The Silver Angel

Chapter 117

"Pearls from Pigs"

After a while, Faith sighed and stood up from her spot, head-butting the door.

Okay…Okay.

Visage firm in stoic scowl, she leaned away and looked up at the top edge of the doorway's blockade. Up and further up at the dusky ceiling and the darkness beyond it with its hive-chitin walls. Carefully, she followed the wall, confirmed the circular structure of the room, until she returned to the door.

Okay.

She nodded in reassurance as she eyed the walls down.

This is the only passage. Assuming there isn't anything in the darkness up there...

A faint tapping against metal stirred behind her.

She frowned and turned around, eyes narrowed.

At the table, the squirming piece of living meat she had left, finished up the last of the yoma muscle on the second plate which it intruded on. Its form unrecognizable.

Faith frowned as her eyes remained their focus on the spectacle while her feet brought her back to the table in curiosity.

What is this thing anyway?

The creature, a palm-sized bone-marrow colored gelatinous glob, stood on the silver plate with four pairs of tubes which deflated and inflated for slow locomotion forward. Four thinning tentacles extruded from its back in a symmetrical arrangement. A circle of short feelers decorated one end of the creature in a makeshift "snout" which still licked drops of blood off the plate in patient pacing. Eyeless, void of any visible ears, it showed neither notice or reaction to the presence of the awakened being which stood next to the table closest to it.

Faith's brows furrowed deeper.

No, really, "what" is it? Some sort of piglet or something?

As no trace of blood remained in front of the creature's snout, the tiny "piglet" curled its feelers in withdrawal and remained motionless on the plate.

Faith only watched as the tiny stumps of tubular-legs deflated and let the tiny creature rest on its belly in peace. The long tentacles swaying faintly as if submerged in water as lone sign of life coming from it.

She eased up in the lack of hostile or any potential reaction from it.

Let's see... She slowly flexed her fingers in a curl. Is this a trick or not?

Faith glanced between her hand and the "piglet".

Hesitation.

Seconds passed until she slowly reached out with her index-finger stretched out, across the table.

Her fingertip gently pressed against the gelatinous piglet's smooth surface.

Stillness.

Neither the tentacles nor the creature reacted as her finger pulled away from its body at first. It slowly heaved up from the plate as its tiny feet inflated once more and let it stand up. Once it stood, it remained motionless and waited.

Faith poked it a second time, followed by a third, and her tendons relaxed as zero hostility followed from the piglet who only turned away and slowly, slowly, walked off the plate, out from her reach.

A deep sigh left her chest.

Okay, its harmless. Faith's shoulders slumped and the tight knot in her chest loosened up. That could have gone a lot worse...

As she watched the little creature, she reached for the platter's bowl-cover, scooped the piglet up, and gently put it down in the makeshift bucket. The creature showed zero resistance at any of her actions and only tried climb out from the lid trice, only to glide back down again with each attempt. It resigned to a deflated stay at the bottom of the bowl.

Well, at least its easy to keep an eye on.

Faith, at ease, glanced back at the door. Her attention returned to the table and she snatched up the cutlery left behind.

Her path brought her back to the lone locked entrance with predetermined focus.

Let's find some answers...

Deep within the depths of the dark, damp, corridors, chitin ceased its cover exposed cold, smooth, bedrock walls beneath it as Little Hand's bare feet rushed through the borderlands of chewed wood and earth. Shadows wrapped over their body in the lack of outside light in the tunnel around them.

"Not good-not good-not goood-!" A voice, broken up into hyperventilated falsetto, madly recycled its mantra and ran inside.

A massive, empty, hexagonal cavity opened up with piles of mixed trinkets leaning against the walls in the corners inviting for rummage. All while the tiny figures which had been carried along jumped off and quickly rushed towards other piles with one of them at the entrance for guard-duty.

Little Hand stumbled over a boot in their way.

They tripped and fell over, hit the floor chest first, and collapsed into a tiny swarm of two-hundred tiny figures which sploshed out like marbles over the floor.

The false-pitched mantra regurgitated among the figures who struggled back up on their feet. Some dusted themselves off, and they resumed their run once more through the room, chanting all the while.

"No good-no good-no good-no good-!" Their chant reached with the vocal strength of mice in a wheat-mill. The entry group headed for a tunnel in the far end of the room, carved out from the base of a chitin wall and obscured by a rag curtain. "Get up!"

Silence.

The tiny figures stomped and jumped on the spots in ineffective tantrums.

"Stupid-stupid-stupid-stupid!" They shouted into the tunnel as they stopped in front of the circular entrance, met only by silent indifference. "You...stupidhead!"

"I heard that." A hollowed-out deep voice, as if speaking from a carved-out pumpkin, answered back.

"Trouble!" The figures alerted. "Trouble, trouble, trouble-!"

"Sentences!" The echo cut off. "Use...sentences."

The tiny figures stopped and cleared their throats for a moment.

"It's-another-stray!" The tiny figures mustered and waited.

"So?"

"They-play-no-nice!"

"Just give them the "cure" and be done with it."

"We-tried!"

"And?"

"We-failed!"

Only darkness and silence greeted them as they looked up at the tunnel's gaping maw and waited.

The squad lowered their heads and sobbed, some wiping their faces at eye-height. "She-is-mean!"

"For the love of..." The voice groaned. "Fine. You can play "rough" with her."

Their heads rose in rejuvenated, childish, vigor and they spun around.

"YAY-!"

"But keep it quiet!"

"Yay...?" The figures whisper-cheered.

A distorted groan left the tunnel.

"Why am I even trying...?"

Silence returned and the echo in the tunnel buried itself deeper inside of it.

Within the chamber, a noisy chorus erupted and the hoard of tiny figures spread around through the boxes and piles of trinkets in the room.

"Play! Yay! Okay!" They laughed and joined in on a musical tone. "Role-play!"

Behind them, three of the tiny figures dragged a pale white full-body dress to the center of the room. Once they arrived, they ran back and dragged other clothing articles such as a corset, pads, a bird-mask of bronze, and a nun's habit with the scalp removed. they gathered in front of the tunnel entrance, raised their hands to their faces, and shouted.

"Suits!" The tiny figures chanted at the entrance. "Suits, suits, suits, suits-!"

As the source of the echo moved away, the squads continued their tasks at hand.

The tiny figures rolled out the cloth, exposed a set of syringes and tiny vials, their contents glowing bright toxic-green in the dark once released from their curled up obscurity.

"The Doctor, the Nun, The Bandit, The Knight, The Archer, The Hoarder, The Scholar, The Mighty! Who-more!?"

As the rattle of armor, weaponry and the smooth strokes of cloth dragged across the floor towards the center in multiple sets of outfits, lined up across the floor.

"Ready?!"

A cheer and they silenced as groups of dozens gathered at each set of equipment.

"Yes!"

They laughed and chirped.

"Play-Now?"

They cheered and waved their arms in the air above their head. "Play-Now! Play-Now? Play-Now!"

Arms raised, they cried out in a mimicked buzzing of hornets with their tiny, high-pitched, voices, hands flapping spasms akin of wing-beats. The spirits in the chamber on the verge on a bar-brawl's worth of mustered self-delusion and intoxicated courage.

As the groups gathered equipment and hay, assigning themselves into groups, the voice in the tunnel grumbled and slowly slithered further away into the realm of silent sleep.

"Why am I even trying?"

"Constance."

"NO! Not "who"! What are you!"

"Constance."

Grace whipped back, face up towards the sky, as she groaned heavily with her hand pressed over the left side of her face.

The sun steadily raising up towards the sky as the group walked on without stop.

"NO!" The taller warrior screamed, as she shook her head and trembled. "That's not an answer!"

"Yes it is." Constance quipped, smiled, and tilted her head. "Constance is Constance and nothing else but Constance..."

She craned her head to the side, smiling. "What else would Constance be?"

"Yes! But-! No-!" Grace erupted and unleashed her frustration alongside her migraine towards the heavens in a shrill.

A couple of birds flew off from their tree-crown where they rested in half a mile away from the group.

"G-Grace?" Cassandra asked hesitatingly asked with one hand lingering inches from grabbing the other woman's shoulder. "Just...turn away from this."

The abyssal turned towards Constance who smiled and waved back at them.

A dark scowl spread in the abyssal's visage in response and vanished as she looked away. She turned to Grace. "I don't know if she's either dumb as a box of rocks or there's mud in her ears, but if the answer haven't changed after the first time, it's not going to change, ever."

Grace glanced back at Cassandra who faintly blushed in eye-contact with her. "I know what it feels like and what would I give just to wipe that repulsive smug smile off the face of the moon...But-!"

The abyssal fidgeted with a strand of her hair as Grace kept looking at her, one brow raised. "Trust me on this one. Don't bother. Idiots are idiots and forever will be."

She shrugged in exasperation. "There's all there is to them."

Deborah, who silently followed by Grace's right side with her hands behind her back, looked up and at her with raised brows in response.

"Oh really?" The double-digit's wasps buzzed and scoffed. "How many idiots do you know?"

She silenced as Cassandra threw a glowing glare at her, out of sight from Grace.

"As I said-..." The abyssal shot back and turned to Grace with empathy and restraint. "Don't bother with the impostor, and who knows, you might get marked for a purge if asking one too many times..."

"Welcome to my life..." Grace mumbled beneath her breath. "I got that answer when asking about "Voracious Eaters" too much..."

"Huh? Really?" Cassandra frowned and glanced aside. "Guess that rule hasn't changed since my time..."

She frowned. "Why did you ask about them?"

"It got too much of the same." Grace sighed. "I wanted more."

Pause.

The abyssal cocked a brow and smirked for herself as recollection of sensations from a lost distant past came to light. A nod of approval bobbed her head and she patted Grace on the shoulder.

"Oh I can understand that..." Cassandra smiled and kept patting Grace's shoulder for longer than required. "But in this case, don't ask the idiot for answers. You're not going to get any-"

"That's not true!" Deborah cut in on them both as she immediately walked in from Grace's other side, grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the abyssal's grip in an instant. The smile faded from Cassandra's face as the double-digit hid behind the warrior while drawing the attention away. "Ask me anything. Anything you like! I've examined her...somewhat...and can tell you what I found out about-!"

"About what?" Constance chirped in and the awakened ones in the group jumped on the spot as the short warrior appeared right behind them with a wide smile. "Hmm?"

"About-!" Deborah cut off at the sight of Constance's painted smile. "-uhh, the "mysteries of life"?"

Silence.

Constance frowned, blinked, tilted her head, and tilted it in the other direction as she looked up at the double-digit. The painted aspect of her smile fading away beneath the surface once more.

"What's that?"

"What it is? Uuhh...Oh boy..." Deborah looked away for a moment in erratic search for a verbal escape. "Where do I even begin?"

Her gaze fell on Cassandra. The wasps buzzed and she pointed in her direction. "Ask her!"

"Wha-!?" The abyssal burst out and cut off as the short warrior leaped in between her and the others with highly expectant visage in her face.

"What's the "mysteries of life"?" Constance paused, tilted her head, and frowned. "What's a "mystery"? What's "life"? And what is this "of"?"

"Back off!" Cassandra pushed the short warrior in the face, only to face mountain-clad resistance as the aura her palm pressed crystallized upon touch. "Don't look at me! You little copycat!"

"Oh! What's that!?" Constance shone up in childish glee. "Is it all soft and cuddly?!"

She stepped back instead and Constance followed with her aura shifting between liquid and solids as the abyssal tried kicking and pulsing her away to no avail.

The distance between them and the group increased by the second. "Stop following me!"

"NO!" Constance called between two solid counters of impact. "Not until you give Constance the kitty!"

Cassandra gnashed her teeth and rolled her eyes as she trembled in self-loathing. A dark smirk flashed over her face for a moment and she eyed back at the short warrior.

"Fine! Okay!" The abyssal bemoaned and turned toward her, smiling, with her hands behind her back. "Turn around and cover your eyes."

Cassandra, yoki pulsing through her legs, one raised for a strong kick, and the full force of Cassandra's aura bursting in the node formed through it.

Constance only looked up for a moment, and smiled.

The abyssal pulse fired off, the spherical crystallized aura instantly hardened, and sent them both flying through the air as Constance caught Cassandra's leg by the ankle and refused letting it go.

In the trail of the heavy gust, they flung across the sky and vanished beyond the visible horizon.

Left behind, Grace and Deborah stared, dumbfounded, after them.

For a moment, the wasp woman opened her mouth.

"Hey...Grace?" Deborah asked.

"Hmm?"

"What did that just look like to you?"

"Like two women being thrown through the air like rocks out of nowhere?"

Deborah only stifled a laughter in turn.

Grace frowned and turned to her. "What's so funny?

"Uuh,nothing..." Deborah cleared her throat and turned towards her. "Hey, Grace? Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Are you really okay? After the dogs, I mean..."

Grace frowned and turned towards her.

"I think so?" Grace patted herself up once from head to toe as she made sure. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Really?" Deborah asked and eyed her down thoroughly. "No hunger pains or anything?"

"No?"

"Are you sure?" Deborah asked with a doctor's determination. "You fought pretty hard from what I could tell..."

"Yes. I'm sure!" Grace pouted for a moment with her arm crossed over her chest. "What was all that about anyway?"

"What? The home-visit?" Deborah asked and scratched over her chest's cleavage with rippling semi-transformed skin beneath her fingertips. "I smelled a budding case of variola and-"

"No,no, not "that"! The "dogs"!" Grace cut off with a handwave. "What was that about?!"

"Oh, that..." Deborah paused, looked away for a moment, and turned to her after a moment. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Grace stared silently back at her and she shrugged. "What? Awakened ones may be "demons" but we aren't "gods". We don't know everything there is to answer."

"Okay..." Grace sighed in exasperation and shook her head. "So why did a human have those things then?"

"My best guess? We stumbled upon someone else's "livestock"..."

"Huh?" Grace frowned and tilted her head. "We went past the barn..."

"No, no, not their livestock..." Deborah shook her head and waved her hand. "An "awakened one's" livestock."

Silence.

With incredulous gaze, Grace tilted her head slowly to the side as Deborah smiled up at her in innocent puzzlement. "What?"

"Seriously?" The warrior asked and blinked with deeply furrowed brows. "Seriously?"

"What? You think that all awakened ones hunt in towns for food all the time?" Deborah asked and frowned back at her. "Do you realize how fast humanity would die out if we actually did that?"

"I rather not think about it..."

"You should." Deborah paused and glanced around for a moment. She frowned as she noticed their complete isolation from anyone and anything else in their vicinity and turned back to her. "That said, what was going on back there, was probably us stumbling upon an awakened one's "farm". Private ownership."

"Private ownership? By an awakened one?" Grace frowned and shook her head. "How does that even work out?!"

"Simple. Defenseless farmers in the middle of nowhere gets protection and in exchange, the awakened one gets a free meal every once in a while." Deborah shrugged. "The dogs is part of that deal, most likely."

"Protection? From what exactly?" Grace scowled.

"Well, let's see here..." A red wasp appeared and a row of the insects lined up over Deborah's knuckles. "Yoma, apex, the Organization, us..."

They stopped and buzzed in united choir while they looked up at Grace. "Need us to keep going?"

"No..." Grace turned towards her. "Then why didn't the owner show up?"

"Hm?"

"If that family is someone's..."pet"..."

"Cattle." A wasp cut in. "You don't eat your pets."

"Whatever..." Grace grumbled and glanced away. "Then why didn't the owner of the hounds show up when you walked in?"

Pause.

"Because you didn't kill the dogs?"

Grace frowned. In the distance, another abyssal pulse ruptured the air followed by a small quake.

Both ignored as Deborah only kept a wasp glancing in its direction. "If you put a guard, you most likely don't want to deal with things yourself. So as long the dogs remained alive, the owner would probably not bother with anything they could handle by themselves."

She hummed and nipped on her thumb for a moment. Arms crossed beneath her bosom and pushing it up.

Insight dawned in the warrior's visage.

"Hey?" Grace asked. "One thing."

"What?"

"If I had killed the dogs then..." Grace paused in deep thought. "How fast would the owner have gotten there?"

Pause.

Deborah frowned and counted in her head for a moment, wasps buzzed in accordance as accompanying tune.

"Anywhere between "In a handful" and "moments"?" Deborah turned to Grace. "Why do you ask?"

"Really?"

"Yes. Really." Deborah nodded and a wasp crawled out from the corner of her mouth. "Especially if they were corrupted chunks of their owner that got killed. You might not imagine it, but sharing essence of yourself really makes it easy to pinpoint locations in an instant."

"Huh..." Grace hummed, her finger curled around her chin. "Are all awakened capable of this?"

"Pretty much." The wasp shrugged. "Even the slowest of us can run pretty fast if we remain in human form doing so. We have no need to go slower if we eat as we should..."

Deborah instantly silenced the bug at the dejected, discomfort flashing in Grace's face.

"Um, Grace? Are you okay?" Deborah asked and leaned closer towards her.

"Great...just, great." The warrior shook her head and winced in low-key pain. "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

"Why would you be?"

Silence.

Grace paled and covered her mouth tightly as she shook her head, eyes closed.

"This...It's taking too much time!"

"What does?"

"Everything!" Grace huffed in frustration. "More and more things keeps piling up on me and every time I spend not moving, everything and everyone moves ahead away from me! I have to find Eliah before she gets killed, get stronger than Blanc so he can be killed, deal with whatever is going on with me, learn how to fight all over again with only one arm from here on, deal with a black card that is just too unbelievable to be true and-!"

She pointed back the way they had arrived. "I'll have who-know-what coming after me while dealing with the card...all at once!"

Vented and hyperventilating, she stopped and breathed on the spot as she clenched her fingers tightly over her right shoulder's stump.

Deborah tilted her head and pursed her brows while she cautiously leaned towards her.

"Want another hug?"

Grace scowled back at her.

"No!" She stopped and winched in a facepalm. "No, sorry, I just-...I just don't want to "hurry" anymore!"

She dropped down on the grass and remained seated there as she trembled with her hand pressed against the left side of her face.

Deborah only held her mouth shut and instantly silenced a couple of wasps which gleefully crawled out for a snappy buzzing in response.

The wasp-woman hummed, frowned, and looked away for a moment as Grace begrudged reality next to her.

"Hey, Grace...?"

Grace only closed her eyes and groaned to herself.

Deborah sighed and nodded determinedly. "Okay...Let's do this!"

While turned away, she rummaged around for a minute, searching with her hand in circles, as Grace brooded on the grass to herself. Deborah turned back around with a jar in her hand, the container filled with a semi-transparent gel. She undid the lid, her visage unchanged from the the iron-clad determination displayed in it.

With jar in hand, she turned looked directly at the warrior. "Grace!"

The warrior raised her head at her, frowning.

"What?" Grace asked, eyes narrowed, at the contents of the jar which jiggled slightly on the surface. "What's that?"

'No questions!" The wasps from the wasp-woman's skin buzzed as she grabbed Grace's left wrist and raised the other woman's arm out to the side. "Don't move."

"U-uh, Debor-!?" Grace stuttered and her eyes widened as the and holding her wrist rippled and crumbled into a branch of red wasps, tightly compressed together. The skin on the appendage dried up and crumbled from the fingertips and down to her shoulder, the remnants raining into the grass as thick snowflakes.

Another red branch of tiny insects burst out from Deborah's armpit, beneath the first semi-transformed appendage, and darted towards the jar. Faux chitin skin forming fingertips which grabbed the jar's top, unscrewed it with a recently formed human hand on a wasp-appendage, and let the chitin add on down until a new human-like arm solidified when she got off the lid.

Grace, hesitant as she pulled through her arm and stared wide-eyed as the raw force akin the one behind a crayfish's pincers firmly held it locked in place. The army of tiny bodies tightly pressing against it with its inner layer and carried by the outer layer for support.

She turned to the Wasp-Woman.

"Deborah!?"

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." Deborah, concentrated, stated as she moved her fingers into the jar and wiped up the upper layer on her fingers. "I'm a Doctor."

"What are you even doing?!"

Deborah paused and a hesitant, sucked-in, smile followed her nod.

"I'm helping you."

Two figures approached from beyond the horizon, at human walking speed, once they reached the vicinity of Deborah's aura.

Cassandra with a miserable slumped posture and exasperated visage, groaned heavily towards the sky.

Next to her, on the left, Constance, her wide smile radiant as a rainbow, skipped with a joyful bounce in her step. Snuggling with her cheek against the Tigon cub's head accompanied with the rattle of the lantern firmly clasped in the feline's jaws.

"Yay! We found it!" Constance cheered as she hugged the little cub tighter to her chest. "Thank you, "pet number two"!"

"Just stop..." Cassandra groaned with her face buried against her hands. "Please stop humiliating me like this..."

Not a single speck of dust on the short warrior's uniform, contrary to the abyssal one's garments which's true colors remained buried under a thick layer of fallout and dust, scarred her appearance in the aftermath.

Cassandra only pondered in disbelief on the violent game of "tag" she involuntarily had played with the short warrior before it all screeched to an halt upon the discovery of the missing tigon, returning from the direction of the farm, with the lantern dragging behind it while it bit down on the handle.

Her visage, darkened, in grim displeasure.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing! She glared the oblivious warrior down as the later rubbed her cheek against the pet's fur. How strong even is that wavelength of hers to catch mine like that!?

Constance glanced up at her, smiled, and held up the tigon with its hind-body dangling from her hold.

"You want to snuggle it too?" Constance asked and shone up.

Cassandra, reluctantly, shook her head and pushed the little critter away with an air-motion.

"Just...leave me alone."

As she looked away and up at the sky in sour silence from her company, Cassandra's eyes narrowed.

But, futility aside, it did give a chance to "see" her up-close this time. Her iron-gray irises slowly crawled back at Constance discretely. Enough for me to begin grasping the "basics" behind that secret of hers... And if I can grasp that...

The right side of Cassandra's mouth tugged involuntarily into a momentary gleeful smirk.

I can outdo it.

"Hey?" Constance asked and looked up at her. "Hey?!"

"What!?" Cassandra snapped back.

"What are they doing?" Constance pointed ahead of them and Cassandra looked straight ahead.

Her mouth returned to a stoic line as she reached the location for Deborah's aura and stopped on the spot as her dark, vengeful, glee sunk like a rock for a moment. Only for it to return with renewed vigor on the scene in front of her.

Wasps holding Grace in a tight grip. The confusion in the warrior's wide-open eyes. The lack of submission from the double-digit classed wasp woman in front of her which worked with a jar of dubious content.

A twitch united the two sides in the abyssal's depths for an instant before it passed into a murky dark surface.

"Hey." Constance asked as the surface of her skin yoki-crystallized and the abyssal hand slapped the equivalent of mountain bedrock instead. "Tell Constance. What are they doing?"

Cassandra glared back, eyes burning in hot, melted, gold, straight from the blacksmith's oven, down at her annoyance.

"Do I look like I want to play twenty questions now?"

Pause.

Constance only tilted her head, smiled, and shook it.

"What's that?"

The abyssal only trembled as the urge of releasing a abyssal node straight into the short warrior's face corroded her self-restraint.

"Don't even start!" The abyssal tossed her hands up in the air while the ocular daggers reserved for Deborah stacked up with later use in mind mentally. "You. Stay. Right here."

"Okay!" Constance tilted her head. "Why?"

Cassandra only tossed up her hands in the air as she turned towards the other two, eyes narrowed and glowering gold.

For one moment, she vanished from the spot next to Constance.

"Hey, "Wench"..." A voice of abyssal depths hissed beneath her breath and raised it to the audible surface. "What do you think you're doing to Grace?"

Grace releasing a sigh of relief and the wasp-woman turned towards her with a jar full of a sluggish, thick, gel in her hand.

Cassandra's heart skipped a beat in dual-faced joy over the gesture.

"Good! You're back!" Grace exclaimed and turned to Deborah. "So...do I really have to go through this, whatever you're doing, anyway?"

The wasp-woman frowned, glanced at the abyssal, cowered, and shifted her gaze between the two women. Ripples danced over Deborah's face into honeycomb patterns and cracked the lower half of it into chitin, pre-cut, pieces. They chunks dropped down and exposed a swarm of red wasps, crawling over one another in a endless buzzing, beneath the still fluid and animated portion of Deborah's human upper-half visage.

"The other one is closer..." The wasps mumbled as she, in awakened-tinted silence, looked up at the abyssal firmly. "You. Arms over your head and don't move!"

She released Grace. Cleared her throat and wasps crawled out from between her lips as they turned towards the abyssal. "Also, strip down first."

Cassandra stared back at her for a moment, frowned, and turned to Grace who shrugged in response.

"Excuse me?" Cassandra asked as she stared the wasp-woman down. "Why?"

"No questions, just play along!" Deborah nodded and held up the jar with its sluggish contents. "I'm doing it for Grace here, nothing else!"

The abyssal scowled, leaned closer, sniffed the jar's contents over the gap and wrinkled her nose.

A fragrance with the strength of vinegar, a fragrance composed of tea leafs and the sea stung her nostrils back, mingled with the delicate scent of a woman embedded deep into the two, breathed out from the gel.

She narrowed her eyes at Deborah and stopped as Grace added.

"Don't ask me." The warrior shook her head and looked directly at her. "Please Cassandra?"

Conflict wrestled in Cassandra's mind and with her head aimed up at the sky a heavy, reluctant, sigh escaped her lips.

"This will come off with the rainwater, right?" The abyssal asked.

A sharp metallic cling shattered in the dim darkness and Faith cursed.

"No!" She grunted down at the forcefully toothless fork in her tight grip. Her sight, augmented by yoki-imbued nocturnal vision, glared down at the broken tool and tossed it aside.

It landed next to the second of its kin, its three prongs shattered, in the corner of the semi-spherical room.

In frustration, she turned around and leaned back against the wall.

The wall is harder than I thought...

Her head against the wall, she let the back of it slide across the glistering surface for a moment. Zero resistance scrubbed her scalp or pulled in her hair as she rubbed. She frowned and glanced back at it.

Polished chitin, dimly illuminated in the lone candlelight, glistened smoothly as she pulled a finger over its surface. A faint cyan glow shimmered beneath her fingertip where she pushed the chitin.

She stopped and frowned.

Wait...is that?

Faith frowned as she rubbed her fingertips together and put her hand against the smooth surface. A faint cyan glow responded upon the pressure in turn and faded away instantly as she let go off it.

The Mantis woman's eyes widened as she looked up at the wall.

Yoki...faint traces, yes, but still...

She glanced down at her hand after a short moment and slowly cupped it. Her attention moved across the room and the smooth chitin coating it.

Is this...an awakened construct?! That Debby built!?

She huffed and sighed as she eyed down the broken fork.

If so... no wonder this thing broke.

She sunk back against the wall.

The only way to break through this then, would be awakening... But I can't do that.

Eyes closed, Faith groaned.

Is this your idea of "helping" Debby? She craned her head to the side. If it is, then I don't want to know what you do when you want to "hurt" someone...

In her arms, the wrapped up bundle stirred.

She glanced down at the docile gelatinous piglet in the lid she carried around. Its tentacles, feelers, and tendril-equipped "snout" sluggishly tapping around on the smooth metal with mindless disinterest.

What even is this thing anyway? She bent her neck and slowly turned around the package in her hands. No aura whatsoever. Not to mention how it isn't reacting to my presence at all...

The stir and uneasiness of the gnawing, clawing, lump within the covered platter continued as she glanced up.

Nah, it's way too docile to be a feeder.

A sour scowl spread over her eyebrows as she nibbled on her lower lip. She gazed back.

"Hey! Anyone out there?!"

I know there are no auras and the scent of humans has been non-existent thus far, but still...

"I know you can hear me!" Faith called out and her voice bounced inwards within the chamber. "Let me out already! Debby?"

Nothing.

Faith sighed and slumped down once more.

Maybe soundproof as well. She sighed. I wish there were something to read...

Her attention moved down to the bundle in her arms.

The motionless lump of jelly twitched its tendrils sporadically in tiny spasms and settled as it rested at the bottom of the lid. Its shade of colors slowly paled in front of her eyes in rate with a alien beat of a unknown heart yet clung to life regardless.

She sighed and looked up.

Well, what do I do now?

A spare glance back at the round door behind her.

No way to cut it up. Not without losing my mind to the mist...

She turned away and eyed the candle on the table.

Can't set it on fire either. She sighed. Even if the smoke won't kill me, who is to say these walls won't burst into flame like dry wood in the summer and turn this place into an oven?

The red muscle-mass sluggishly looked around in its cupped cradle, peeked over the edge, and gazed blindly into the room.

She glanced down at the "piglet".

"No, not happening..." She hummed and glanced up with the docile co-captive in her company. "It doesn't even have teeth..."

The back of her head hit the door as she slugged it in a annoyed growl. In the distance, the aura in the corridor slowed down and stopped behind her.

It moved closer, yet went ignored as Faith tried wreaking her mind on how to escape the locked chamber as top priority.

So, what am I supposed to do? It's not like someone would just pass by and say "hi" in this giant wasp-nest-?

"Are you the one?"

A voice, hollow as a carved pumpkin's with surgically removed hints of gender from its base, spoke up and she instantly spun her head in its direction.

Next to her, within the very chamber she occupied, a young adult stood, gazing in half-asleep exasperation and annoyance, down back at her. "The one ruining my sweet dreams with the "Doctor"?"

Snow-blonde, ragged long hair tied up in a pony-tail on the side of their head, its slender frame wrapped loosely in a pale burial-shroud glowing ethereally in the cyan shine of yoki, slumped with its hands, concealed up to their wrists by the shroud limp along its sides.

Radiant as a reflection of the moon in the water's rippling surface.

The mantis woman stared dumbfound at the figure as it spoke up, move not moving. "What? Answer already! Or are you deaf too? You "washboard"?"

Faith frowned and broke the trance.

"What did you call me?!"

"And...that should be the last spot." Deborah clapped her wiped hands together while she put away the empty jar into her semi-transformed cleavage. A bundle of clothing dangling over her right forearm like drying laundry.

In front of her, Cassandra lowered her arms as her skin glistened in the daylight as the sheen coated her her completely. The carved trinket of the twin-goddess hanging from her throat in its string and resting on her collarbones' meeting point.

A sour grimace teased within her visage.

"What?" The swarm asked. "Is it the smell?"

"No, no, no." Cassandra groaned and narrowed her gaze in exasperation at the wasp-woman. "It's just...not how I would have liked it to play out."

Deborah frowned and the abyssal sneaked a glance back over her shoulder.

Grace remained looking the other way, arm crossed under her chest, as she kept mumbling to herself in courtesy.

Cassandra's gaze sunk and she looked away. "Three is such a mood-killer..."

Her shoulders slumped and she reached her right hand toward the wasp-woman and the clothing draped over the other woman's forearm. "Hand them back..."

Deborah stepped back.

Cassandra's eyes narrowed. "Wasp-wench..."

"And ruin all this effort?" Deborah clapped her hands and tugged a smile in the myriad of wasp-bodies. "Here..."

She pulled out a long garb from the semi-transformed patch of skin in her chest and held it up by its shoulder straps.

The double-digit's wasp-face smirked. "Put this on."

The piece of cloth, a long black, sleeveless and backless, dress with a side-slit, swayed faintly in the breeze from the pinching of Deborah's fingers. Its quality, royal-class, and the thin reflective-less material smooth as silk in how the wind gently stroke it.

Cassandra only stared at it for five seconds and turned to Deborah with the visage of a stoic statue.

"No."

"Too bad." The wasps buzzed as the upper, human, half of her visage rolled back its eyes in fearful disbelief. "Put it on."

"Excuse me!" Cassandra stepped back, arms crossed. "Since when am I your "rag doll" to dress up for giggles?"

"Got a problem with the dress?" The wasps buzzed and held up the garb with one human arm. "Do you?"

The abyssal measured up the dress with her eyes. "Well...it does look... pretty...classy."

She shook her head and scowled back. "But if you think I'm wearing that thing because "you" ask me to, then you got a whole other thing coming your way-!"

"I'm, not doing it for "me", genius." The wasps objected and held up the dress as if to measure it up by eye on the abyssal. "But if you refuse, I can always go with the original idea and have Grace wear it..."

The wasps shifted their attention beyond and behind Cassandra. They twitched their antennas and hummed. "It might not fit though..."

Cassandra froze up for a moment, glanced down at the dress, and looked back at Grace. Her mind vividly in process of putting the warrior in the piece of fabric with pinpoint accuracy, minus any stigmata to her generous contribution for the warrior's behalf.

A squirming of tendrils stirred beneath the abyssal's skin on her back as she shivered. Cheeks red and a pleased grin tightly suppressed beneath the restraints of self-respect.

Deborah leaned away a step at the sight of it and continued. "Listen, putting your old clothes back on would just ruin the whole point with the gel in the first place. So unless you want another rubbing, chomp down and keep your mouth shut, would you?"

The wasp-woman held out the dress to Cassandra. "Okay?"

The squirming of plated tendrils sunk down and the abyssal frowned back at her, the blush receding.

Hesitation. Moments of consideration while lost in a forest of mental imaginary, her aura settled down.

Cassandra only let out a heavy breath and reached out to her with an empty hand.

"Hand it over." She mumbled and Deborah obliged happily as the dress traded carriers. "But I'm not doing this for you."

"Oh, I knew that... Never expected it either."

"And...!" Cassandra pointed up as she held out her hand in Deborah's direction. "I'm keeping this...Got it?"

Deborah nodded and the wasps scoffed as they retorted with silence.

Once the shoulder straps had been reaffirmed on her shoulders, Cassandra moved around on the spot and stretched her arms out for a test. The dress kept a perfect fit on her figure with flexibility room to spare for the "dust-eater" on the upper half, yet with the risk of entangled feet on the lower, regardless of the slit in its side.

Another semi-awakened tremble ran through her upper back as the mental image of Grace in the dress revisited her mind.

"Good, perfect fit." Deborah's swarm buzzed. "Still missing a thing though..."

"Are you two done yet?" Grace asked, her head turned away from them both. "This is taking all day..."

"Oh, we're done with most of it." Deborah, with a chewed shell of a human lower facial-half rebuilt and coating the swarm in a paper-thin attempt of comfort, turned to Grace. The stiff, unfinished, mask coating frozen in a warm smile, in sharp contrast to the fluid smoothness of Deborah's upper facial-half capable of expression.

A serrated jagged cavity between the two halves exposed tiny red bodies within as they held it all together. "Say Grace...can you do that thing again?"

"What thing?"

"That thing with your hair." Deborah turned to her. "Can you do it again?"

Grace hesitantly pinched a strand of her platinum blonde hair between her fingers and frowned.

"But...I just had it cut... and fixed."

"You can cut it again, no big deal." The wasps cut in and withdrew behind the mask. "It's easy to do one more time, right?"

"But...still..."

An awkward pause moved between them as the warrior looked Deborah right in the eyes.

Deborah gulped.

"It would work wonders, trust me!" She added. "It will definitely be worth it!"

Grace only groaned as she looked up and closed her eyes, arm lowered at her side.

Hesitation.

Deborah clasped her hands together and with the biggest of "puppy-eyes" looked up at the other warrior. "Please?"

Silent seconds passed.

She sighed and closed her eyes as she let go off the platinum-strand stroked between her fingers.

Her hair slightly swayed in a breeze and, in front of the spectators, rejected its cut ends as the hair regained its length, not through growth from the scalp, but from the tips.

The growth carried out slowly and once it quickly reached past her lower back, Deborah interfered. "Stop! That should be enough."

The rejection of loss ceased and Grace opened her eyes with a heavy sigh as she reached down and held up her platinum-strands in her hand, the strands around her neck dangling down over her torso's front.

Deborah nodded as she rummaged around in her semi-transformed cleavage. "Wow, still got the surprise from me so far...How do you feel?"

"Regretted every second of it." Grace's chest heaved heavily and she dropped the hair caught in her palm. "Now what?"

"Well..." Deborah mumbled as she pulled out a comb and another vial. "Needs to be straightened out first..."

"Wait, what?" Grace frowned in confusion at her. "Deborah, is this really going to help?"

The wasp-woman raised her brows in turn.

"Of course it will." She kindly and patiently insisted as wasps crawled out from her hands. "Trust me! This time, I know what I'm doing...definitely."

Grace only furrowed incredulously at her and nibbled on her lower lip in concern.

With a sigh, Grace turned her back at Deborah who proceeded the daunting task of taming the wild, wavy, platinum-strands as the comb sunk its teeth into them.

Thirty minutes later, the final stroke reached its end and the wasp-woman stepped back in finalized relief.

"There!" She exclaimed and wiped her forehead with her comb still caught between her pinched fingers. "By Goddesses, that was a chore."

Deborah pulled out a handheld mirror with a high-class silver frame from her cleavage and held it out to Grace. "Want to have a look?"

The warrior calmly accepted it and in stoic silence, watched the reflection in introspective detail. Dismay displayed in her visage as she pouted at the image and its knee-long, curtain of platinum.

Deborah frowned in uncertainty and leaned over the shoulder, catching Grace's eye-contact in the mirror. "You...really don't like it, do you?"

"The first thing my teacher did, was cutting my hair down." Grace said with her gaze in the mirror. "Can you guess why?"

"Petty jealousy?" Cassandra offhandedly threw out from the side and her smile stumbled at Grace's non-humored visage back at her. "What?"

Grace glanced aside, eyes closed, and sighed as she stroke her platinum-strands slowly in her hand.

"How long am I supposed to keep it like this?"

"Oh, not long, not long at all!" Deborah reassured and gathered all of the warrior's long hair with one hand, its thumb pressed against the taller woman's nape. "In fact-!"

The wasp-woman pulled out a pair of sewing-scissors from her cleavage.

The toothless jaw chomped once and in one fell motion, released all of the platinum strands which dangled past Deborah's fist at once. "It's already over!"

Grace's eyes went wide open, her face frozen in a stoic mask.

Cassandra's jaw dropped, staring at her.

Deborah, absentmindedly, only stepped away and moved her hand inside the semi-awakened patch of skin on her chest as the swarm stirred eagerly for the pale ends.

"Time to get to work!" The swarm cheered as movement tugged within it and her. "Stitch it up nice and smoothly."

Next to her, on a couple of feet worth with distance, Cassandra only hesitantly looked away, moved her hand up to close her lower jaw, and turned her concern to Grace.

The warrior , her bangs left untouched but with the rest of her hair cut down to inch-length behind her, only slowly felt up her

The abyssal scoffed. "How hum-...Hey?"

She stopped, grumbled, and sighed. "Hey? Grace? Want to know something?"

"W-What?" Grace asked in stunned trance as she felt up the extremely short hair on the back of her head where Deborah had roughly cut it.

"You're..." Cassandra paused, her visage soured for an instant, and gulped as red layers burned up through her cheeks involuntarily. "...you're not any less pretty having it cut this short at all."

Grace only incredulously gazed back at her.

The abyssal awkwardly squirmed beneath the warrior's unreadable wide silver gaze. "I m-mean-!"

Cassandra hid her visage behind her hands and turned away, burning up emotionally. "S-see for yourself."

Grace only frowned as she unsheathed her sword and gazed into her reflection within the broadside of her blade while the abyssal cooled down.

"Pretty?"

"Y-Yes!" Cassandra raised a finger up and the anxiety drained away with a confident smile beneath closed eyes. "Don't you know? "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"."

Grace only cocked a brow back at her in turn.

""Pretty"?"

"You doubt me?" Cassandra frowned for a moment to herself. "Or...are you doubting yourself?"

The warrior only blinked confusedly in turn and returned to the reflection.

With tilting head from side to side, she only frowned and blinked incredulously back at it.

"Pretty...?" Grace mumbled beneath her breath and leaned away in deep thought of her staring-contest. "Me?"

Their conversation cut short by the swarming of insects near them.

"Okay, that should do it..."Deborah nodded as her wasps settled down and she pulled out the end result of rapid knitting from her cleavage, a platinum-blonde wig. With a nod, she turned to Cassandra and without warning put the headgear on the abyssal's pixie-cut pale hair. "Now stand still and let me put it in place."

The abyssal moved in objection, yet stopped as Deborah faced her gaze straight on, eye-sockets full of swarming red wasps staring back at her through a hundred insects' eyes.

Cassandra glanced at Grace who wrestled with the idea of personal prettiness with her reflection at the side. Frowning deeply as she looked away and scowled before returning to the image.

The abyssal only sighed and let the wasp-woman put the wig in proper place on her head. "Just let me get this done and...done!"

She let go and Cassandra, frowning resigned in deflation, craned her head as she looked down on herself in the black dress and slowly turned to Grace.

"Can I borrow that?" The abyssal asked and pointed at the sword.

Grace glanced between them and held the blade up for the function of a full-body mirror on the abyssal's behalf.

Clad in cultivated class, Cassandra eyed down herself as she, in sharp contrast to the country-garbs she worn since leaving the desert, radiated with authority. A miasma of otherworldly force, sensually obscured in the draping of tailored darkness around her body. The wig and its long platinum-strands obscuring her ears completely with subtle bumps of feline points pressed from beneath them.

Subconsciously, her right hand's fingers rubbed the tip of the strands between her fingers.

"Well?" The abyssal looked at Grace. "How do I look?"

"Familiar." Grace answered with a slight scowl. "Very familiar."

The abyssal frowned as Deborah walked up to them with a smile in her visage and the swarm of wasps forming the lower half of her face. Hands clasped together in delight at cheek-height.

"This is working out better than imagined!" The swarm turned to Grace and lowered its unclasped hands. She pointed at Cassandra. "Now, try and kill her."

The ambiguous shroud-clad figure, tethering superficially on the razor-fine line between masculinity and femininity, only sighed and shook her head heavily.

"Ah, so you can hear!" It said and scoffed. "What's the lemon-face about? I tried to be nice here..."

"What was nice about that?!" Faith moved up on her feet.

The figure pointed at her torso.

"Aren't nice muscles a compliment?"

"Do I look "happy" about it?" Faith corrected harshly. "No, wait...Who are you!? How did you get in!?"

"Through the door." The figure waved a raised thumb at the entrance next to them. "I'm "Little Hand"."

Faith frowned, stared at the sealed entrance and pushed a palm against the wooden boards.

Solid resistance of a mountain pushed back and she pulled her hand away.

Her eyes moved away from the door and down along the trespasser's body.

The shroud ended at ankle-length and exposed the pale, glowing, bare feet, alongside the pattens attached to them, elevating the figure's height through their wooden heels and soles against the chitin floor.

The single-digit glanced incredulously up at the figure's face.

"Okay, no sarcasm." Faith turned to the company, Little Hand, and scowled. "How did you get in?"

"Told you already. Through the door." Little Hand snorted and tilted their head, arms crossed. "I thought you weren't deaf."

"I'm no-!" Faith opened her mouth, stopped, silenced, and slowly closed it as she turned away from the company. "Wait..."

She frowned and turned attention back to the company. "Little Hand?"

"Yep, that's me." The figure shrugged. "Well, what's left of me...anyway."

"What that supposed to mean?"

Little Hand looked aside and sighed heavily in exasperation.

"Who knows?" The androgynous figure shrugged and turned back to her. "Okay, listen. Can we get this over with? As you might see, assuming you can, that is, I was having a great dream and would like to return to it before it fades away..."

"Return? Back where?" Faith scoffed with a smile. "Your bed or your coffin?"

"Oh, ha-ha-ha-ha..." The figure, Little Hand, emptily and slowly laughed. "There's no difference there anyway, not for "us", so jokes on you."

She stopped and yawned. "Please don't make me mood-swing...I'm still pretty groggy. And loose in the head."

"In that case, start talking." Faith nonchalant waved a hand in front of her. "What is going on here?"

Little Hand scowled in a deep frown.

Faith cocked a brow at them. "What? Too difficult to answer?"

"No! Just..." Little Hand mumbled and looked up at the empty ceiling. "How long have I been asleep?"

"How should I know?" Faith frowned back at her and checked the seasoning of Little Hand's aura. No more than a decade...

She looked up at the awakened enigma's drowsy visage. This one hasn't been here for that long from the looks of it...

Little Hand floated over to the table, silently with the fluid motion of water through the air, and sat down in an "air-chair" position, held up by leg muscle-strength alone.

They soured. "Has that giant cesspool dried up yet?"

Faith raised her brows high in return as the air-sitter crossed its arms.

Little Hand rolled their eyes and blinked drowsily. "I take that a "no" then...Bummer."

The shrouded figure stretched their arms over their head and yawned. "Better just go back to sleep then..."

"Not before you have let me out of here!"

Little Hand scowled back and raised a finger at her.

"Here's the important part you don't know about that. Number one: You do not want to leave this room."

"Says you."

"And you better listen, because if you're still here the next time that door opens?" Little Hand pointed at the door with their thumb. "You'll be in for a world of hurt."

"Like that's something new." Faith scoffed in dim disinterest. "What else is there?"

"There's no exit." Little hand instantly swiped their hand and silenced Faith from afar with a mute "hush". "No really, there isn't. So if you want out, then it will only be through the doctor."

"And how can you be so sure about that?" Faith asked. "Debby must have gotten in here somehow, didn't she?"

"Doctor." Little Hand sharply corrected. "Don't dare taste her name so casually, you wicked little..."

"Focus."

Little Hand swallowed their words down.

"As said... If you want out, and the Doctor sent you here, then the only way out is by doing what she sent you here to do." They pointed at the gelatinous creature in Faith's lap. "And from the looks of it, she sent you for a "cure", so all you have to do is eat that thing and be done with it. I wouldn't wait if I were you. No, really."

"And why would waiting be such a bad idea?"

"Because the last one the Doctor sent here to test...take... the cure didn't..." Little Hand sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "And his screams completely ruined one of my best dreams ever, right at the best part of it too..."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you about that?" Faith raised a brow in response. "Hey you, how many people have Debby-?"

"DOCT-!"

"Debby." Faith cut back. "How many have she sent down here anyway?"

Little Hand paused and counted on their fingers for a moment.

"Fi-...Four?...Fifteen?..." They frowned and looked down at their fingers again. "They starts with an "F-"! I'm dead sure of it!"

"And...are they still down here?" Faith raised a brow in turn.

"Nope." Little Hand shook their head.

"She sent them back?"

Little Hand paused and gazed incredulously back at her before they erupted in laughter.

"Nope." The androgynous figure grinned and shook their head. "There's not a shred of life left from them down here."

Faith's narrowed eyes honed in on Little Hand.

"Then where are they?"

Pause.

"No idea." Little Hand shrugged. "Where do you go when you get eaten?"

They stopped and spotted the tense stare from Faith's direction. "Not by "me" you dumb-!"

Pause.

Little Hand awkwardly turned away. "Well...not exactly by "me"...I guess."

"If not you, then "who"?" Faith demanded as she stood up with the bundle in her arms and its trembling lump of pale drying flesh. "Don't lie. Your "Doctor" will know if she can't find me here again."

Little Hand hesitated, paused, reluctantly sighed and looked away for a moment.

Faith's eyes narrowed at them. "I'm waiting..."

"Just some...some...creeps... Not sure...Not ME! Definitely not me!" Little Hand shivered in faux dismissal. "...I think?"

The shrouded figure hummed and frowned deeply. "I'm not so sure anymore..."

"Not sure? How can you not be sure?!" Faith scowled back at her. "Are there others in this place or not?"

"Yes! Definitely!" Pause. "Used to be. I'm sure...I think?"

"Don't test my patience..."

"Well, they used to be others!" Little Hand shot back without echo. "Then they just started...eating each other...and then split apart...and eat each other again...and..."

Little Hand cringed, eyes closed, and shook their head in confusion. "Things really got weird after the Doctor left me here all alone."

"You don't say?" Faith turned away and mumbled. "Debby, what have you thrown me into?"

"Doctor!"

In silence, Faith only stared back at the reluctant company for a minute, turned away, and leaned up against the wall.

A sigh left her chest.

"So let me ask..." She sighed and knocked lightly on the door with her knuckles. "How many voracious ones are down here in this place?"

"Voracious?"

"Cannibals." Faith corrected. "Yoki devouring yoki, that kind of thing."

"Oh, in that case, lots." Little Hand nodded as they chuckled.

Faith only stared back at them, eyes narrowed.

"Define "lots"?"

Pause.

"How many is an "anthill" worth?"

Faith gazed silently at them and slumped down with her head back against the wall.

"When did my life get so difficult?"

"Why are you whining to me?" Little Hand scoffed. "Do that outside."

"I would..." Faith turned to Little Hand. "But you locked the door."

Silence.

"Oh." Little Hand sighed, arms crossed, and looked away. "Well, don't look at me. I can't open it."

"Lies." Faith narrowed her eyes. "You "walked" in here through it, didn't you?"

Little Hand turned to her, arms crossed.

"So?"

Faith hummed, one brow raised, as she eyed her company down.

"That should mean, you opened the door to get in here, didn't you?" She paused. "Unless there is a secret passage here I don't know about. So which one is it?"

Pause.

Little Hand awkwardly looked away and sighed heavily.

"Oh...I forgot." They mumbled to themselves. "Well...this is going to get awkward."

"What will?" Faith stood up for a moment. "Is it a crawl-space or something?"

"No, there's no other way out like that." Little Hand shook their head. "It's just... You'll see..."

They paused, silenced, and turned to the door. Once assured Faith watched them, they stopped in front of the thick barricade of wood and with a deep sigh, walked straight forward.

The glowing figure of yoki-induced luster phased clean through the wood, without resistance, in a heartbeat.

Faith's eyes widened.

A couple of moments later, Little Hand leaned in, head and portion of their shoulder visible, back inside. She sighed and while in the middle of the door, raised a hand up as if to carry a point. "See?"

Grace frowned and turned towards the wasp-woman in turn.

"What?"

"Kill her." Deborah shrugged a the swarm edged on. "Kill her slowly and painfully like your life depended on it! Make it believable!"

"No, I mean..." Grace shook her head. "For real?"

"Did I mumble?" A wasp buzzed. "I said "Make it believable", didn't I?"

Grace shook her head in turn.

Cassandra only stared out into empty air, lost in thought, as she tried pick the proper response.

A response between murder and potential opportunities to cease with Grace balancing each other out.

"No, no... I won't do that." Grace swallowed and clenched her jaws tightly together. She waved a hand at Cassandra. "Just...No!"

Cassandra only turned her head, brows raised to high heavens, and stared at her.

"Oh, she'll be fine!" The lower half of Deborah's semi-transformed, swarming, face beneath the cracked chitin mask, buzzed. "It's not like you could actually "hurt" her or anything..."

"And that makes it fine to go ahead and try it anyway!?" Grace frowned incredulously back at her.

Silence.

Deborah glanced between Cassandra and the warrior for a moment, snorted, and wasps crawled out from her lips.

"You seriously think that you're "that" strong, Grace?" A larger swarm formed out from the wasp-woman's shoulder, shaped into a human arm, and pointed at Cassandra. "Really?"

Cassandra frowned, opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it, at loss for words.

What is going on here? She blinked and craned her neck to the side. No really, what's going on?

"Can I ask something here?" Cassandra, one arm raised, asked.

"No." The swarm buzzed. "You can however, answer. Would a broken neck kill you?"

"Pfft! No!" Cassandra stifled a giggle.

"Would suffocation kill you?"

"Probably not." Cassandra shrugged and recalled the self-imposed burials in Mucha during her days in isolation. "No idea "why" though..."

"Great! That's enough." The wasps buzzed and turned to Grace. "You heard her. Go for it!"

Grace sighed and moved up behind the abyssal one.

Cassandra glanced back for a moment as the warrior stood right behind her, the difference in heights apparent with the top of her head in height with the warrior's lips.

She stared.

Well, I "did" wanted to get closer to her... But, I didn't think it would be this close, this soon...

"So...?" Grace frowned and looked down at the abyssal woman in front of her. "How are we going to do this?"

"Huh?" Cassandra snapped out from her thought. "Oh right. You know how to arm-choke someone, right?"

Grace frowned deeply and looked away.

"Kind a?"

"It'll be just fine then..." The abyssal only offered a conceding nod in turn and looked away with her back entrusted to Grace. "Go on. I won't bite."

A short chuckle burst out from the warrior's mouth and she nodded back.

"Okay...here we go... Just... Tell me if you can't breathe, okay?"

Cassandra nodded and relaxed, eyes closed.

The warrior's arm stilted and snaked around Cassandra's throat in search for an anchor to tie the noose up.

All as the abyssal summed up every particle of self-restraint from gushing and explode from the blood rapid-hammering through her body through her stirred-awake heart. The abyssal aura whirled violently within its cocoon until a rainbow of yoki rolled around, whipped into a loop, with multiple nodes forming to store the excess power from overflowing.

Deborah hesitatingly wavered between fleeing and holding her ground for a potential detonation of depth from the woman in front of her.

This is happening. Cassandra gulped in wide-eyed disbelieving stare. This is actually happening!?

Grace gulped and the grip tightened in anchored security. "Okay...okay...this still works."

How long has it been since I got this close to "anyone"?

She turned to Deborah who watched from a distance. "Anything else?"

The warrior remarked as she tightened her grip with her arm around the abyssal's neck. Her height easing the task considerably without the need of leaning over to get a good hold, using her neck's right side as anchor.

The firm squeeze of muscle bulked slightly beneath her skin-tight uniform's sleeve, contrast with the soft padding from behind, as Cassandra took the full impression in analytically.

Whatever...I might pass out already.

Next to them, out of nowhere without a warning, Constance appeared and watched them both. She opened her mouth while she turned to the abyssal.

Before the first syllable birthed from her throat, it hit a wall as Cassandra instantly blocked Constance's lips with her open left hand and a cold, glowing, glare.

The short warrior innocently looked up at her as the abyssal hissed between clenched teeth and parted lips.

"Don't, you, dare interrupt this." Cassandra inhaled discretely as she eyed Constance down in contempt and spite. "Just shut up, stand right there, far over there, and watch. Got that?"

Constance frowned, tilted her head like a bird, shrugged and nodded back, oblivious of the toxic venom which seared in the abyssal's tone.

She turned to Deborah.

"What are you all even doing?" Constance asked.

"Fishing?" Deborah responded as she hesitantly walked in front of the abyssal one. "I m-mean "helping"."

"Say what now?" Cassandra asked and verbally cut Constance off.

The wasp woman eyed the Abyssal down, perceived her, and glanced between the woman's face and the trinket dangling around her neck.

The wasps muted for a minute and the human eyes in the fluid face-mask furrowed.

Cassandra scowled back. "What?"

Ignoring the follow-up, Deborah reached up to Cassandra's neck, against the hostile, feline, glare greeting her.

"One more thing."

Unwilling to interrupt the blissful state of embrace, the abyssal only glared as the wasp-woman's fingers clenched around the string to the twin-goddess trinket around her neck.

She yanked it off, the knot on the loop came undone, and a small-scale abyssal tsunami erupted without warning, freed of its restraints.

Raw abyssal yoki, visible only to those with the senses attuned for it, blasted out in all directions within the area. Constance instantly held her breath and got sent flying back in her crystallized sphere of yoki as the raw wave of force carried her with it like a air-filled pig bladder on water's surface. All as the aura pushed out wider and wider, expanding its radius by the second.

Deborah, right in front of the overwhelming pressuring onslaught, only covered her eyes and shielded her face, as a shield of isolating yoki aura, transparent as glass with slight illuminated undertones, shielded her from being swept away and crushed herself. The shield wrapped itself loosely around her akin of a silkworm's cocoon and protected in her own space of yoki, none of the lethal abyssal pressure struck her down at the moment.

In moments, the spread ceased, instantly expanded to its maximum range from the tiny dot of a human's worth. Engulfing miles of area with an aurora, privileged only to the dark abyss, that saturated all things with reflected the blend of cyan and tyrian-purple off them.

In the cease of expanding force, Cassandra only stared wide-eyed around in the illuminated sky with its suggestive shapes of giant tentacles, blades, horns and countless gaps lined with teeth. Fleeting forms visible only for the open mind of cloud-watchers and their association games, as the whirls and colors of yoki remained constantly changing in its liberated state of expressed freedom.

All as the abyssal only sighed.

So in the end, "shit-eater" wasn't the one who made any of that progress, huh?

Her eyes went down to the trinket in Deborah's hands, and its loose cocoon which it dutifully wrapped around the one which carried it tightly in their hands.

That thing is not just "some trash"...

Cassandra's attention turned back right behind her, brow furrowed in calculation.

Grace, clinging to the source of the immense abyssal pressure engulfing the area, remained unmoved and untouched. Boredom painted thick over her visage as she met Cassandra's gaze.

"What?"

Dumbfounded seconds passed and Cassandra blinked.

"Grace..." The abyssal started. "What color is the sky?"

"Huh?" Grace glanced up, frowning. "Blue? Cloudy? Sunny?"

Cassandra glanced up at the violent and vivid whirlpools and slithering tentacles of cyan and tyrian-purple coating the cranium of the celestial sphere in its aurora. Her attention shifted to the trees, stones, grass, insects and animals coated with the sticky sheen of her soul, unaware of its existence to their pure senses.

She turned back to Grace and shared a stare with her.

Is she for real? Was her choice of words just lacking or does she really not see all of this from this close?

"W-Well, that should be plenty." The swarm staggered, their safety reassured while cowering beneath the protective film of the isolating layers which wrapped around them. "Now, go for the choke...and keep going until change comes around."

"What change?" Grace asked, unaware of the abyssal, raw, immense force which engulfed her from all sides and threatened to crush the others within it beneath its sheer oceanic pressure.

"Y-you will notice." Deborah staggered, and looked up at the skies. "That's a promise."

Grace frowned and resumed the hesitant task of practicing what lessons she left before the mountains of Alphonse had interrupted them.

As Cassandra watched, she traced her clingy aura which only stroke past the tall warrior's outline without a second of slowing down in friction with the fluidity of water against oil on its surface. Soaked and saturated in the utter void of sensations received from the warrior's body, in sharp contrast of the crawling taste of insects, the rusty rustling of wind through the grass, and the solid gemstone-pressure from Constance's aura, and the fluid weight and pressure from the isolating cocoon around Deborah's existence.

Cassandra only frowned as she glanced back at Grace who remained focused on regulating the strength through her remaining arm.

Without a word, she hesitantly reached up and grabbed Grace's forearm with both hands.

"What?!" Grace asked, startled, as she snapped out from her focus. "Was that too much!?"

Without any pull, the abyssal only squeezed the limb in her hands slowly, repeatedly, and let her senses focus on it.

Am I actually feeling her arm? She paused and mused in her observations. Or just the cloth wrapped around it?

"Hey Grace..." Cassandra asked as he grip around the forearm tightened. "Are you even trying here?"

"Y-yes?" Grace gulped and nodded behind her.

A scowl moved in the abyssal's face.

"Really?"

"Yes! I am!" Grace scowled back. "I just don't want to pop your head off, okay!"

"Hey, I'm right here." Cassandra scoffed. "No need to shout."

Grace sighed, her breath stroke Cassandra's wig, and the abyssal eased her scowl. "And I wouldn't be worried about that."

"How so?"

Silence. Casandra frowned and insight surfaced as a glimmer in her eyes. Her attention glanced back at the warrior. "Hey, Grace?"

"Hmmm?"

"Is it really that hard to do things one-armed?"

Silence.

Reluctantly, Grace nodded, her visage solemn.

"Yeah..."

"Oh..."

Cassandra lowered her head, silenced, frowned and glanced down at herself and back up. She nodded to herself and confidently smiled. "Hey, Grace?"

She glanced back at the warrior. "Want one of mine?"

"Wait, wait...wait a bit here." Faith, one hand's fingers pressed against her temple as she frowned deeply in chaotic thought. Her spot from the wall, abandoned, as she rushed over to Little Hand who leaned back through the door and out from her reach.

Sturdy dead wood pushed back against her fingers where Little Hand had phased through.

Little Hand glanced back inside and her shoulder pushed Faith's hand back.

Soft flesh and bone pressed against the other woman's fingers.

Faith only frowned in utter disbelief as Little Hand shifted their shoulder and let her press against the hard door once more.

"Who gave you permission?" Little Hand asked and moved away while her head remained inside the room.

"Okay, you got a lot of explaining to do." Faith started as she eyed between them and the door.

"And why do you think that I would know the answer if asked?" Little Hand scoffed and leaned back inside the room, through the door. They yawned. "I'm getting so tired of this..."

"Then why don't you just write a letter and let me have it so you could-?"

A heavy metallic screech wailed in the muffled distance.

Little Hand frowned and leaned outside for a moment, leaving a arm and a shoulder inside the room. After a couple of seconds, they instantly leaned back in, drowsiness gone.

"Hey you? You better take the cure." Little Hand hurried as another, metallic screeching of a heavy door, scraped the floor beyond the chamber. "Like, right now!"

"How so?" Faith frowned and the echo died out. "What is happening?"

Little Hand glanced outside, hesitant to stay, and returned to her with panic in her eyes.

"I told you that a "world of hurt" would come if you still stayed here, didn't I?" Little hand gulped as Faith nodded. "Well...This is the "wrong" kind of hurt heading your way, now."

Grace only stared, wide-eyed, down at the abyssal, her stranglehold all drained of effort in maintenance.

"What?" The warrior staggered as the other woman looked away from her.

"If being shorthanded is bothering you that much, then why not let me fix that for you?" Cassandra asked as she glanced back at her. "I'm serious."

"B-But...it's your arm!"

"So? I'm a defensive type. I'll just make another one." Cassandra scoffed in bemusement. "Would be no harder than taking the next breath."

Pause.

Grace, stunned, frowned and shook her head sporadically for a moment.

"No, I mean... Would...that even work?"

Cassandra frowned, glanced down at the grass in front of her feet for a moment. Silent, loss at words, she scowled bitterly.

"Hey you!" She raised her gaze and gazed directly at Deborah. "Answer her question."

Deborah, awake from the awe of the abyssal sea surrounding her beyond the safety of the borrowed cocoon, snapped her head back at them.

"Oh, what? Give me a moment." The wasp-woman frowned as the lower half of her human mask regained certain amounts of fluidity to its chitin layers. "Good question."

Deborah frowned deeper as she looked up at the sky. "Wow...what do I even answer on that?"

"What's the hitch? Can it be done or not?"

"Well, in theory." Deborah shrugged hesitantly. "I mean, claymores can do it between each other if necessary, but rather not end up in those situations in the first place. And even then, a whole arm isn't that common, or easy to do..."

The wasp-woman mumbled to herself as she sat down on the grass, her chin resting against her free right hand. "I don't even know if awakened ones would do it between one another if asked for it...I mean, even the offensive-typed can just grow a new one back with enough time put into it. But..."

She looked up at Cassandra and the wasps took over. "The arm of an "voracious abyssal one" given to a "yoki-less claymore"?"

Straight confounded puzzlement shook her head. "I don't even know where to start theorizing about that! Or what could happen! This is beyond anything even the retrieval department could conjure up as far I can recollect!"

"But it can still be done, right?" Cassandra, her own hesitation muffled, raised a brow at her. "Human parts are still human parts, aren't they? Wouldn't they fit just fine?"

"In t-theory? Yes." Deborah chopped the air in front of her like an ax. "But...still..."

"What do you say?" Cassandra turned to Grace. "I'm fine with it either way, but what about you? It's you who're going to use it after all."

Grace, hesitant, frowned deeply as she looked down at her right shoulder and with the difficulty of degraded swordsmanship skills fresh in mind with the recent strife in the giant red forest. Eyes closed, she tensed up and trembled for a short moment.

"Hey Deborah." The warrior spoke up and turned to the woman addressed. "How much longer can I continue with just one arm?"

"A couple of moon-cycles...Six at most."

Grace and Cassandra stared in deep unison back at her.

"What?"

"Well, is basic retrieval-procedure." The wasps shrugged. "If a claymore loses a limb, they'll give it a couple of months to try and die on its own terms and if they're still alive once six cycles pass, they'll call "it" in and dismantle it for all materials at Staff, regardless if they got around the handicap or not."

"And...how do you know about that?" Cassandra asked.

"I used to work for them." The wasps buzzed and silenced as they pulled the face-mask visage together. "What?"

"To what extent?"

"I spent a lot of time with them...both on and inside the field." The swarm counted on its fingers. "I was one of their "retrievers"."

Pause.

"Leaving that for later... So you could do this transplant without problem?"

"Yes." The swarm paused. "B-But I don't know what would happen if I did, no such experiments were ever done in those surgery halls..."

Pause. "And if they "did", I've never seen the end-results of them."

Deborah pulled her face together and reformed it into a soft human visage once more over the insects. "No Now I'm getting "curious"..."

"So...you're saying..." Grace interrupted and Cassandra glanced back at her. "That in half a year's time...I'll be disposed off anyway?"

"Pretty much." Deborah, very reluctantly, nodded. "Even if your handler hasn't told anyone, the Retrieval squad will still always knows its samples' conditions."

Deborah gulped. "Always...and they can, and they will retrieve them in the end. Always."

Grace swallowed saliva as she tried fill up the dryness in her mouth. Her hand clenched tightly over her nape and she gazed on her right shoulder for moments on end. Silent.

"Grace...?" Cassandra gently spoke up and the warrior remained focused on her shoulder. "Want to know a lesson I learned long ago?"

The abyssal sighed. "Just because something "works", it doesn't mean it's "enough"."

Grace frowned as Cassandra looked up at the colorful abyssal sea of aura over their heads. "You heard the bugs. Even if you think, and somehow manage, to make up for the loss of your arm, it won't matter, the black coats will get you "dismantled" anyway. That's how things are and always has been...even since my time. But far more thorough in these days as it seems..."

She paused and sighed. "Listen, you have to get a new arm, no discussion. What little choice you do have, is if you get one or take one."

Cassandra glanced back with a small smirk. "Would you really be fine with stealing one?"

Grace paused, frowned deeply in discontent.

Deep breaths filled her chest.

The abyssal sighed. "Think about it. I won't try and force your hand but let me also tell you-!"

She held up her own right arm within sight of the warrior's sight. "You're not going to find any better arm than this."

On the side-lines, Deborah frowned, open her mouth in objection, and silenced at the mute glare from Cassandra.

A halfhearted nod left her neck.

"Hey, it's your bodies." The swarm interrupted. "As long they're not "dead" then what you do with them isn't my responsibility."

Cassandra glanced back to Grace.

"Well?" The abyssal added and offered a smile with effort of kindness behind it. "What do you say? Want one?"

"Say what now?" Faith asked, eyes narrowed at Little Hand as the increasingly anxious woman kept looking outside the chamber in irregular intervals. "Is it a corrupt being or something? Can't you give me something more to work with here?"

"Well...Too late." Little Hand peeked back outside through the door and back in at her. "I warned you. I told you. Maybe I will see you. Bye."

Little Hand pulled out and their aura vanished in an instant from Faith's range of perception.

The lone woman in the chamber scowled and instantly turned towards the door.

"What!? Hey! Hey you!" She banged her fist on the old wood. "Get back here! At least unlock the door first!"

A heavy, muffled, quake answered her demands.

Complete silence filled the room as Faith, wide-eyed and staring, slowly backed away as the other set of steps, slow and singular, moved closer to her position. Through yoki-perception, Faith tracked only nothingness and darkness which the heavy footsteps defied with every moment. Her heart drummed in her chest, its beat throbbing within her ears.

No yoki... Faith's eyes narrowed. Either its a very big feeder that Debby caught in here...or something..."else".

As she listened and watched in lethal awareness, far away from the entrance with the table now in between her and it, the footsteps stopped.

Right in front of the massive door.

Silence passed, interrupted by sporadic deep sniffing, audible in spite of the thick wood separating the chambers apart. Faith gulped, her heart throbbing in her chest as her legs tensed up for the flight.

After a couple of seconds, stretched into an infinity, the sniffing stopped and the footsteps moved away, slowly. Until the last faded echoes ceased, Faith remained silenced with her heart forcefully slowed down to a crawl.

Silence.

Faith released the faintest and shortest of relieved breaths.

The wall right next to the door, at its right side, exploded inward.

In an instant, without thought, she kicked and flipped the dinner table over as a shield as a explosion of dust, chitin riddled with tiny tunnels, and chewed wood, filled the room from the raw impact that had broken it.

Before the settle of the dust, she dived in behind it, out of sight, and remained on her toes, the bundle firmly secured in a one-handed grip as its little resident, the sea-piglet instantly spun its head up slowly and looked around in the sudden cause of motion.

A dark wheeze filled the room as the intruder exhaled, while she inhaled and kept the dust-free air inside as more dust and shrapnel filled the air around the table.

What was that!?

Cautiously, she glanced around the table corner while under the cover of the temporary smoke-screen.

A massive hole, its edges porous with tunnels for the tiny figures, gaped out into the corridor outside. In the middle of it, a gargantuan figure stood, heaving, as it leaned over and breathed while searching the room from its spot, obscured in the thick dust.

A shone of silver radiated from the center of its eclipsed visage for an instant, piercing through the thick layers of dust.

Faith instantly retreated back behind the chair and withheld her breath. The sickly pale sea-piglet in her bundle trembling as it coiled up and made itself as small as possible.

Is it going to toy with me? Faith scowled as the wheezing resumed and the silver glow vanished from the cast light in the room. Or does it really not know where I am?

She glanced around the table-corner and frowned over how the curtain of dust had regained its thickness, obscuring the figure once more. No glow in sight as it moved further into the room, slowly, silently, on its big heavy steps.

No aura...Faith retreated and glanced back. No, leave the room first. Then think.

She grabbed two of the silver-platters on the floor behind her.

The obscured beast turned heavily around, sniffed slowly and renewed the cloud-curtain with each exhale as the stirred up smoke recycled from its pull in gravity. Slowly, silently, it waited in the middle of the broken-up hole.

A swift motion flew through the dust away from the beast.

Silver snapped open in the middle of its visage for an instant and it pounced after the source of disturbance in an heartbeat.

A massive fist slammed into the chitin-wall, pinned the fleeing object into its grip, and the shine of silver marinated it in light.

The wrangled remains of a silver-tray, caught in a four-fingered grip.

The beast tilted its head and snapped up as a rapid stirring sound spun madly behind it. Behind an overturned table.

On the spot, it spun around and with predatory four-legged stance, pounced the noise at its source, silver glow gone.

Wood shattered, table-legs cracked in two, and the table itself broke apart while its pieces slid across the floor upon the obscured beast colliding with it. While on all fours, the silver glow opened once more and eyed down the prey in its clutches.

Another silver plate, vibrations from its rapid high-end spin still present in its metal.

While gazing in sparrow-like confusion at the trembling, dying, metallic prey in its hand, a silent pair of feet stealthily left the dust-filled room through the fresh entrance.

Faith, silent and breathing through her nose, with the bundle tightly in her hold, ran as fast as her bare feet could mask their noise. Away from the containment chamber, and into the ever-stretching corridor beyond it without concern for directions.

Deeper into the nest of never-known depths of the gigantic wasp-hive.

"Can...Can I think about it?" Grace asked with her grip still in place around the abyssal's neck.

Cassandra hummed, shrugged, and maintained her smile as she looked away from her.

"Sure, You don't have to make up your mind about it today or anything..." A smirk, unseen by Grace, darkened in the abyssal's face. "But the sooner, the better, right?"

Grace hummed as she resumed into deep thought and Cassandra glanced at the sky-gazing Deborah. "So...how much longer are we supposed to do this again? Wasp-we...-"Whisperer"?"

"Not sure..." The swarm responded and buzzed in contemplation. "The winds are fickle today, so it might take longer than..."

"Are we going to be doing this all day!?" Cassandra asked, wide-eyed, at the double-digit, with a barely contained grin.

"Well, if we're unlucky..." The swarm shrugged and walked over in front of Cassandra once more. "First try..."

Without pause, she put the twin-goddess trinket back around the abyssal's neck.

The aura instantly retracted back within the cocoon of Cassandra's human physical shell, leaving the air natural-blue and the grass green once more while it left Deborah's completely.

In the moment the layer closed again, from Grace's perspective, time instantaneously crawled down to a standstill within the space between two seconds.

Insects froze in the air. Neither of the women in front of her moved an inch. Constance's aura remained crystallized and the tigon cub next to her with its partly opened slit in the lantern it carried, froze in the middle of a disrespectful yawn. The wind stopped dead in its track, mid-motion, akin of a frog in a frozen river.

Realization struck the warrior with the mental pain of a broken toe. Her eyes went eyes and she drew breath, unaware of the source for the anxiety.

Without thought or time, she immediately released Cassandra and kicked in the back with one foot, sending both the abyssal and Deborah flying far away from her as borderline bone-breaking force allowed. All while she leaped in the opposite direction, using the abyssal's back as a foothold and springboard for added force.

The timeless second broke.

A faint dark glimmer tinkled in the high sky.

And in the next second, the air shattered in multiple deafening sonic-booms and the ground where Grace flew in her initiated mid-leap, erupted upwards as if struck by a visitor from the stars in a violent burst of raw yoki, released upon impact.

Dirt flew over Cassandra's back as she and Deborah, landed tangled together on the grass, the former forcefully pushing away the later, as she spun around, the wig blown off from her head.

"Grace!?" She shouted and silenced as her gray eyes fell on the scene behind her.

A massive crater, twenty feet in diameter, had opened up in the field, stones and dirt scattered everywhere. At the epicenter. ten feet down, Grace laid on her back, partly buried in the earth and coated in dust, as the visitor from the stars pummeled its fists into her face while straddling her mid-section like a rider on a horse. Only clad in a pair of pants and a torn, dirty, cape wrapped around his neck.

Partly obscured in the aftermath of the dust stirred up from the impact, the assailant, the pants-clad man, bellowed in mindless indignation and fury as his fists kept slamming into the warrior's face.

Roars released from a set of still semi-awakened, triangular, shark-teeth in his mouth, beneath the two glowing, pale white orbs serving as his eyes.

"MINE!" His voice assailed all the listeners' eardrums through sheer yoki-induced into it. "SHE! IS! MIIIIIINE!"

Each word punctuated with a punch.

As Cassandra raised her hand and hesitated in the release of the abyssal node building up within it, Grace's brain barely managed to process one coherent thought through the flurry of brutal, primitive, knuckles slamming into her bruised cheeks.

One thought.

There is...a man...on top of me.

The warrior's teeth gritted together, partly sharpening, as her entire body trembled from the blood rushing to her head. Eyes wide, bloodshot, and glowering.

A..."man"!?

Another male roar. Another punch.

In Grace's head, the entire world went red.

And all further thinking vanished with the rest of the colors.

The ear-piercing, mindless, maddening, female shrill drowned out his voice for seconds.

The man recoiled for a moment as blood burst out from his eardrums and nostrils, halting the assault.

The shrill exhausted its breath and Grace backhanded her assailant across the left side of his cheek. His head swung to the right, bruised across the left side of his face, as her hand flew past it, reversed its course, and with a claw-like reverse, grappled his throat from his right side.

He coughed as her fingers dug into his skin, his ears and nose still bleeding and his mouth returned to the form of a human's, while she pushed him to her right without pause, off her body.

Pain burst through her hand as a semi-transformed shark-maw opened up across his throat, where she clawed into him, and chomped down her fingers.

None of it registered into either of their heads, as blind fury filled their worlds with red.

Once on the ground, they rolled around in the dirt until Grace got on top of him, with one bent leg pressed over his chest, as she pulled her hand out from his throat, fingers intact yet throbbing in crushing pain within the suit's gloves. As the pain vanished away and the wound in his throat morphed further into a jaw and closed up into human skin without a sign of injury, she hammered down on his visage with her remaining fist.

A assault countered by him as his entire visage opened up into multiple, criss-crossed, shark-maws and left only air for her to hammer in rage, while the sets of triangular teeth chomped down on her hand in varied range of success.

"I AM NOT YOUR TOY!" Grace shrilled as she, in throbbing pain and renewed blood-thirsty fever, kept punching him to no avail.

At the edge of the crater, Cassandra scowled in displeasure over how Grace ruined the perfect aim she had aligned at the attacker while he had the higher ground. She aimed her open palm, formed into a blade, and its fingertips at his legs instead.

Her aim once more disrupted as Deborah, a arm of red wasps released from her shoulder, grabbed her wrist and pulled it upward.

"Don't!" The swarm buzzed and the abyssal glared at her. "Help me pull them away!"

"Are you kidding me?!" Cassandra pointed at the brawl in the crater. "He attacked her first!"

"If you're not helping, then back off!" The swarm promptly shot back and kept pulling in the abyssal's mountain-enforced limb. "I'll do it myself!"

"Huh!?" Cassandra paused as the sound of a fist thrown came to a halt.

The assailant had caught Grace's fist by its wrist in its multiple maws, in the center of its semi-transformed visage.

Grace, eyes glowing madly in blindsided fury, pulled and yanked to no avail as the man maintained the grip, and with his human hands, swung his arms up for a firm hold around her neck with them.

His fingers squeezed.

Grace gasped and fought against the lack of blood-circulation, as she tried pull her stuck arm out for a counter-punch, only to grind its wrists against the makeshift ring of shark-teeth instead. Her fist stuck, her air cut off and him showing no sign of weakening it, gradually lost the sharp silver glow in her eyes as the world within her view layer by layer, paled, from deep red to pink and eventually, white.

The warrior's body slackened as it remained upright by the assailant's arm-strength alone.

The pull in her arm ceased, the grinding eased up, and the rage boiling in her veins went lukewarm.

Darkness closed in on her mind, and her shoulders slumped down.

Cassandra only swung her free arm at Deborah who dispersed into a red swarm of wasps completely which darted straight for the two.

The red mass filled the space between them, firmed their hold, and pushed them both away from one another as their stingers sunk into the man's contracted biceps and pumped it full of sedatives. His grip loosened and he gasped once freed from the warrior's face through his face. The swarm kept pushing them both away until five feet remained between them. It gently put Grace on the ground, back first, and moved away while she regained her nearly lost consciousness with loud coughing, grasping her bruised throat.

The majority of the swarm remained with the man who stayed motionless on the ground akin of a corpse.

A human arm formed from its buzzing surface and held up towards Cassandra who kept a ready node full of abyssal aura aimed at the man on the ground.

"Wait!" The swarm, darkly echoed, while it shielded the man from the abyssal's aim.

"It's either one or two!" Cassandra shouted back, her aim pinpointed on his yoki aura through the blur of Deborah's. "Your choice, your funeral!"

"Don't you get it!?" The swarm buzzed and reformed the chitin-layers of her human form in its center at rapid pace. "We got lucky!"

"Huh!?" Cassandra cocked her head and pulled away her arm as Grace's coughing regained strength alongside presence.

The warrior, the bruises on her throat fading away in regression, gasped in residue pain while her confounded visage turned to the now human Deborah who tended to her attacker. Her mind freed of the bloodthirsty rage which intoxicated her moments beforehand.

"Wh-what...are you...doing?" Grace coughed as she gazed at them both. "What...just-?"

"You said that you didn't want to "hurry" anymore, didn't you?" Deborah shone up as she held up her arms and presented the man with the widest of smiles as he gradually regained his complete human form. "Well...here you go!"

As Grace frowned, dumbfounded, the man's face closed up its jaws and formed its sedated features in the daylight, the wide-open globes rolling back their compact white set of thick third-eyelids from his eyes.

Her face twitched in disturbance, as Deborah grinned widely in childish pride. "I got you a "shortcut"!"

As the warrior stared in utter disbelief, the man groaned, one hand to his temple, and sat groggily up on his spot.

"W-Where am I?" He bemoaned, scowled deeply, shook his head, and raised his head high as he opened his eyes. "What in the name of Pluto is going on-?"

His clear gaze fell on Deborah next to him. "Oh by the old gods...not you."

"Hi Faren!" Deborah only waved her hand with a bright smile at him. "Nice to see you too!"

He scowled and turned his head forward, away from the wasp-woman. "And the day started so goo-"

His entire body froze up as his gaze fell on Grace, equally dumbfounded, who stared back at him in turn.

And for one moment, their voices broke the regained silence as they pointed at each other and both Grace and Faren alike, verbally cross-countered with perfect unison.

"You/You!" The called out, staring in utter disbelief. "Why are you here/Why are you here!?"

Author's Note: Yes, I know it has been a while since the last chapter was posted, but my life has been chaotic lately, with both getting a real job for the first time in my life and my own place to live on top of that. Getting used to actual work took a while and I lost contact with my inner author and artist in the process, forcing me to find them again for this. And oh boy was that taxing on the soul to bury that deep. (And this chapter took a lot of re-writes and work to get right as without the "inner author", it got really difficult to agree on the result until it was found.)

But now, I got at least 2/3 of a basic normal life going for me, so that's part of my concerns heaved off my shoulders. I can finally focus on other things as well on my regained spare time now.

Hopefully, I will be able to keep writing again now when it all has settled down and draw as well, since distractions in my life have dropped to reasonable levels.

Please provide constructive feedback if possible, it would be greatly appreciated.

Next chapter comes when it comes.

And Happy New Year 2020 to you all.