Luchesi's eyes popped open, staring up through the canopy. Clouds were twisted to thin, wriggling streamers, like fog soon to break in the light of a new down. The chirps of birds filled the air, and the sun was warm on his face. The patio ripped from his memories was moving in waves beyond the patch of shattered bricks his body had been planted through. The Backyards were changing, their will recognizing the authority of Richie's spirit over Luchesi's own. This had been the final defeat; complete and utter defeat in his own territory. Richie's newfound affinity for the yards had kneecapped Luchesi's ability to twist it to his needs, to trap Richie in nightmares. The boy's conviction was stronger.
Luchesi’s body was a broken doll. He groaned, summoning what strength remained to him to speak, as he saw Richie, eyes hard, standing over him, arms folded.
“It seems the yards prefer you. Finish me.” he sighed, closing his eyes.
Richie looked at his hand, bits of dragon scale flaking from the edges, nails sharp and jagged, not unlike Luchesi’s own claws. “I won’t. The fight is over. It’s enough for me.” he said.
Luchesi couldn’t comprehend that. “Don’t play coy. There’s no room in the Backyards for losers.”
“Say what you want. The weak don’t decide their fate, isn’t that right?” Richie said. “Enough blood has been spilled already. I’m not like you, and I swear I’ll never become someone like you. Someone like your shithead master.”
Luchesi groaned, body trembling in pain and feeling fainter and fainter, as karmic rip rattled its tail, coming to collect. “With the magnitude of my crimes, I’ll just get tossed into death row sooner or later. It makes little difference if you kill me here and now. No one would blame you. I’m a mass-murdering psychopath, after all.”
Richie looked up at the sky, trying to decide what color he wanted to paint it when Luchesi’s stage walls came tumbling down.
“After all, you have no guarantee I won’t just resume my killing spree if you let me go.” Luchesi said.
“That’s your cross to bear, not mine.” Richie sighed, closing his eyes. “I’ve wasted enough energy on you already. Get lost and don’t come back.”
Luchesi fell silent, and after a few moments, drew in a hissing, rattling breath, and began to laugh. “I see. How noble. That black and white attitude is going to bite you in the ass one day.”
“Maybe. I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.” Richie said.
“Hehehe.” Luchesi coughed up some blood. “Good luck, then. May you fare better sailing the waves of fate than I did. Maybe you’ll be the one to clear the storm.” his eyes darkened, reflecting on everything he had lost. “Best the Faceless Man if you can. Destroy him… as he has destroyed me…”
The yard began to fracture and break apart, as though an island ripped by tectonic forces and the pieces scattered across oceans of empty darkness. Richie shifted his weight on his chunk of rubble as it drifted away from Luchesi’s, and Luchesi from him, the yard unraveling itself in preparation to weave together into new tapestries drawn from Richie’s mind and will. As the chunk of earth bearing Luchesi’s crippled form away off into the darkness and beyond the draw distance of the Backyards neared the very edge, Luchesi’s voice carried to Richie.
“Beware… Shadow Nexus.” Luchesi said.
Then, he was gone, banished from the collective dream of the divine forever.
…
A gentle snowfall blanketed a place equal parts serene and eerie. A vast forest extended in rows of trees, like aisles, to either side of a long clearing which had a circular pond, rippling subtly, at its head, and a distant tori gate at its tail. Smooth white stones encircled the place like an amphitheater, and another pond near the gate was frozen over like an ice skating rink. Above, a crescent moon hung framed by drifting clouds. Beneath the lunar rays, Chikita sat in a lotus position upon the pond's surface, the water flowing freely beneath her. The moon was waxing, soon to become full, in time with something welling up inside of her. Lashes heavy with frost, Chikita opened her eyes and gave a small, mirthless smile.
"What am I doing here, getting caught up in one job? Our contract is completed, it's time for me to move on."
At her side, Yukihana stirred.
Should you not stay? There is safety in numbers, and it seems fate has linked you five. The path to the Faceless Man lies in unity between your yards. he said.
"We may share a common enemy, but we do not share the same goals." Chikita said wistfully, closing her eyes and summoning her pipe. It materialized in her hand out of a swirl of snowflakes. "There is nothing beyond my revenge. Nothing waiting for me but the weight of my sins when all is said and done."
Her eyes gazed far off, through the snow, through the horizon. "There is no other directive or insight for me to understand, I am kept alive only by the singular purpose I swore on when I cast off everything. Even if I sink myself straight into Hell, I'll be content with that as long as I drag my enemies down with me. That said, I admit I had fun."
She felt a chill on the back of her neck. That shouldn't be possible. Her pupils narrowed, and her skin pricked up. She turned behind her as she heard a giggle.
"Ohohoho, is that what you tell yourself, lambchop? Take it from a professional, you need some acting lessons." an exaggerated, mocking voice that felt somehow hollow issued from the thin lips of an uncanny, vaguely felid being standing before her. Chikita blinked, not comprehending initially what she was looking at.
The being was utterly androgynous, body well-toned and muscular, yet lithe and curvy, with wide hips, swollen pecks evocative of flattened female breasts, yet lacking fluff. The creature was pale, wearing a leopard-print, skintight bodysuit or leotard with sharp yellow and black contrasting spots. A deep v ran down the being's chest, exposing pale, well-sculpted flesh with odd circular patterns upon its abs and midriff. Legs were long and powerful, and the sleeves of its suit - or was it a suit? It was hard to tell where fabric ended and flesh began - terminated in furry hands with gloved fingers slightly pointed and evocative of retracted claws. Surmounting a head whose face wore blank white eyes and an unsettling smirk was a cloud of curly orange hair, wild and untamed, like a feral clown's mane.
Chikita was instantly on guard, yet felt slow to draw her sword. Her fingers trembled on Yukihana's sheath, as if numbed with cold, grasping fruitlessly and having difficulty finding purchase. Though she didn't recognize it, this was the weight of primal, mortal terror, the flipswitch of waking sleep paralysis encoded as a genetic memory from generations upon generations of experience for a species that was only very recently out of the food chain in the grand scheme of things. The body remembered what it felt like to be in the sights of an apex predator.
How did this joker slip into my yard? Don't I still have control over it? Why didn't I sense him until now?
Yukihana rattled in his sheath. I haven't felt this pressure since Sheol.
"And who are you supposed to be? A bootleg Luchesi-kun?" Chikita put on a brave face, steadying her words as she steadied her sword.
The cat gave a phlegmy giggle. "Oh, I'm no copycat, tootz."
"What are you then?" Chikita said.
"A magician." the stage reject gave a faux-humble bow.
"Not interested." Chikita said. Without another word, she drew her katana in a flash, and slashed a crescent of pressurized freezing wind down the aisle toward the intruder. It split the snowy ground in its wake as it soared.
The thing held its hands on its hips, head bowed, a smirk growing wider and wider across its face. The edged gust flew within inches of the thing's face, only for it to puff out its cheeks and blow, as though blowing out the candle on a birthday cake. The razor wind scattered to white mist that dissipated harmlessly around the creature's body.
Chikita's mouth fell open, and she realized her gut instinct was more than validated. She began to feel heavy, as though rooted to the spot. She hadn't experienced overwhelming fear in quite some time.
"You ain't seen nothing yet." the creature wagged its finger. "For my next trick, I'll make your hope, mmmmm, disappear."
He snapped his fingers, and the snowy sanctuary around Chikita scattered to flecks of sleet that withered and died like fallen petals. They were standing now in a blank white void that extended, featureless, forever in every direction.
As Chikita buffered, processing that her homefield advantage was just effortlessly tossed out, the plane beneath the intruder's paw-like feet began to ripple, and he sank into the 'ground' as though through quicksand.
A few tense moments later, Chikita felt hot, tuna-laced breath on the nape of her neck. She squeaked, whirling, and swung her sword.
The cat-like entity caught the blade between its fingers, forcing a dead stop. A shockwave exploded outward from the impact, Yukihana rattling in Chikita's grip. Her biceps were swollen, having given it all that she had, and now she found her body broken out in a cold sweat.
"No way..." she whimpered.
"Oh yes, my dear. All the way." he leaned in, invading her personal space, nose twitching as it brushed tip to tip with hers.
"G-get away from me, you freak!" she yanked her sword back - more a case of the creature letting go - and adopted a stance.
But it was all for show.
Chinokiri, snarling, hackles raised, exploded out of Chikita's pipe, assuming full kyuubi form, and locked eyes with the being. With an earth-shaking roar, the smoke fox charged at the entity.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire." the thing said.
Its arms stretched unnaturally far, as if its joints dislocated and its ligaments extended, and clasped either side of Chinokiri's mane, each hand gripping a tuft of vaporal fur.
How? Chinokiri's intangible... Chikita thought, the situation getting bleaker and bleaker with every passing second.
Cackling, the thing slammed Chinokiri's vulpine head into its crotch as it thrust forward. From its pelvis, a churning column of fire erupted like an orange geyser. Chinokiri was swept up and away into the superheated twister, which warped and distorted the air of the blank white void all around them. As it eased, like a torrent from a fire hydrant being shut down, into a spray of flickering embers, a few strands of smoke twisted away from the aftermath and wove themselves back into the small, pipe fox form Chi once had.
The thing gave a pained grunt, and fell over on its side.
"'Kiri!" Chikita cried, and threw herself to her knees at the little fox's side, scooping her up in her hands. The fox's sides moved weakly. Chikita looked up at the fiendish humanoid, smoke, dark and black, still rising from his crotch. Making a finger gun, he blew the smoke away, and placed his hands on his hips again.
"P-Pervert!" Chikita screeched.
The creature's eyes crossed. "Excuse you?"
"You're a creepy deviant!" Chikita pointed her sword like an accusing finger.
The cat-man twitched his nose, showing something like irritation. "I don't have to hear that from YOU!"
He ground his teeth, exposing fangs, but then gave way to another amused expression. "Fufu. Besides, I couldn't diddle you or your cute pets if I wanted to. Observe."
The white void went black to contrast a sudden stage light enveloping the cat.
He threw his hands wide, exposing a completely smooth pubic bone, as though he were a living doll.
"Kids, sing along if you know the words!"
A karaoke dot, shaped like an orange poof ball, appeared.
What the. Yukihana thought in monotone.
"1
♪ I've got no cock
To swing around
To make me piss or make me pound
I had a dong
But now I'm free
There ain't no peen on me
2
I had these balls
They weighed me down
To drag me-all-day, piss to prowl
Balls and chain
But now they're gone
Ain't no balls on me
3
I had no tact
Fucked around
Made it down to every town
Now I've seen
I've fucked right off
There's no peen here for me
4
A femboy cat
That's what I am
With Hyundai hips to shake & ram
Without a horn
It's all for show
No loads for me to blow
5
I've got no peen
So I have fun
I'm not tight in anyone,
They've got peen
But you can see
There ain't no peen on me
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
6
Despite my lack
Of horny meat
This empty void of beef to beat
An O-ring sits
'Twixt backdoor tits
A' bending I will go
7
Rainbow Isle
Where I've been sent
For cheeky spread and over bent
The locals stared
My ringtail bared
Indecent fun for me
8
Now I've run off
I've sped away
In firenado scorch flambay
I'm gone it seems
But in your dreams
This eunuch's bound to stay
9
You've heard my tale,
Fiesta's song
About a life absent a schlong
But all's not bad
For I've still got
A catboy pink star spot!♬"
As he concluded the spontaneous song and dance number no one asked for, he turned round and spanked his bare ass to hammer in the point. As the last note rang out, two bursts of confetti, announced by airhorns, exploded out of the ground on either side of him.
Chikita stood, still, blinking every now and then, head tilted, for what felt like a very long time.
Yukihana shared the sentiment.
The figure, impatient for the applause, shook his ass again, one hip to each side, back to center.
"..."
"..."
"Well, clearly you're moved to profound contemplation." the figure shrugged.
"Look, I don't know what hell you crawled out of, but save me the trouble of shoving you back in." Chikita bristled.
The figure giggled again, body vibrating as he did. "Oh puddin', there is no hell. 'Cept the one you carry inside." he said, eyes darkening. "Observe." he gestured grandly about the white void.
A tapestry of memories, emotions, and desires unfurled around them, becoming the land, sea, and sky, drawn from the threads of Chikita's psyche. She felt them pulled, as a loose string is pulled from a quilt, and likewise, began to unravel. Thunder split her skull from the inside, and her scream was deafened by its rumble. Her hands clamped to ears that felt like they would bleed, and she dropped to her knees. All around was a swirling, undulating miasma of disocciated vignettes and set pieces. A bridge over a koi pond here, a mountain trail in winter there, a bit of snowflakes everywhere. Beneath the surface, as snow conceals the ground, was soil she'd prefer stayed frozen.
Her vantage point drifting farther away, from a child's eye view, from a den in the icy mountainside, to the mournful tune of a lingering wolf howl. Being dumped off on Kyoko's doorstep. The eventual blooming warmth of that adoption did nothing to cleanse the festering mental wound of being twice taken from the family she had known until now.
Suspicious, scornful gazes and paranoid whispers, judgmental eyes laid upon the child cursed by fate.
"Juarez said he sent you to live with the harlot for your own safety, but in your heart you know you were simply baggage." Fiesta said.
Chikita continued to clutch her head, curling into a ball and eyes streaming tears.
The image of a tranquil village shrouded by cherry blossom trees drifted across the nothingness around them, fluttering like a mantle.
The vista was engulfed in raging flame, wood creaking and cracking as it was consumed by the ravenous fire. Templar everywhere, Chikita's friends and neighbors struck down in their homes.
And then, a twelve year old Chikita standing over Kyoko's bloodied body, shaking, face frozen in a mask of shock and disbelief.
"Stop..." Chikita groaned as the cat-like figure stood bent over her.
He placed his fingers in her hair and began walking them across her head.
"You'll plunge yourself into Hell, sunk by the weight of your sins so long as you take your hated enemies with you? You say that like it's some choice you made, but we both know that this was long decided for you."
Chikita saw a vision of herself, throttled by the neck by one of the supposed missionaries, clutching at the hand closed around her throat. She was dangled over the roaring blaze of Kyoko's own home, reduced to so much burning rubble, held from the precipice of a pagoda. At the godly server's back, the cobalt-cloaked Faceless Man stood, the proverbial devil on mankind's shoulder. When he spoke, only Chikita could hear it.
"This place would have remained peaceful if it weren't for you. A cursed child in paradise infects and corrupts it into a nest of sin. The judge, jury, and executioners of God's will come to cleanse the devil's taint from this world. Wherever you go, ruin will follow. That is your fate - a fate you can never escape."
And then, Chikita was dropped, to plunge into the fires beneath, and join Kyoko in death.
"No!" Chikita roared, and slashed out to the side. The mirage scattered to bits, and the creature jumped back to dodge the strike.
Chiki plunged her blade into the ground and stood to her full height again, panting.
"All you have is revenge. Face the facts. Whoever you grow close to will share your fate, little girl."
Chikita rushed the beast, rapidly slashing at all angles. Fiesta backpedaled casually, hands on swaying hips, leaning and bending around every strike. Chikita brought down a vertical cut upon Fiesta's head, and all of its momentum and cutting power was deadened by his afro. It squished in a bit, cushioning and absorbing all of the impact.
Fiesta snarled, eyes soulless wells of deadlight.
"Dead! And by our hand!" he roared.
He swayed and slammed his hip into Chikita's, and the point of contact became the epicenter of a fiery explosion which threw Chikita into a high arc, body shrouded in dark smoke and embers.
"Hraugh!" she gave a guttural cry. As she landed hard on her back and shoulders, she went tumbling and landed in an agonized heap.
"All those souls, yet still no closer to your goal. At this rate, you can never atone for the crime of living to this day, and dragging all who know you to their doom. You think by scooping up as many ferals as you can, you can attain the power to level the playing field with the Faceless Man, but all you've done is create more victims. You're the same as the shades themselves!" he sneered.
As Chikita's trembling hand reached for her fallen katana, Fiesta stomped on her wrist, pinning it.
"You're as far from the Faceless Man as you are sobriety. You think staking your very soul on avenging your village makes you noble, but you're just kidding yourself. Man creates gods to rationalize and justify the chaos around us, so too do you twist the narrative to your liking. The only way you can sleep at night. And, so weak that you can only repress all those lovely, squishy little facets of humanity that make your lives oh-so special. This isn't a quest, it's just an elaborate suicide!"
- he brought down a rending paw, and the white was streaked with red.
...
"Ain't the sunk cost fallacy a cruel mistress?" he mused, licking the blood from his fingers.
Chikita lay, breathing shallowly, at his feet. "You've piled up this many bodies to reach your goal, but the enemy you wish to destroy is far beyond your reach. You can't even beat me, let alone him. Ever consider switching up your approach?"
"What... do you..." Chikita shuddered.
Fiesta snapped his fingers, and the 12 sigils that Richie had seen in the Garden of the Forged appeared, one by one, circling Fiesta's paw.
"You and the other brats have inherited the wills and status of those who came before you. You are uniquely qualified to connect the untamed wilds of the Backyards and form an ultimate corridor to the heart of creation itself. Therein lies ultimate power, and the only way to close the gap between you and Crocus. But you'll never reach it as you are. Were you to travel together, ever would you be the albatross around their necks. Sooner or later, they will all fall to your cursed fate. Therein lies your sticky wicket, though. The only way for you to succeed is to combine the might of the 12. Whatever are you to do?"
-
Chikita's eyes snapped open, and she screamed. She sat up, calmed her racing heart, and remembered where she was. She was upon an iceberg, floating in the bay, and had drifted to the edge of the encircling wall of fog excluding Station Bay from the rest of the world beyond. Within the primordial mists, impossibly large, godly things stalked and stomped. Chikita felt their shadows tower over her, dwarfing her and making her feel utterly small and insignificant. Microbial.
The nightmare was right. She was no match for the forces poised against her. Not as a lone human being.
"Legacy..." she said.
They needed to be together to win, but she couldn't be together without condemning them. What the fuck?
She held her pipe and looked into the bowl, where Chinokiri was curled up in an uneasy sleep.
"I've piled on this many bodies to build a bridge across the Gulf of infinity." she looked back toward the city and thought of Richie and co.
What was four more? If they were doomed to fail anyway because of her, then the only solution was to become one, and carry their legacies within her. Then, Chikita would carry their torch through the darkness.
She smiled faintly, weighing the last remnants of her humanity against the injustice of the Faceless Man living a day longer.
There was no contest.
She would pay any price.
…
Cuppy yawned, refilling his cup with the icky black stuff Holly was obsessed with, wearing a stoic face against the necessary evil. Freyja couldn't be moved yet, not without endangering her, and someone needed to stand guard while Richie handled the clown.
"I envy you." Cuppy pointed bleary eyes at Cuppet, slouched over in a chair. "You don't have to sleep."
Cuppet protested that it gets bored at night.
"Read a book." Cuppy yawned again.
Holly burst into the room, panting. "C-Cuppy, everyone alright? Where's Richie?"
Cuppy blinked one eye at a time, each making a creaking noise.
"Richie's still beating up the pajamas jerk. I'm glad your here, let's switch shifts." he smiled, put his mug of cold coffee down, and promptly collapsed into a heap. Already snoring softly, his unconscious body curled itself into a cat pose.
Holly sighed. "I was afraid of that. Should I try to whip up a corridor and go in to help?"
Freyja kicked her leg a little in her coma.
-
Richie looked upon his dragons, slithering like snakes uncoiling from his arms and swaying. As he regarded them, Luchesi's courtyard crumbled away, and his ears picked up the distant thunder of shattering glass as the greenhouse with its stained glass window paneling came crashing down. Colors swirled around him as he felt himself and the vacated dreamspace drawn toward his own established territory. As if looking at two translucent slides with landscapes drawn upon them, Richie overlapped Luchesi's yard and his own with the Garden of the Forged.
"Let's see. You go over there." Richie nodded to the right, and a courtyard and greenhouse rebuilt in Richie's significantly less-emo tastes shifted to the right of the Garden of the Forged, "- and you, over there," he shifted his bamboo forest house thing to the left, leaving the concentric stone circle ponds and sigil monument as a common ground linkage between these yards, both sectioned off by a stone archway evocative of Stonehenge, or some druidic monument. When no-clip ended, one could not see separate yards from each other in the conventional sense. Rather, by stepping through either arch, they would pass on the other side into an alternate yard that, by all natural laws of space shouldn't be there, much like the first corridor in the broken fence had been. More, only those on Richie's reverse-shitlist would be able to reach them. In the event someone ended up in one yard uninvited, these gates would close, leaving them trapped and subject to his devious whim, which he now had ample free time to develop. He briefly contemplated engineering that looping screen bullshit Chikita had used to troll him back in her hot spring of coercion.
"Ok, that's west and east, I - shit, what cardinal direction do you guys represent, again?" Richie asked his tattoos.
There's a lot to unpack there. 1 - you're the mythology buff, shouldn't you have this memorized? 2 - it's the east, asian dragons are from the East, you mentally-impoverished philistine, and 3, is any of this strictly necessary?
Richie blew a raspberry. "Of course it's not fucking necessary. This is just fun. Everything I've done has been out of necessity, I just beat the crap out of an usurped a reality-warping shitlord, let me have fun, goddammit."
He crossed his eyes. "Did you say east?" he sighed. "Ok, starting over."
He snapped his fingers, and the sum of the assembled yards shattered like shards of glass, swirling around in blank nothingness while he got his shit together.
We didn't take you for the perfectionist type. his dragons sighed.
"Why not? I mean, you fucks certainly are. Mr 'durrr, u gotta fite yer own battlez' before you help me in any meaningful way whatsoever. On the subject,"
Richie crossed his arms, punching either bicep in sync. His tattoos grunted, eyes bulging, and the regurgitated, each, his remaining ice cream scoops. Richie snapped them out of the air like a dog catching a treat, or perhaps a dolphin. Why exactly and how exactly said scoops remained intact inside his tattoos until now didn't concern him.
"Justice." he nodded triumphantly.
That was petty.
"No you." Richie said. "Second priority, now can you start sharing some intel? Pretty please?"
Very well then, you've earned that much, it seems. they composed themselves.
-
Holly stood in an elevator lined with blue carpeting, playing an obnoxious 10 second loop of 8 bit music. If this was per the will of the Backyards' current local Lord, she was hard pressed to say whether it was Richie's or Luchesi's doing. After a slow, rumbly ascent, the lights indicated 'floor' 5.
Out of 200.
"Are you fucking serious right now?!" she slammed her microwave pistol into the wall.
The indicator switched to '4'.
"FUCK YOU!" Holly crushed her own glasses in a furiously-clenched palm.
...
And that sums it up. Richie's dragons concluded.
Richie nodded, holding his chin. "Well, that's a lot to take in, but I guess it explains a few things."
A hedge on his yards' lawn beeped, then slid aside like a safehouse secret door. From the hole in the grass, a tool shed emerged.
Ding
The door swung open, and an exceedingly aggravated Holly stepped out.
Richie's face lit up. "Holly!"
He cheered, then mowed her down with a hug, squishing her against the shed wall. "Glad you could make it! Guess what, I won!"
"Good." Holly grumbled, patting Richie's back. "Because if anyone has the right to kill you, it's me."
Richie stepped back, lacing his fingers behind his back and giving a guilty-as-fuck grin. "Whatever are you talking about?"
Holly pressed the muzzle to Richie's head. "Don't give me that! What the HELL was that elevator nonsense?!?"
"No idea what you're talking about." Richie grinned.
"I - you - fuckin' -" she hissed for a few moments, a forked tongue darting out at him as her head seemed to flatten and her neck stretched like a hood. Then she sighed. "Oh whatever. I take it this is our territory now then?"
"Yep!" Richie smiled happily.
His smile was adorable, and Holly felt her face flush.
Holly slapped herself.
Richie tilted his head. "Sudden Tourettes?"
"Yes." Holly said suspiciously quickly.
She widened her eyes. "That reminds me."
-
Back in the hospital room, Chikita sneezed, standing in the doorway.
"Oh, hey Chiki." Cuppy looked up from the ball he was curled in for a second.
Cuppet seemed tense.
"Nighty night." Cuppy chirped, then instantly went back to sleep.
Cuppet stared at Chikita, her eyes as unblinking as his. He had his hand on the loop of his scissor blade behind his back, as she had hers upon Yukihana. The keen silver blade had been drawn ever so slightly from its sheath.
Freyja's foot twitched.
Chikita blinked, then looked up. As her hard eyes fell on the demon's comatose form, she was briefly touched by how vulnerable and strangely peaceful the goth girl seemed under all the medical equipment. She looked to Cuppy again and echoed a similar thought.
She sighed, and subtly clicked Yukihana back into place.
"Our contract is complete." she said finally. "Farewell."
She turned, and stalked out of the room.
Cuppet breathed a hypothetically sigh of relief, and settled. The woman who stood before him and his prone companions felt nothing like the eccentric mentor who'd guided his companions - with mixed success - through the trials of the Backyards. The rhythm within her was one of complete and utter cold detachment, as though a blizzard had gained sentience and form, and turned its pitiless gaze on spring flowers who'd overstayed their welcome.
Only just now did Cuppet fully process the fact that they had lived for weeks with an assassin in their nest.
-
Freyja yawned as she sat up, stretched, and casually yanked the apparatuses off of, and IVs out of, herself. "Morning already?" she asked Richie.
"Close enough." he grinned. "I staked our claim."
Freyja smiled. "I knew you would."
"Let's go home." Richie said, scooping up the sleeping Cuppy and draping him over his back like a tuckered-out koala.
-
Outside the building, Holly stood in the parking lot across from Mason, who had left his visit to Chelsea.
"Is it true? Were you a mole, this whole time?" the Director asked.
Holly pushed up her new glasses, and sighed. "It's a longer story than I imagine you have patience for."
Mason's hand brushed the handle of his magnum, twitching, as did his eyes beneath his inscrutable sunglasses.
"Are you going to shoot me?" Holly asked.
"The penalty for treason is death. Why, Holly?" he asked.
"Does it matter?"
He hung his head, contemplating.
"If you aren't going to kill me, then I have places to be." Holly said.
"Tell me one thing. Was it all a lie?" he asked, lowering his sunglasses. His eyes were an oddly innocent blue, contrasting the dark circles beneath them. They were red and puffy too.
"I wasn't who I said I was, but I never lied to you. If you'd look at the world from outside your damn box, you'd see things aren't so black and white. I'm sorry, Mason, but you're forging a path I cannot follow. There can be no doubt in my mind now - the ferals are not the enemy. I've seen the real enemy, in fact. It sounds like you did too." Holly said.
"Those men at Carnival Top - who are they?" Mason asked.
"That I don't know. They aren't part of us." Holly said.
"Us? Jumped ships already?" Mason asked.
"I'm afraid so." Holly approached Mason, who stood impassively. "I'm sorry, Director, but -"
- she slapped him hard across the face, leaving a red mark. "Consider this my resignation."
He clutched his red, stinging cheek. "Holly?"
"For Cuppy." Holly said, and walked away.
Mason knew that this must have been the same moppet who'd named Holly to begin with, accidentally blowing the lid on some kind of conspiracy hiding beneath his nose.
Despite himself, Mason breathed a sigh of relief.
A part of him he couldn't hear thought Good. I'm not a child killer.
There would be questions to ask later. But not now. For now, he just wanted to go home and sleep for days.
Mason now had more in common with the mysterious contractor they'd hired than either of them realize. Both had opted to give the same targets one freebie.