“I know who you really are, now,” she sang, the sound of her heels clacking my way making me pick my head up again. “Nero, you must be a year one hunter. I’d only heard your name around these parts as of late. And you didn’t come alone. No, you decided to stroll into my affairs with the rest of your team, determined to crash my little soiree. Sorry, but your names weren’t on my guest list. I’d love nothing more than to properly dispose of you and your friends, so Daddy and I can finish our business here.”

I heard a piece of glass slide off the floor and attack her, no doubt Naomi using her powers to slice her head off. When she decapitated the flesh eater, I wanted to breathe out a sigh of relief, but something felt off. I squinted my eyes and carefully walked closer to Keiko, my body instantly growing numb at the sight of Naomi’s head twitching against a tossed chair.

I backed away, nearly tripping on my feet as my legs went weak, my heart burning ripples through my chest.

“N-n-aomi?”

“Oops!” I heard Keiko’s voice from the left of me. When I turned around expecting to see Keiko, I saw Naomi….

“What was… going on?”

“Such a shame, that friend of yours…. But she was playing cheap, and I just had to get rid of her. Don’t worry though, her corpse will be put to good use.”

“I don’t… understand….”

“You’re not supposed to. I’m a top grade predator, and I don’t hold back. I used your friend’s ability against her, and now she’s dead. All of that happy beheading… I’d say that’s karma justly served. She killed my friends, so I killed her.”

My mind was so clutter-fucked that I couldn’t think straight. I just couldn’t process Naomi being dead. I swear, my whole body went on shut down mode as my vision began to stir. The world around me was spinning like a vortex on steroids with my ears filled with a high-pitched ringing. I grabbed my head, sinking to my knees as I fought the emotional turmoil tearing me apart.

“Poor baby,” Keiko cooed mockingly. “Life’s not a playground and karma certainly isn’t a schoolteacher who’ll pat your back and fluff you with words of endearment.”

“I’ll make you pay…” I growled, my body heaving hard deep breaths. “You hear me… I will—” I stopped, feeling a fire seeping through me itching to escape. I remembered the last time I lost control that I set everything around me ablaze. I had to remember that Reina was still here, and so were the innocent lives that Naomi saved.

It was hard… so fucking hard… applying my training with Hayashi here and now… with her dead eyes staring back at me….

Naomi promised to bring me to the top, and I couldn’t give her the courtesy of being a decent teammate!

I grinned. I couldn’t keep the madness inside anymore. The tips of my fingers pressed against my skull as I felt something crawl into me, forming words from my smirking lips, “That’s right… let that wrath consume you… burn everything to the ground…. It’s not as bad as you think it’ll be. Trust the process….”

I’d lost touch with reality just then as it felt like something was dominating my body inside and out. I fought hard to disengage it, but it laughed and laughed, this power changing me.

My throat felt raw, tears threatening to spill from my eyes. I clenched my fists into the floor, feeling my chest about ready to burst. I snapped my eyes shut and tried to drown the noise in my head, and just as fast, I’d forgotten where I was….

“Nero, are you alri—”

I swatted her hand away, Keiko taking a step back as I glared at her. “Don’t you touch me!” I growled. “You kill her and then use her body to taunt me?!”

My vision swayed again, Keiko’s poison ink still working through my blood. I got up on my feet and fought it, the glare in my eyes keeping her away as she stood there and stared at me. “You and your half ass excuse of a father are dead!”

“Nero, snap out of it! You’re under an illusion! I’m not Keiko!”

“Quit messing with me!” I roared, charging right for her.

“Nero!” she yelled out again, terrified. But her cries were drowned by the rage-fueled madness bubbling inside of me. I had to keep telling myself that this was all a trick. A top grade monster would stop at nothing for the kill, and she’d already shown me what she was capable of.

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In a blur of movement, I lunged at Keiko. She tried to sidestep my attack but she wasn’t quick enough. My body collided with hers, and we crashed into the wall with a dull thud. The force rattled her, my attack stirring up more dust and debris before we dropped down. When her back collapsed on the floor, I cocked my fist back to wallop her, but she flung me off. I went flying into the ceiling, my back smashing into a crystal chandelier before I was tossed through the balcony window.

With quick thinking, I grabbed onto the balcony railing and climbed my way back up. I blinked once, and then I felt something tickling the back of my eyes. When I pressed them shut again, I saw a bunch of signatures in patterns of greens, oranges, and reds.

Thermal imaging?

I got another meta ability….

Perfect timing, I thought, able to see that bitch Keiko running through the hole I blast her through as she tried to sneak into another room.

“You’re not escaping, I promise you that! Not after what you did to Naomi!” I growled under my breath before jumping onto the other balcony to my right. With my elbow, I bashed the window glass and invited myself into a dark room within the mansion. I paced my breathing and allowed my body to adapt to my thermal vision. The moonlight outside gave way to a bunch of shadows of furniture along the room that I realized was a parlor. A bunch of fancy couches and chaises, a mini bar, a grand piano, bookshelves and a huge fireplace. Nothing else stuck out, and I realized the time I took to get in here made me lose her. I thought that anywhere Keiko might hide, I would find her, but the blur of hot red I’d seen before was now gone.

“Where the hell are you hiding, you cold-hearted bitch?” My eyes roamed, until I heard a noise over my head. When I looked up, I noticed the same sliver of red thermal energy escaping inside an air vent.

It was a smart hiding place, but she was no church mouse.

I climbed the fireplace to reach the ventilation shaft. Holding onto the edge of the stone overmantle, I leaned over and tore the grate, suddenly feeling push back as the grate was swallowed in dark purple energy.

Immediately, I released the grate, but Keiko caught me with a smack against my face. The grate kept whaling on me until my feet dropped to the floor, and that was when she surrendered the grate for a stronger weapon—the grand piano.

The stupid thing caught me off guard, rolling toward me before I had a chance to resist it. It shoved me, the pressure from the heavy instrument crashing me into the wall. Once I was pinned, Keiko leaped onto the floor, her cold stare locked on me.

“Your cheap tricks aren’t going to work!” I hissed at her.

“You’re not listening to me….”

“I don’t have to listen to you! The only shit that comes out of your mouth are lies!”

She froze, like I’d said something that personally offended her. Whatever I said made her lose concentration of her powers, the pressure from the piano weakening. Just like that, I tore through the piano and tackled her again, refusing to use my flames.

No, Keiko was a special case. I wanted her to feel what it’s like getting her cranium severed out of her fucking body!

Tables, books and shelves, bottles of wine—all of them bounced against the arm I was holding that was blocking my head as I rushed her down. She was running out of options and quick, the last of the heavy piece of furniture she tried to attack me with backfiring on her. My feet leaped off the ground when I slammed into her, the both of us landing on a chaise. The force of our landing tipped it over, Keiko grabbing me by the throat to scare me off.

I gave her the same treatment.

She winced, the look of fear in her eyes making me hesitate. But I had to remain firm in my resolve. This wasn’t my Naomi.

“You monsters are truly something else. I had a feeling that you were bad news, but to be so full of yourself thinking that you’re actually making a difference out there by poisoning kids. I didn’t believe a word that came out of your sick mouth! You think that mutating them will do them good? Compound 7 is a disease! And messing with it will only motivate those other worthless shits to do the same!”

“Don’t do this, Nero….”

“Don’t you dare!” I shouted. “Get out of her skin, or I’ll snap your head off so quick that you won’t get a chance to pull another one over on me!”

“I’m not Keiko,” she begged. “You’re letting your emotions take over. You need to learn to control them. I’m not dead. Why is that so hard to believe? Think about the events that led up to that scene. A monster can shapeshift into someone else, but they can’t mimic our powers,” she said calmly. “So ask yourself, are you really going to sit here and let this anger inside you make you kill me?”

“No more games!” I cried, trying to suppress the burning tears trying to flood my eyes. “You shut up and get out of her!”

“You’re…. not listening to me again,” she said, and then loosened her grip around my throat. “We have memories, Nero. For months, I’ve knocked into you, trying to pretend you don’t exist. In Acadia, the place you swore you’d escape as soon as you got the chance to. I hear you talking to Chen, I know how much you hate being there….”

I paused, actually considering her words.

“Again, I’m still alive, right here underneath you. Keiko tricked you into thinking I was gone, and you know what? She isn’t dead, either. She’s in the other room right now laughing her ass off thinking she’s made you kill me. The black ink that went in your mouth is making you see and hear things. Don’t be a chump and fall for it.”

My face dropped as she continued to open my mind up. “But, my mental barrier… how could—”

“We don’t see a monster’s skills, remember? She could very well have a blocker. She isn’t a grade A for no reason.”

“But I don’t—”

“I know what you’re thinking…. It’s harder to accept knowing that you hurt me than to accept what I say is true. But it'll be harder to accept knowing that you killed me, Nero.”

My fingers released her neck, and I leaned back, disengaging my thermal vision to see Naomi for who she really was.

“Naomi?” My voice shook, and I took a hard breath after I realized what I was doing. “Naomi, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Don’t apologize,” she whispered softly, and then her voice went stern, “Just get off of me and let’s take care of Keiko and our target.”