Life is such a bother.

Maybe it's for the best. Jade pools around your unmoving body, another color to add to the gory rainbow of death painted across the room with yellow, fuchsia and the green flowing from your stomach.

There is no red to be found in this work of art and this observation makes your lips quirk into a miniscule smile before the thoughts in your head blend together into a giant blur once more. The last thing precious to your vascular pump is still alive and breathing; you wish you could ensure it stayed that way, but you're much too dead for meddling already.

Death is a hassle.

A last sigh escapes your perfectly painted lips before the last droplets of color leave your veins for good and take the last bits of life with them. The pounding of your heart beat in your ear dies and an unsettling silence embraces you like an old, long-lost friend.

A mermaid princess once told you of what awaited you on the other side, of the dream bubbles where your fallen friends will welcome you back. And the horrorterrors lurking beyond your grave.

You brace yourself for the inevitable and you attempt to find solace in the fact that you went through the countless times in the endless alternate timelines already. The only thing that makes you differ from them is that you lived, but also died, as the Alpha-version. Your path was meant to end with the shambles of your hard work laid out in front of you and the vicious fruits of your foolishness bleeding you out. Hope could not save you.

So you wait and for a laughable second you feel like the muscle in your chest expands and contracts, alive anew with the fear coursing through your dead body.

Your eyes flutter open, the gray tiles of the laboratory's ceiling taking shape.

How nice, you think, your mind reconstructed the last memory of your life for you. For now, you're numb, all senses dulled as if sedated by death. Computer screens flicker, casting ominous shadows, cracks in the wall and splatters of mustard blood mark the beginning. The body of the heiress is sprawled over that atrocious horn pile and paints it her colors and your own jade stains your clothes and the ground beneath your feet.

A sudden pain races through your body and when you look down to locate its source, the big hole in your stomach catches your attention. Something is wrong, horribly wrong.
There's a hole in your stomach and you can feel it. What sort of corpse feels?

The disconnected nerves scream in agony and send the signals to your thinking pan, yet that shouldn't even be possible because you're dead. This is the afterlife, your personal dream bubble and customized hell, not the real world.

But here you are, your chest rising and falling out of habit and experiencing pain in its purest form. The mess in your mind makes it impossible to send commands to your limbs anymore, but it seems they don't even need you. Curiously you watch as you drag your corpse to the seadwelling girl and bend down to her.

It takes you by surprise when you realize you've sunken your sharp teeth into the gray hide. A metallic taste floods your mouth and her blood reminds you of sweet berries. For such a small girl, there is still surprisingly much blood left for you to feast on.

The chilling liquid soothingly runs down your dry throat and instead of dripping out of your wound again, strings of muscles and flesh re-build themselves a bit, the ache in your midsection dies a little.

Drinking Feferi's blood clears your head and now you are fully aware of your surroundings. You're not alive. But you're not dead either and that's all what matters right now. Life is such a bother, but Death is a hassle. The vision of a bratty prince enters your head.

There are things that need to be done.

You reapply some lipstick and your teeth poke over your lips as they pull into a sneer and your hands grip on to the handle of your trusty chainsaw.

You're not done with this world yet.

The roar of your weapon and the gleam the light your skin gives off on its blade brings back some of your old life into your body. Time to correct your mistakes.

You will teach that boy not to meddle with what's yours to meddle with already.

Kanaya. Why are you so hard to write.