Gumi wanted to run but held back, walking fast instead. Running would make her pant, and if she did, what little Powder of God she had left in her vocalizer would soon be gone. She braced herself for disappointment after rounding the final corner on her way to the Concert Hall. Even from a distance, it was obvious the hall was in ruins. Neglect and vandalism had turned it into a shell of what it had been.

I was playing there a short while ago, Gumi thought. How come it looks so different?

She picked her way through cobwebs and debris on her way to the dressing room where she had prepped before going onstage. Once there, she figured out why things were not the way they should be.

I destroyed the continuum between Hell and Earth, but Hell wasn't obliterated. It was set loose upon the world.

Even so, she was amazed at the amount of ruin she saw. It seemed like all hell had broke loose, both inside and outside the Concert Hall. She recalled something peculiar she knew about Hell as she sat in the chair in front of her vanity and mirror.

There are only two kinds of Time in Hell—Now and Forever. And I was in Hell forever.

Gumi leaned in close, hoping beyond hope that some small crumb of the Powder of God might still be where she had left it. It seemed to her as if she had just placed a bag of the lustrous white powder on the vanity a mere moment ago. But it had only dust on it now, and what appeared to be rat droppings. A moment of time ago to Gumi looked like a hundred years in the dressing room. As despair welled within her, she stared at the fractured images her face made in the vanity's broken mirror.

Which one of you is me?

Gumi pondered her past, the present and its future, until a sharp noise caused her head to snap reflexively towards the door. She had left it wide open. Now she wished she hadn't.

Someone's coming!

Whoever it was, or whatever it was, it seemed far away. Gumi bolted from the room, heading away from the noise. Once she was outdoors again, she labored to calm her breathing. The crashing sounds could still be heard, growing louder from inside the Concert Hall.

They're coming!

Gumi looked both this way and that. The empty streets and sidewalks she saw offered no place to hide. She thought about taking off at a dead run in some random direction, but wasting what little Powder of God she had left tearing around the city in fear didn't seem like a good idea.

I know a martial arts move or two, she thought, choosing to stand her ground. If worse came to worst, she figured she'd waste the last of her precious powder kicking some bad guy's ass.

The rumbling and crashing inside the hall seemed to be searching for a way out. A unitimidating man with a look of panic on his face exited a side door to the building. He scanned the area much like Gumi had done, squinting in the sun. Upon catching a glimpse of her, he ran towards her as fast as he could, with crazed looks of relief and shock and awe playing across the grime on his face.

"Hi-ya!"

Once the man got close enough, Gumi laid him out with a solid kick to the chest.

"Ow!" the man said, hitting the pavement. "What did you do that for?"

Recognizing his voice, Gumi's eyes grew wide. It was Hunter, one of her roadies. With the crazy look he had in his eyes and all the grime on his face, she didn't even know it was him until he spoke out loud.

She picked him up and brushed him off. "Hunter!" she said, wasting precious powder. "What is going on?"

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Hunter regained some composure. He smiled at the sound of her voice. Soon however, panic again overtook him.

"It's VioLinja!" he said, twisting to look this way and that. "She's after me!"

Gumi scoffed a bit. "You're one of the nicest guys I know. Why would she be after you?"

Gumi barely got out her words before Hunter grabbed two fistfuls of her desert packrat vest. He shook her while screaming, his face an inch from hers.

"Nothing matters anymore! VioLinja's obliterating everyone! Anyone who has anything at all to do with the band. And then…and then just everyone! Like, anyone even in general!"

"VioLinja obliterated the band?"

Hunter shook Gumi harder, making her cherrywood Les Paul guitar thump against her butt.

"She's obliterating everyone! She doesn't care who they are! I'm tellin' ya, Gumi! She's gone mad! Freaking bananas, I say! Freaking bananas mad!"

"Hi-ya!"

With a thump from the flat of her hand on his chest, Gumi again sent Hunter to the ground, laying him flat on his back.

"Ow-w-w…"

Gumi struck an apologetic pose, bowing with her hands clasped together. A smile hidden inside her vocalizer crinkled her snow white cheeks.

"Please stop shaking me," she said kindly to her prostrate roadie.

Before Hunter could get back on his feet, more sounds came from inside the Concert Hall. It was as if someone—or something—was destroying it from the inside out.

"It…it's Gisella!" Hunter gasped, frozen to the ground with fear.

"Gisella?" Gumi asked, looking back and forth between Hunter and the hall. "Who's Gisella?"

"VioLinja's new bass guitarist!"

Gumi wasted a little Powder of God on a chuckle. She swung her own guitar into position, preparing it for play by checking its connections to her body and her mic pack.

"I can drown out a bass guitar with this," she said to Hunter as she lowered red-tinted goggles from the top of her head to her eyes. "Don't worry. I'll obliterate her before she gets near."

Hunter still seemed frozen with fear. "Not if VioLinja's with her. Which she always is!"

Gumi let out another chuckle, wasting a bit more powder. "I can drown out a violin as well. I'm the lead guitar!"

She blasted out a couple chords, showing Hunter how loud she could play. He seemed unimpressed as he sat on the ground, looking up at her.

"Don't you know who Gisella is?"

"Well…no. I don't." Gumi cheeks crinkled up again from another unseen smile. Her eyes reduced to happy slits behind her red-tinted goggles. "But how loud can she be?"

Hunter spoke in a calm voice as he sat on the ground. "Well, Gisella isn't really so much of a 'she'…" he began.

The sounds of demolition inside the Concert Hall now seemed to be coming from a point just behind the door through which Hunter had exited. It grew in volume until it became obvious that whoever—or whatever—approached wasn't exactly going to open the door.

They were going to destroy it.

Splinters of metal and wood and glass shot into the street before whatever—or whoever—caused the destruction actually appeared. The silhouette of a woman could be seen walking through the cloud of rubble and dust. Her auburn hair, both thick and long, was the first part of her that broke from the cloud, as she exited the building while hunkered down. She straightened her posture when she drew near, soon standing six feet tall.

Then seven feet, and then ten…

And then twenty feet or more. Riding in a saddle on her right shoulder was a whisper thin woman of normal height whose arms and legs were astronomically long. Her stark white skin stood in sharp contrast to the black of her gossamer gown. The gown's great length caused its ends to curl like tendrils, caressing the giant woman's breasts.

"It's Gisella!" Hunter exclaimed, staring up at the giantess.

VioLinja? Gumi thought, staring at the woman in the saddle.

VioLinja had a slender black violin tucked under her chin. It was obvious she was playing it, but the tune she played was drowned out by residual crashes as the Concert Hall caved in, and the echoing thuds of Gisella's ballerina flats as they struck the ground. The couple said not one word as they approached, and while VioLinja's face bore a frightful grin, Gisella's expression was anything but.

If fact, she looked ready to cry. She had beautiful Italian features chiseled into olive skin, with her hair swept back in tresses. She wore a sequined tunic that was off-white and long, looking for all the world like she had just stepped from the stage of an interpretive ballet. The tunic was bestrewn with decorative tucks and stitches, below which light gray tights with lace trim ended at a point halfway down her calves.

Gisella plodded methodically, heading straight towards Hunter. He could do nothing but crawl away backwards, crab-like on his hands and feet with his butt scooting along the ground.

"Get out of here, Gumi!" he cried, his gaze transfixed on Gisella's sad eyes. "Save yourself!"

"Uh…" Gumi muttered to herself. "I got this? I think?"

Gisella had in her possession an enormous Fender Stratocaster bass guitar, easily eighteen feet long. It seemed glued to her hands, as if she were unable to let it go. While Gumi hesitated, deciding what chord might best be used to obliterate VioLinja, Gisella struck one note.

It obliterated Hunter, along with a few cubic yards of concrete and dirt that lay underneath him.