Dive led the charge to embrace her. She swatted him away when he tried to pick her up, not that he would have succeeded. If you think about it, she saved him the embarrassment. The others came up slowly, not wanting the same treatment.

”That was incredible! I don’t even know how you did half of that stuff!” Trip said.

Everything was pitch black.

”Are you using any, I think they call them, performance enhancing drugs?” Plunge leaned in conspiratorially, “Can I have some?”

They had appeared slowly, two ovals, somehow darker than the black that surrounded them

Hailien offered a surprisingly gentle pat on the back, “that saved us all a lot of grief, thank you.”

The black brightened until it was a cold white

The pupils appeared like twin holes in the earth

They blinked

Tremble took her hand, “Oh, Devon, as if there was any more evidence needed that we are a pair among pairs!”

Snapped out of the memory, she folded Tremble's fingers back farther than they could curl and kicked her upside the head.

“Oh! Well, you know best,” Tremble said, bleeding profusely from the head wound. She arched her back, got on all fours like an animal and crawled way too slowly out of view.

“Devon, what’s wrong?”

The others had noticed it too. What was just the start of the festivities would be the climax. They all gave her weird looks as their pats on the back slowed down and their kudos got shorter and less specific. She didn’t need them now, she had to think.

139 said something about winners never knowing what to do with their victories but Devon didn’t hear the specifics. She hopped into the hole and hit the ground with a perfect three point landing, exhaling on impact. Everything was muffled here, not just sound but feeling.

”Your heart rate is accelerating and decelerating with my voice. Right now it just spiked.”

“I should just ask you point blank then,” she didn’t give him a chance to reply before saying, “what are you. Like, really?”

”… I’m a Remark who can take on his own duelists?,” he had never sounded this hesitant.

“Yeah. That made sense to me at first,” she tore off a part of Yucian, her calcified structure had gotten considerably more spongy. She flicked a spiral of it into a bullet hole leaking light, ”and you know, that’s probably what you are, but I think… I think… I don’t know, I don’t know.“

“What did you see when your senses were taken?”

“Can you not see it?”

A pause.

“I can, but I’m not sure how literal I’m supposed to take it.”

That was something, he wasn’t dodging the question at least.

“As literal as a kick to the head,” she threw her hands back, Adam moved out of the way, “there are eyes in my skull, and they weren’t kind eyes.”

Hovering, he got lower and lower until he was only an inch off the ground.

”You’re insinuating that that’s me.”

She had every answer planned outside of the one where he stated plainly what was happening. Struggling to find something for her hands to do, she put them in her pockets and turned away from Adam. He floated up and followed her as her head turned, “I don’t know what it truly was but that isn’t me. I’m not hurting you.”

“You can’t know for sure,” she noticed the way her inner temperature was being reduced, the way the bruises and superficial cuts were healing without any input from her. With a sudden urgency she rolled down her sleeves and found a gash that Chitany had caused. It was closing slowly, and would heal within minutes.

She jammed two fingers in the wound and pressed down hard.

”DEVON!”

“Promise me you won’t heal this one.”

The pain pulsed like a constant cough. Devon could feel Adam trying his hardest to null it but she just pressed down harder, “you won’t take this from me, give me this.”

The dullness of his anesthesia faded, letting the pain take center stage. He hovered in front of her, strangely close to her eyes. If she had suddenly thrust her head forward he would have broken through her cornea. Then he could have seen it too.

“There’s a scar, well, two scars. One above your eye and one below it,” he tilted so light could reflect and she could see her own face, “both vertical, the way they match up is interesting, I think it suits you.”

He was right, it was like a line had been cut down her left eye. It wasn’t deep enough to be bleeding, it almost looked like a tattoo.

”I was going to heal this one as well, but I think it’s a far better candidate for a permanent scar than that gash.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Sure,” she liked the way it traced down to her cheek, the history it conveyed.

“Hey!” It was Dive, yelling from the hole, “can you come back up here, I think she’s gonna let us go.”

Devon got up there faster than Dive expected. With a single jump she was back on the deck. She knew this because he told her, going on and on about how cool she was and what an honor it was to fight alongside her (not that he had done any of the fighting.)

But she wasn’t concerned about that.

139 was on deck.

Face to face it was clear there was something wrong with her. Grimy toes wiggled under her bulging shopping bag of a body. Arms paler than dead earth stretched out to each side of the ship, almost spanning it. Her looping smile was faster, like it had somehow been sped up. Devon swore she could see teeth pressing up against the sack hood.

”Her Signature is a mountain of knives that beckons us to climb it.”

“Friends who I thought were enemies, rejoice! You all know the steps. Death herself has declared your purpose is to perpetuate!” The drunken crowd yelled and rocked. Two of them held up Eric’s torso and waved it around like a sign.

“We’re going now,” Hailien said, “you’re gonna open your ship and we’ll never see you again.”

”Sure, we’ll open it, for Devon and 17.”

Devon felt her stomach drop, she gripped Adam. The crowd roared on command, like they had been expecting this.

“Our team won, that was the deal. We’re leaving,” Hailien kept her temper, but Devon recognized the way her left pointer finger twitched. It always presaged a deathblow.

139 leaned in and stood on her tiptoes, her masked face pressing into Hailien’s forehead, “Devon and 17 won, they go free,” her hand rose up, fingers waggling, “that's… the deal.”

The swoosh of metal. Hailien hoisted her Remark up straight at 139’s looping expression.

139 ducked it and careened forward like a drunk given a free round, holding something behind her back and laughing, laughing, laughing.

Devon dodged out of the way as Hailien’s Remark flew through the air. It was trying to catch 139 but the duelist’s wild movements were impossible to track. She wasn’t even attacking them, she was dodging and swirling around them.

Hitting the ground, she looked up to see the dashing figure of 139 engulfed by light.

”They turned up the floodlights!”

There were yells and sounds of confusion from the other. 139 tried her best to drown them out with her own laughter (and did a Grand of a job) but jokes on her because that's how Devon found her.

She had Collapse pinned to the side of the boat. There was a massive pair of Scissors in one hand, in the other was nothing but gnarled too sharp nails.

The nail hand raked through Collapse's arms. Devon’s vision was still adjusting to the brightness, she couldn’t tell where anyone else was.

Without being asked Adam shot out and scraped across 139’s side, tearing open her sack hood and knocking off her half mask.

Her face was obscured, back still turned, but Collapse saw her face, and she screamed silently.

”Something the matter?” 139 turned slowly, the looping smile was gone, replaced by moldy gums and teeth too large for her mouth.

Devon went for a kick straight to the teeth.

139 caught it in her open mouth.

”Fuck, fuck!!” Devon fumbled for Adam as she felt a massive tongue wrap around her foot. It was sharp, it felt like a thousand needles. The one small comfort was that Collapse was able to escape in the chaos. Those dull loop eyes stared up at Devon, the head turned, she felt like a toy caught by a crywolf who didn’t know what to do now that it had her. Through her grimace, she kept laughing.

”What the fuck are you?” Devon screamed.

139 opened her mouth to reply

And that was when Devon slipped out of her grip and thrusted Adam through the roof of her mouth.

More of her hood was torn, the black and white color of the image shifted to a faint red. Yet 139 was not finished. With shocking strength she gripped Adam in her hand and pulled him out. There was a crunch.

Devon was leveled by a great tearing in her brain, it was the pain Adam felt, pain she realized he hadn’t felt in years, centuries maybe. He wasn’t dead, that was clear if for no other reason than the sheer intensity of his screams, but she couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t strategize.

She could barely think.

139 walked up to her, Adam being held like a spent bottle. Behind her, movement.

“You and the other have already been granted freedom, there’s no reason to-“

139 tossed Adam off the deck, she turned quick and blocked with her scissors a blow from Hailien. Holding Hailien’s steel back, she snapped her scissors shut, and a geyser of blood gushed out of Hailien’s chest, the type of wounds the scissors would have made.

The creature (Devon couldn’t see her as human anymore) pushed Hailien aside and walked back to Devon. Hailien was on the ground. Adam had gone silent. The others were-

A jittery hand grazed Devon’s hair, and then grabbed it.

”It’s time for us to get even. You get two, I get two.”

It was Tremble, behind her Dive, Plunge, and Trip, all with their Remarks. The trio shared looks, not anywhere near as confident as Tremble.

“AH. Now here’s one who understands courtesy, come come, let us feast on existence,” 139 held out her Remark to Tremble, it was jagged and bleeding.

Tremble stepped forward on command, in a straight line to 139. The three followed, bunched up and moving at the side of the ship. Devon went to get up but her foot screamed bloody murder.

Shit, she looked down and tried her best to assess the damage.

And then the world froze, and Devon was fucking happy she happened to be turned away. She didn’t want to see Tremble do it again.

Time came back, 139 seemed to deflate. What remained of her fell to the ground flat, faintly smoking.

“Crawl shit you did it again!” Dive rushed to her, his arms outstretched for a hug. Tremble looked unsure but opened her arms as well. He jumped to her waist and they spun around for a bit, laughing and whooping, the crowd joining in.

Devon ignored this, she crawled over to the edge of the Eggshell, where Adam was thrown.

”Are you using any drugs? Perhaps of the performance enhancing variety?” Plunge asked.

It was hard to resist the urge to jump off.

She held out her hand over the edge, she thought she saw the glint of something bright in the water.

“I want to say… I owe you an apology.”

Hailien’s voice made her turn.

Sure enough there she was, congratulating Tremble with all the others. It was a surreal sight, especially just how awkward Tremble looked, like approval was something she never thought she’d actually get.

Adam slipped into her hand, she heard his voice again.

”Oh thank Grand, she’s dead. Who killed her?”

She thought for a second, realized there was only one answer.

”I did.”

If Adam knew she was lying, he didn’t say it.