In another corner of the building Gren9 strolled through the halls leisurely, awaiting the results from her plan. Compared to the young man who went down easily after being hit once, it'd taken several of the Originals working together to take down the old snake guy. He really put up quite a fight, breaking most of them down continuously. Inevitably, the old man's energy ran out and he started getting injury after injury while they continued to heal.
Heck, she wouldn't have dared to release him if he was still at full capacity, it'd just end up with him disappearing. Too bad the man was sentimental, he'd brought his most prized possession with him and in the end, that just allowed her to control him as well.
She felt absolutely giddy at the thought of her plans coming to fruition. 'Giddy?' Was that something she should've been able to feel? Her persona had been born from fear, even the act of smiling should've been impossible for her. Her face was on the brink of breaking apart again, a small bubble forming under her cheek, pushing her skin to crack like dry earth.
The moment was short lived as she felt a huge hand land on her shoulder. "Number 1, it seems that you're making a habit of sneaking up on me today." She smirked, "What seems to be the issue that you've come looking for me for?"
Gren1 didn't answer, she stood there and glared at Gren9. Feeling a little nervous, she tried to shake the hand off her shoulder only to find it gripping down harder.
The strength in those fingers clamped down slowly and easily crumpled Gren9's shoulder like an empty can.
Through all this Gren9 maintained her nonchalance, with her free hand she held one of Gren1s fingers.
Gren1s eyes went wide, she'd felt resistance. She was by far the strongest around here, she could usually destroy the rest just by holding them wrong.
Gren9 smiled, from the change in Gren1s face told her that her own strength had definitely grown, just as she thought, however she didn't get the chance to enjoy that feeling as she saw everything blur.
The next time she was able to see, she was embedded deep into a wall after passing through 5 other walls.
Her whole body was definitely not responding. Even though they could regenerate, there was a limit to how fast the golems could do so depending on the extent of the damage.
For Gren9, it was like every single section of her body had simultaneously been crushed and was now simultaneously trying to stitch all of it back together.
She needed some time to even do anything, but of course Gren1 wouldn't give her that time, arriving a little over half a minute after tearing a path of her own. "I really didn't think it was real at first, but this settles it." She dug her hand into the crater and picked Gren9 up by her currently deformed head. "You're not doing all this for the creator, you're just doing this for yourself."
Gren9 didn't have the jaws or even vocal chords to reply with right now, so she settled with a deformed smile to taunt the big oaf. "Don't bother talking to her, just hold her down while I finish the procedure.." Gren8 spoke once she caught up.
Now Gren9's eyes showed a little worry. In her mirror image's hands was a box, one she herself was too familiar with. Gren8 laid the box on the floor and from it, she extracted several needles which seemed to be attracted to each other.
Pulling them apart, Gren8 began stabbing them into specific spots on Gren9's body as she watched. "You... can't.. do... this." Gren9's mouth had begun to recover.
"Don't worry," Gren8 spoke understandingly, "We've already figured out how to keep the soul around even if we still can't directly transfer it to Lady Grendolyn safely... so yeah, I'm pretty sure I can do this." She continued as she fiddled with the instruments.
"Besides, having that many souls of the deconstructed in your body shouldn't feel very nice, there's a difference between us and real living being, materials have a capacity, and you've exceeded yours."
"You. Don't Understand." Gren9 tried to explain.
"But I do get it, everybody wants to stop being a puppet, to turn into a real boy. What the rest of you don't understand is that we're just derivatives of the original, anything you can imagine to think about has probably already or would've probably been thought of by the creator at some point." Gren8 scrutinized her equipment to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. "So I completely understand why you chose to do what you did, because we're all quite literally the same person."
"No" Gren9 spoke, this time with a bit more clarity, drawing Gren8s eyes from her work for the first time only to see her confident smirk. "I mean you 'literally' can't do this."
The image of Gren1 holding Gren9 down was replaced with Gren1 kneeling under the pressure of one of Gren9s arms..