. Her heart rate raced, beginning to wind her chest tightly.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

No. No, I can't let that happen again.

She slowed her breathing and began to move her wand in a small loop.

"Lumos," she breathed, causing the tip of the wand to glow brightly. The hazy light formed a halo against the back wall, the remains of the exoskeleton casting a chilling mechanical shadow. Hermione quickly swept her wand's aim across the room, hoping to find her colleagues. Having the light on was a liability, since it was a double-edged sword; she could see, but anything in the dark could see her. Whatever was in the dark must have been oblivious, because Hermione found what she was looking for first. The Elite Four stood back-to-back, although with Gamagori towering over the rest, it could be said that only three of them truly stood back-to-back.

"What are you doing?!" hissed Jakuzure.

"Trying to see if you're all right," whispered Hermione.

"Well, now we're not going to be!"

"We don't know that yet. Stay close to one another- if any of you think you hear or see something, say so. What happened to the Reis?"

"DEAD, PROBABLY," shouted Gamagori, who was met with several exasperated shushing sounds.

Dainty giggles echoed off the walls. "They're not dead, they're just fine!"

The lights clicked back on, revealing a scene not too different than the one before the lights went off. The only difference Hermione could detect was that the Reis, who were all still accounted for, were no longer wearing their helmets. Nui twiddled her thumbs and swayed in place idly under their watchful gaze.

None of it made sense to Hermione. "You didn't escape?"

"No. Don't you get it? I planned this. I heard that there was going to be a temporary outage in this part of the ship, which would give me some more time to play around with you guys! And it all worked out, too!"

"But… you could have turned tail and ran," said the witch.

"But then I wouldn't have gotten such nice new playmates!"

She raised an index finger, and a thin red trail glittered in the air before disappearing. As she did, each of the Reis convulsed in place, lifting their pulse rifles to aim them at the investigators.

"Oh, no," gasped Inumuta.

Nonon threw herself in front of her allies. "JAKUZURE SOUND BARRIER!"

The field absorbed a slew of armor-piercing rounds before dissipating, leaving the others unharmed. The Reis began to scramble for new magazines to replace their empty ones.

"She's controlling them?!" yelped Hermione.

"The seams in their brains were a little loose," smiled Nui. "So I stitched them a little tighter. Now they're just fine!"

This must be what she did to Fluttershy, realized Hermione.

"I don't like your definition of fine," said the witch, flicking her wand forward. "Expelliarmus!"

The first Rei on the left of their formation suddenly lost her grip on her pulse rifle, which flew across the room, driven by an unseen magical force. Hermione followed with a second Expelliarmus, and then a third, and continued until every Rei had been disarmed.

Nui adjusted her smile to reflect her disappointment. "Aw, you ruined it! But, it was fun while it lasted. La vie est drôle, non?" She twitched her index finger again, and the Reis collapsed to the ground, blood running from their ears. "Nowthey're dead," she giggled.

"Twelve… you killed twelve people, and you're still bloody laughing about it," hissed Hermione.

"Hee-hee! You said twelve!"

Hermione gritted her teeth. "You're more of a monster than that alien. From here on out, I don't care about bringing you back in. I'm going to make sure… that you never take another bloody breath."

Nui kept on smiling. "But then, aren't you a monster too?"

"No, because I'm doing this to stop you from hurting anyone else. Even if I can't forgive myself, everyone will understand. This is how it has to be."

Before Nui could make a move, Hermione used her wand to etch a small lightning-bolt shape into the air.

"Avada Kedavara," she whispered.

A nearly-silent pulse skipped from her wand to the girl's body, the two points briefly connected by a green arc of electricity. The current skipped upwards from Nui's stomach, danced across her chest, and licked the side of her face within the mere nanoseconds of its existence, before fading away with only the smallest of traces. For a moment, the girl stood still. She then began to topple forward, falling first onto one knee, then the other, before slumping to the floor face-first.

"Oh, jeez," gasped Jakuzure. "You did it."

"I-I did," mumbled Hermione, feeling numb as she slipped her wand back into her belt. "And I had to."

"Don't feel down on yourself," assured Sanageyama.

"My calculations show that killing Harime was the strategy with the highest rate of success," Inumuta chimed in.

"And she was really kind of an ass," noted Jakuzure. "Like you said, nobody's going to blame you for offing her."

"I know… but I just- can't feel right about using that spell. I know a lot of people that died because of it."

"AND YOU CAN ADD HER TO THE LIST," shouted Gamagori. "PERHAPS WE SHOULD WORK ON GETTING OUT OF HERE."

"Or, you could take me off of that list," came a weak laugh from the floor. All eyes at once returned to the body of Nui, which was slowly pushing itself back up.

"W-what t-the h-hell?" stammered Jakuzure.

Hermione was similarly terrified. "But… that was- nobody can survive that!"

"Well, you can call me nobody if you want!" giggled Nui, standing limply with the help of her Scissor Blade. Her condition appeared to be rapidly improving, though a distinct bolt-shaped scar now ran up from under the left side of her dress, curled up under her cheek, and streaked across her left eye, which was now a milky blank white.

"I don't understand," gasped Hermione to her subordinates. "The killing curse instantly kills any living thing it hits… how did it not kill her?"

"She's got Life Fibers in every inch of her body," explained Inumuta. "They could have taken the hit instead of her."

"Which means you could slug that spell at her all day, and she'd never drop as long as there was one Life Fiber left in her," Sanageyama realized.

"THAT IS MOST DISTRESSING," whimpered Gamagori.

"Look at that," cooed Nui. "The amazing power of love! Life Fibers, maman, and me. Love is just wonderful!"

"So how are we supposed to kill her, Curly?"

"I don't have an answer for everything, you know!"

"And soon you won't have an answer for anything! Because you'll be dead!" The girl dropped to a crouch to pounce forward, her Scissor Blade once again meeting Sanageyama's shinai.

"I'm not opposed to us making one up," screamed the young man.

"Perhaps my data will assist us," Inumuta suggested, darting behind their opponent. He delivered a quick series of jabs that distracted Harime long enough for Gamagori's whip to deal a storm of lashes.

"Does your data tell us to keep hitting her 'till she doesn't move?" asked Jakuzure, drawing two metal cylinders from her pockets which extended thin, short blades with a touch of a button. "Because I'm thinking that's our best course of action."

"We'll have to start there," Hermione grunted. The remaining two investigators sprinted into the fray, with Jakuzure scoring two gashes into Nui's gut before the witch followed with another casting of Incendio. Burnt and bleeding, the killer hopped backwards to let her wounds seal.

"You know, I'm really glad I got to fight you guys again. It was always so fun dealing with you before," she grinned as a red streak across her face closed up, but failed to repair the lightning-bolt scar Hermione's curse had left.

"THE FEELING IS NOT MUTUAL!" roared Gamagori, cracking his whip towards her again. She raised her Scissor Blade and stopped the lash in its tracks.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," smirked Nui. "You're not being very good friends."

Hermione waved her subordinates on in a charge toward their opponent. "Well, you can consider our relationship over!"

The investigators surrounded the girl and began to pummel her with their varied attacks, letting up only to parry any strikes from the purple Scissor Blade. Horrifically, despite being stabbed, whipped, burned, and beaten to a pulp, Nui never stopped smiling.

"Why?" asked Hermione, pulling back from her assault. "Why do you always smile?"

"Because I'm so very, very happy!" giggled the girl as she repelled a barrage of shinai strikes. "Maman loves me and I love everyone! Except maybe you, because you messed up my eye, right after I got it back! But I'm willing to forgive you," she cooed as something long and dark whipped out from behind her to slash through the midsections of the Elite four, "because I only… just met you."

She stalked away from the falling investigators on increasingly long and skeletal legs. Hermione realized what was happening and attempted to run, but she knew it was too late. Without any other targets to distract her, Nui could easily single her out. She tossed her Scissor Blade into the air and caught it on her prehensile tail, which settled to smear its fresh blood across the floor. Before she could make it another ten feet, steel claws clamped down around Hermione's shoulders and forcibly turned her around. Hermione had nothing else to see except that innocent smile, which slowly bulged into an eyeless, slavering death maw filled with glittering fangs. Boiling saliva dripped down onto her cheek, but she was too afraid to flinch in pain. For all of the twists and turns the case had taken, this had been the exact end she knew it had come to. All those years ago, when she had shaken the hands of her fellow Illuminates, she had started down this path; when she landed with her team on that desolate planet, she had set her own death in motion. Even her lengthy hiatus in the organization had not changed her fate. This time, there was no Atticus to save her.

Nui's skeletal jaws creaked further open as a slick, oblong structure moved closer toward the teeth. It was the pharyngeal jaw, XX121's favored instrument of death. It began to vibrate in place as the massive, mechanical muscles attached to it began to prepare for their sole purpose; it would be jammed forward with enough force to rupture steel, and would destroy her skull like the teeth against the thin skin of a grape. The sharp, metallic grinding signaled the beginning of the jaw's journey into the soft, physical depths of her mind. In her last few seconds, Hermione had accepted this fate, had closed her eyes, and had released what she intended to be her final breath. She supposed it could be worse, with such a large chunk of her brain gone, she would feel no pain. The Illuminati were very good at lying, and they would no doubt give her husband a very solid explanation as to what happened. Perhaps they would even mind-wipe him, or convince him that he had never really liked her anyway, and was glad to be rid of her. They would make sure that someone competent would take up her position at the Ministry, and would make sure that her children's schooling was paid for. It was highly probable that her body would not turn into an egg with which to spawn more of the hateful creatures, since it was a rare occurrence, but if such an outcome did arise, she resolved to be a very poor facehugger, and get shot before doing any damage. Yes, she was certain that she had thought of everything, which meant that she was very surprised when the grinding noise continued, and her life did not end. She opened her eyes and found that Nui's long, terrible head was instead looking towards the door they had come in through. She took a stealthy breath and slowly turned her own to investigate.

The grinding sound was not coming from the creature, but instead from a thin, black protrusion that was making its way around the door. After forming a complete circle, the disk was knocked out of the door and into the center of the room, where it spun on its edge before settling to the floor. An unusual figure stepped through this makeshift entranceway, carrying the long, black blade at its side. It was most definitely a woman, as the absurdly tight and revealing outfit left very little to the imagination, its bright, shining white framing similarly alabaster skin. Heavy, clenched eyebrows turned the eyes beneath them into fiery slits, echoed by the glowing eyes mounted on the gigantic shoulder pylons.

Satsuki Kiryuin pointed the tip of her sword towards the alien that was Nui, and bellowed her command with regal authority.

"Get away from her, you bitch."