The halls of the immense maze of concrete and suffering resounded with terrible screams, yet Jo could not find it within herself to be terrified. Every feeling within her heart ignited only as excitement and vigor— a rush, with the horrifying surroundings only adding to this. It was everything she wanted, underwhelming if anything.
Her feet hit the floor and bounded over railings, fences. Any gateways and windows in her path were smashed completely by dense, metallic fists. She reveled in the flashing colors of the hundreds of screens, the slamming of steel on steel. If she didn't know that she was supposed to kill something, she wouldn't have seen the point in looking for whatever it was. Jo could barely control her soulform, with it randomly lashing out at whatever made noise in the form of solid steel spikes or razor-thin claws that cleaved it in two.
It'd been a strange game of tug-of-war for the past few Jo could remember—once the other face showed up. Yolanda never quite lost her will to give up and just let herself go crazy enough to be away from the controls completely, but this situation had spurred quite the well of hopelessness. Jo couldn't imagine doing anything else besides going crazy, though. Spirits preyed on strong emotions right? Feelings about what they represented, or how they affected the world; dumb, limp-dick shit like that. All you had to do was think about how dead they'd be, and it'd come true! Especially if you beat them to a pulp while you did it.
It was a little morbid, maybe, but it worked. At least, in her eyes. For Jo, violence was its own fun. Didn't matter what form, just so long as it happened. She was told multiple times that her behavior wasn't normal by Chiq, but what did she care? Chiq only showed her face at the tail end of her tantrums, or when a spirit died so she could feed off of their lost essence. She wasn't her mother or anything, and Chiq always refrained from calling Jo 'weird' or 'broken' like she was something that needed to be fixed. Jo liked herself, and that was enough.
Yolanda, by comparison, was a pretty sad sap who yearned for affection deep down, and it was always her downfall. Every so often a familiar-enough guy or gal would come through and Yolanda would lose herself in them. Jo always felt like she'd been ripping off band-aids trying to gain back control from a lovestruck puppy gone wild. But Jo was a protector, even if she couldn't protect Yolanda from everything. Heartbreaks, betrayals, and the occasional discovery of some fucked-up kinks she couldn't handle. It was a long road with a few deaths Jo personally saw to on the way, but the Reikai was a lawless land.
Jo herself didn't really care about other people as much. Maybe it was because they seemed so… dull. She was an inferno, a roaring wildfire that glowed so brightly you could see it from space. She didn't see the same spark in anyone else's eyes, madness or innocence. Maybe they really were just meant to be that way. Dull husks scorched by the first signs of real danger, trees who didn't dare move from the oncoming storm. Motionless statues who were too scared to be burnt in order to shine. Jo had asked herself once if she was one of them, a tree rooted firmly in place, but the question itself bored her. She clearly wasn't. She was the flickering flame jumping from leaf to leaf, pushing limits and loving life. Jo burned twice as brightly because everyone else was simply too scared to. Too scared to fight for a good cause or die trying in a world that would rewrite your name anyway.
It was exactly why she hated Yolanda.
Jo skidded to a halt in front of a depiction of some guy with a crown of thorns. He looked like he'd seen a few too many tours in a minefield from the missing pieces that were replaced only by scar tissue. It was a dead-end from here, she'd have to turn around. The rest of the church was fairly empty too, just pillars and shadows with windows that led to more structures outside.
Jo, on pure instinct, erected a sheet of solid soulform steel next to her head. Her ears rang for a few moments, and she coated that side of her body in makeshift mercurial armor. A few more shots rang out, all hitting the surface of the rippling metal harmlessly. All she heard from then was a shivery gasp, then helpless sobbing as a gun clattered to the ground.
She was pretty, a real 'sad girl' type. Crestfallen, dark grey eyes and beautiful black hair curled at the ends. She was dressed in a suit too, a real fancy hotel-like one. Jo almost lost control to Yolanda, before her shooter's pathetic display of bursting into tears reminded her of the exact things she sought to burn away.
As the girl collapsed to the ground and curled into a fetal position, Jo found herself yelling at her for reasons she didn't understand with words she barely thought of.
"QUIT CRYIN' BITCH! OR I'LL LOBOTOMIZE YOU FROM THE ASS OUT!"
What it meant? Jo had no clue. But the girl was spooked enough to look at her instead of cowering. Tears still fell from her eyes, but she only sniveled weakly instead of crying fully. Weakly, she pried at a whistle on a string around her neck.
"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Jo shouted, the metallic substance locking around her fist like some kind of medieval gauntlet. A very spiky one. The girl was threatened, at least Jo was pretty sure she was until a rosy blush spread across her cheeks at the sight of the implement. Jo's face contorted into one of utter disgust, and she dismissed the glove in exchange for a javelin instead.
"You're messed up, girl. I'm not… I'm not touching on that. Look, just throw me the whistle or I'll kill you. Your choice."
Jo was amazed that this was a decision the girl had to mull over. She wouldn't even be done blowing the whistle before the javelin impaled her head to the floor, and she was giving legitimate consideration to trying regardless. Jo really wasn't sure how to speed her up, but she was clearly either an unhealthy masochist or stalling for time. Either thought wasn't comforting, and Jo was losing some of her rush from earlier. This was just weird and unnatural for her. She was tempted to hand the reins back to Yolanda even in her nigh-broken state, but that would just get them both killed on this wild ride.
That loss of her adrenaline made her even more worried too, because she wasn't sure if she could close the distance between the whistleblower and herself quickly enough to stop it from happening. The whole situation had gone from an ideal fight scene to trauma counseling too fast to reel back in. An idea crossed her mind, but it grated on every nerve like iron on iron as it did.
"Hey… you know, you've been pretty bad." Jo said, wishing that she had the nerve to kill herself instead of going through with this ploy to gain an insane girl's affection. Yolanda would have been better at this, but Jo didn't hate her that much.
The girl seemed to perk back up, attention off of the whistle. Perfect. Now if only she weren't staring at her so intensely instead.
"Yeah. You heard me." Jo spoke, putting on her best 'tough guy' voice. The spiked fist reappeared on her hand, though in the moment she could only manage small bumps of metal rather than full points. She really didn't have it in her. Jo could feel Yolanda attempting to peek her head from behind the proverbial door at the worst possible time. Shit. Jo hadn't managed to get out of the situation yet. She froze, her focus now directed more on keeping the gate of her mind closed. Jo could feel her hands on the knob, attempting to stop it from turning.
-
"What? What's happening?" Yolanda cried out, confused by the change in scenery. Who was this girl?
Yolanda summoned her wand and pointed it at the girl, only for the girl's excited expression to melt away.
"Aw… only half the time? I don't know. Kind of a dealbreaker."
She put the whistle to her lips. Yolanda didn't know what would happen, but she knew it wasn't good. Still, she couldn't bring herself to kill an innocent girl. Her other half would be better at this, if she didn't hate letting her out so much. Especially in cases like these. She almost always came to sprawled out somewhere too sore to move or covered in new cuts and wounds.
"Don't blow that!" Yolanda pleaded. Still, the shrill noise filled the air, and Yolanda covered her ears. Within moments, the landscape seemed to reverberate with static and the sounds of distant bass. She could see it now, the horrid devil of screens and wires marching towards the two of them from a distant hall. She was cornered, and even if she managed to escape Yolanda doubted she could outrun the spirit or his lackeys on a gradually emptying stomach and sore feet.
Her heart dropped when the thing dropped Kaiyo onto the ground like a sack of potatoes. A wet flop of unconscious meat on the smooth flooring, blood beginning to stain it.
"Don't worry folks— she's not dead! — only mostly dead!" The screen spirit spoke, voice raspy with laugh tracks and processed noise.
"Two girls — one bullet…" It continued, pulling back one of the various mechanisms in its bastardized firearm. Rather forcefully, it jammed Kaiyo's head onto the end and nearly dislocated her jaw as the sizable barrel was pushed to the back of her throat. It wanted a clear shot, and it didn't care how brutal it had to be to get one.
"Gonna make this easy — or do I gotta — ask nicely?"
Yolanda felt the gloomy girl from earlier wrap around her from behind, holding her in place and smiling as though they were about to have their pictures taken together.
She wanted to tear her hair out, to scream. To plead and beg for this not to happen. Yolanda could feel that damned, unstoppable force banging on the other side of the door.
"Let me out you fucking pussy! What? Think you can beat them all by yourself? You're pathetic! Open this damn door before I tear off its hinges."
Yolanda sank into the confines of her mental space and sobbed. Everything she did just… fell to shit. No matter how many years apart, it was always that same desolating feeling of helplessness and fear. No matter what she did. Even now, a pesky voice in her head didn't want to believe she could do it.
Tearing up, Yolanda closed her eyes and accepted her fate. She'd been a failure her entire life, why not do one thing right and die like everyone wanted her to?
She made her peace and sighed, trying to give the screen-faced spirit its best-ever money shot.
Maybe next time. Yolanda thought to herself. Maybe next time she'd finally find peace, or she'd get a nice home in the afterlife.
-
Afterlife? Peace? What a load of bull.
The gun was smoking in the spirit's hands, but Jo was completely fine. Instead, the gloomy, cute girl had been turned into a dead, gloomy, still sort of cute girl. Jo dropped her corpse on the ground and simply stared down the annoyed, weapon-toting spirit. For some reason, he'd decided to stick another dead girl on the end of his gun. Weird. Not like Jo could tell who it was from all of the bleeding and the missing head.
"Oh no! Looks like you missed. Guess you gotta shoot aga—"
The spirit hesitated with no time at all to fire dead at Jo's forehead, but her metallic soulform took the shot and caused it to shatter on impact away from her.
"DUMBASS!" Jo shouted gleefully. Before the shooter could finished reloading, she lept at his legs. A long sliver of steel cut at the strangely spidery supports below his cloak of newsreels, the insides filled only with droopy cobwebs and wires. A heavy hand swatted her aside, but Jo molded a hook of steel all across her arm to redirect her momentum around one of the supports. Why did everyone complain about fighting spirits? They were all so dumb. At least, if you could ignore the pain.
The G-force of the movement made her head feel blurry for a second, but it was no trouble when she slammed into the spirit foot-first— now donning sharp metal greaves that dug into his frail, computerized body. Screens shattered and leaked raw static from within, fleshy eyes and mouths gasping and blinking just behind the black glass panes.
"Wow! You're even uglier inside mister. What are you gonna do, huh? Shoot me again? Dumb bitch." She egged, getting into a hyped-up boxing stance to taunt him further. The spirit only gave a ragged, frequencied sigh as he stood and adjusted the broken lenses of his body.
"Got a big mouth— on ya, — doll. Ever wanted to star — in a snuff film?"
"Drugs are bad kids, maybe if your dumbass watched what you spewed you'd know, screwhead." Jo vibrated, eagerly waiting to beat the pulp out of this orange.
The screen spirit laughed— a real laugh, not a pre-recorded one. Something dark, raw, and vicious from behind the glass he wore. Jo could see it now, the meat of his self behind everything. Twitching spider-eyes and fangs pressed into flat places like crushed recycling cubes.
"You know I didn't like 'em before, but Witchhosts have their values as dogs too. Especially for killing the occasional coyote that comes around. I guess you're — special— kid. You're gonna get a grand execution, that's for sure. Maybe I can make a deal with your corpse."
With that, the spirit jumped to the ceiling in a flash, slittering about on uneven, broken arachnid legs that sprouted from within the meat of the screens like aliens from that one movie.
"COME BACK HERE YOU QUEEFBRAIN!" She shouted, waving her fist angrily.
He was gone, but Jo had other problems now. Soft, professional footsteps approached from the only hallway of escape she had— and there were definitely more than two feet coming her way.
Two footsteps. Four feet. Or was it four footsteps and two sets of feet? How do you count footsteps? Whatever. There were two of them facing her, both just as fucked up physically as that sad girl had been mentally.
Jo hadn't seen it very often in her walks of life, but there were the occasional Witches who just gave everything to spirits. Sometimes it was done over time gradually through multiple deals and arrangements, other times they just forfeited everything because they were too arsed to be bothered with living. Yet, they were still too weak to die, too weak to just take matters into their own hands. It was quite the compromise if you were a coward in every aspect of life. Jo would have much preferred to go out with a bang though… something explosive, maybe with a plane.
From left to right, it was a rogue's gallery of odd and impossible looks. Without the miracles of spirits, they'd be corpses.
The first was the most telling of this, an older man who was more broad than tall with the left half of his head missing, devoted entirely to a fetus which strung itself to his brain by a warped umbilical tail. Strangely, the malformed infant seemed to regard Jo with a gleam in its eyes the man's own gaze did not have. His hands and feet, visible through a lack of clothing besides an old torn suit, were coated with strange tumorous growths that never seemed to stop moving. They at times replaced entire fingers and toes, never fully developed.
The second seemed more Jo's style. A pretty redhead wearing a town dress, her entire body woven through by thick red strands of wires and string. Her face and mouth were sewn shut entirely by them, and despite the motif of a puppet, she moved quite naturally. Jo almost regarded her as the most normal of the group, were it not for the backside of her head oozing brain matter and holding itself together with a fishnet of the red strands. The longer Jo looked at her, the less screwed-on-right she felt. She couldn't really describe it, but it was sort of addictive.
"You two here to fight? I was just about to kill your—" Jo didn't get the chance to finish, the girl already piping up despite her stitched mouth. The skin seemed to fold around the movement of her jaw, as if it were a poorly-secured plastic bag instead of a necessary organ.
"KILL HER! SHE CANNOT DESTROY THE TRUMPET OF WAR!" The female Witchhost spoke, her voice connived of the tones an overzealous drill sergeant might use when disciplining.
Jo got little more than a second before the one with the fetus on his head charged her, small clumps of cells writhing across his skin into congealed faces and mouths across the surface. There wasn't even time for a witty comment before her reflexes took over, a metallic shield acting as a protective barrier before the Witchhost's fleshy fist made contact. It landed with a wet slop, the excess masses bursting away and dropping as bloodied, congealed clumps that refused to stop crying even on the ground as they continued to develop forcefully.
Before Jo could retaliate, a red, meaty cable swept her off of her feet, and her legs were soon bound by crimson veins and lengths of nerves. She looked up and saw the red-headed Witchhost girl smiling at her, the lengths connecting to her own brain and bursting from within her skin.
First things first, Jo needed to get out of the weird trap she'd been lured into. Although, she didn't really fall for it or anything, these two were just that fast. Finally! Something that she couldn't just mash into a fine pulp and be done with. She had to think for once!
An array of spikes burst from her protective aegis, and she felt them sink into the body of the childbearing spirit host about to wail on her. A sliver of metal cut her free from the other's organic restraints, but her joy of escape was short lived upon seeing neither of them were particularly harmed by this. The man-child combination merely grew in any missing parts, and the other merely knit her torn threads back together with copious knots and intertwinings.
Weirdly, it didn't really occur to Jo at all to try and discern what the Witchhosts were hosting for. The only thing going through her mind right now was how best to turn them into pulpy smoothies so they couldn't regrow. Maybe Yolanda would have given a shit, but she didn't.
Speaking of smoothies, Jo remembered an old commercial she saw. Something about a blender that was cheap and easy, but she mostly remembered the slowed-down motion of the blending action itself. Two reversed blades spinning to cut things… she could do that, right?
All she had to do was imagine it, and soon the length of her soulform became something like a set of lawnmower blades pivoted on her wrist. Jo had the foresight to keep them mostly away from herself, but she wasn't really happy with the limited range she had to deal with. Actually, Yolanda would have been able to burn both of the Witchhosts to a crisp, but that would mean letting up her control for some sad sack of shit to take over and cry before giving up.
"So! You both just gonna stare, or do you wanna come closer?"
It didn't really sound as cool as Jo had hoped, but her aggressors seemed more than happy to tear her a new one. The fetus-riddled man exploded with malignant growths, charging headfirst with a protective layer of doomed offspring. Jo noticed the other Witchhost wasn't doing much of anything, and that worried her a little more than the immediate threat of a fat man gunning for her.
The two of them clashed, and a spray of blood and tissue flew everywhere as he relentlessly pummeled Jo, even through her spinning blades. He didn't care at all, and even when she cut away the dominant child's umbilical cord, a new one simply sprang from the man's brain anew. What the fuck.
Jo backed off once she thought his body couldn't possibly still be alive, but his deboned arm twitched and slammed straight into her stomach with the force of a twenty-pound kettlebell. Her breath left her, and no chance was given to regain it as a thick red strand of rope tightened around her neck from behind. With a hefty yank, Jo was sprawled out on the ground and clutching at her neck, trying to stop herself from being hung as the noose of brainstem coiled tighter.
A burst of liquid steel, and Jo freed herself from the clutches of the raving woman. Even with this, Jo knew she was outmatched definitively. Every blow back and forth only left her the more damaged one, with both of the Witchhosts able to regenerate whatever wounds she could inflict. She blew the head off of the stitchwork woman and her brain coils merely sewed themselves back to her spine. It was like she was all cloth and no stuffing. The same could be said for the other guy, who must have had more meat in him than a butchery.
Fire could almost certainly take care of both of them, but Jo loathed the idea of letting Yolanda take over for anything. Even now, when their lives were at stake, Jo could already see Yolanda crying and sniveling when it mattered most instead of taking charge.
Upon the mental wall between them, Jo rapped the back of her hand.
"Hey! I know you're probably shitting yourself, but I can't kill these fuckers unless you help me."
The voice from within the recesses of her thoughts bounced around the walls, as if confined just outside of them.
"Help you? Help you? You've been mean to me this whole time!"
"I saved your ass!" Jo responded, frantically searching for something to yank her ungrateful half back into the picture with. All the while, attacks from the other two flew and left marks that would surely bruise. Even with her metal defenses, Jo could only multitask so much. If she made a chestpiece, they went for her limbs. If she made greaves, they went for her head. To make matters worse, Jo swore she could hear the spirit's legs skittering back down the halls. He wasn't retreating, he'd been reloading. Grabbing more firepower from wherever he got it to really deal with her. Probably to hand off to the other two as well. Shit.
"Fine then! Don't help me! We both die, and it's all your fault, sister." Jo retorted mentally, any further attempt at communication cut off by a blow straight to her liver from the fetus-adorned man. For an accident, he hit quite hard. Jo stumbled back and attempted to shield herself, but another blow rocked straight up her nose and landed her on the ground. She felt blood trickling from the broken part of her face, and she struggled to find footing before another hefty blow came to her chest.
-
Yolanda never asked for this. Or any of it, really. Sure, Jo helped sometimes, but in a strange way it almost felt cheap. Or rather, the feeling of suddenly waking up with the smoking gun in her hands instead of Jo's had gotten stale. It was usually small stuff, but when it mattered most Yolanda always woke up with a sour feeling and something to remember the occasion by even if Jo didn't. She burned hot, but nothing ever stuck to her. Ex boyfriend hit her, or an ex girlfriend dumped her over trashy drama shit? Jo didn't have a single care towards any consequences.
The worst part was how awesome it sounded to anyone who hadn't experienced it. Oh, you black out during fights and wake up the winner? That sounds fun! Or Yolanda's personal favorite, 'man, I wish I had someone like that. Life would be so much less lonely!'.
Except it really wasn't. The revolving door they had was more like a jammed carousel, and Jo typically took over for as long as she felt when she did. It was a good deal too, which was the worst part. Jo sucked up and ate shit for Yolanda, but it just made her feel worthless and helpless afterwards. Like a teenager who's not allowed to watch movies because of a single 'adult' joke halfway through. Jo was like a tapeworm that kept her thin, but Yolanda hated the idea of having that worm altogether.
Ugh, whatever. She'd already been over this so many times in her own monologues that moping about it changed nothing. Usually when Jo asked for help, it was just a situation she couldn't stand to be in. Waiting, awkward silences, even sleeping were all on Yolanda's designated to-do list. Everything that was boring and monotonous was her assignment, apparently. Jo just couldn't be arsed not to be in the fast lane.
But they were really going to die if Yolanda did nothing. Part of that sounded almost appealing. Not having to deal with any of her messed up brain anymore. Maybe if they died, Jo would go on to party in Hell, the only place that could handle her.
Or… Jo would go with her and they'd be stuck together forever. That was somehow discomforting enough for Yolanda to peek out of her psychological confine with the door Jo had left open. Something worse than death, being forced to live with both your paradoxical problem and solution all at once.
Yolanda was given the wheel just as another fist hit her face, and she boiled with enough contempt from her thoughts about Jo to scream aloud, probably the worst conjuration of her spell so far.
"PERKY PERKY FUCK—fuck —YOU BITCH! FIRE!"
A ray of molten heat burst from the soulform of her wand, and the strangely horrifying half-born man was reduced to cinders as every cell of him screamed like an infant. This was somehow worse than what she had expected going into this.
Yolanda turned to the other aggregate just in time to get a whipping across the face. A lash of fleshy tendrils corded together, like slick leather. It didn't hurt so much as it did sting, like a thin papercut across her entire face, only much wider and not nearly as finite.
"Ow!" Yolanda yelped, covering her face in response. The whippings kept coming, and she started shouting the only combinations of words she could really keep up with all of the pain active in her body.
"Parade Parade Fireblast! Killavolt Firework! Darkstar Thunderblast!"
The names of the spells didn't really matter, all she could do was shoot fire. Still, one of the shots hit her target. Like a candle, the red-stringed woman started to ignite at the tips of her tendrils. The organic fuses began to burn down, and the Witchhost woman began to actively panic.
Yolanda watched in partial disgust as she tore out her own brainstems and neural links, severing the seared parts of her like pieces of brittle hair. The blood from her nose leaked into her mouth, and Yolanda was forced to sputter and spew it out before she could speak again. By the time both of them were done, the tension on the battlefield between them had left. The Witchhost stared dead ahead, holding her head and groaning as if she'd undergone a migraine. Then, she collapsed in place, drooling on the ground like a drunkard.
Yolanda didn't have much time to contemplate. Before she could witness the crawling horror of the arachnid manipulator, a black shape darted through the halls and whisked her off of her feet. Yolanda nearly blasted it, but saw something she had never expected to. The face of the familiar river feline horse spirit yes, but a spirit whose expression was composed only of utter mortal fear was something she hadn't expected to see. It seemed as though the Dark Horse Spirit had grabbed Yolanda more as part of a contractual obligation than out of concern—he was running. He was struck with such a deep terror by something that he couldn't stand to stick around. Yolanda could still see some damage leftover on his body.
The Dark Horse Spirit was moving so quickly that she passed countless people as blurry afterimages. She heard shots ring out from behind her, curling up tight against the fuzzy body of the lengthy mammalian spirit. She heard him yelp and whine as a round penetrated his body, dangerously close to where her hands were wrapped.
It felt like a nosediving plane in slow motion. Everything did. Even as they connected with the spirit as extensions of the Firearm Kami's violent nature, the steed refused to slow. Yolanda could feel the aura of horror melting away as they put distance between themselves and the bullet-riddled domain.
It was all too late that Yolanda noticed they weren't simply leaving. The Dark Horse Spirit was flying straight for a tear in the Veil, and as much as she hated the idea of returning to the real world outside the Reikai she had no better ideas. At least, hopefully, the screenhead couldn't follow them there.