Cross Crisis (A Interconnected, Multicross Short Story Collection)

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel

Spoiler: What is Parahumans?

Parahumans is a duology of two web serials, Worm and Ward. The first work focuses on Taylor Hebert, better known as Skitter who begins her descent into villainy with good intentions. She struggles and fights against increasingly mounting threats that culminates in a threat not just to her world of Earth Bet but all worlds. The sequel focuses on Victoria Dallon, the hero formerly known as Glory Girl, and her own team in the after of said threat.

Spoiler: What is Marvel?

Marvel is a superhero brand, popularly known as a comic book setting. Taking place on Earth 616, this world is host to any manner of heroes and villains, mutants and Inhumans. The most premier team is known as the Avengers with several other well known teams such as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Alien invasions are common and there's a whole universe, as well as several others, that have intersected with Earth 616.

Wasn't every day that someone fell from a portal in the sky, but it was common enough that Spider-Man was already swooping in to save them from certain death. And, for good or for ill, he was well-experienced in such matters. On the rare occasion, it turned out to be a wayward traveler sometimes from another planet, sometimes from another dimension. Though, sadly, encounters with portal travelers tended to have a non-zero chance of conflict.

Didn't matter if that was inevitable, Spider-Man would still intervene. He caught the fallen person in his arms and swung to a nearby rooftop. He set them down and got a better look. It was clearly a young woman, clad in a black bodysuit with white armor plates. The mask was insect-like, especially in the shape of its lenses, but it let long, curly hair flow out the back.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked.

She stirred with a groan, but otherwise remained unconscious. He sighed, getting up and putting his hands on his hips. Turning around, he looked out to the city, not worried about the woman attacking him. His spider-sense would warn him. But right now, he was concerned with getting her some medical treatment. She might have a concussion.

Given how she was dressed, she was clearly a super of some kind. But whether that was a super-hero or a super-villain, remained to be seen. Either way, that ruled out normal hospitals, because he wouldn't risk her identity like that or put the healthcare workers at risk.

There was the Avengers, but right now, there was all hands-on-deck situation going on. Spider-Man was on standby, though he could bring her to them if it was serious enough. Though it might sour their mood a bit to barge in, because – and he had to admit this to himself – Spider-Man was a reliable team-player, but he took on too much responsibility for himself. He only ever called in when it was serious.

It was almost ironic given his reputation as a wisecracking joker, which didn't help matters either.

He looked back, knowing he shouldn't stew too much in his own problems. There was the Fantastic Four and he was sure Reed Richards with all his PhDs and degrees had basic healthcare equipment and know-how. The problem was if they were too busy exploring some weird dimension or whatever esoteric problems they tended to deal with.

Patting himself down, he rolled up his costume a bit around the waist, exposing the belt where he kept his web cartridges.

"Let's see…" He pulled out a cheap flip-phone. "Personal phone… no." Spider-Man put the first one away and took out a cutting edge smart phone. "Ah, super-hero phone."

He dialed up a number and waited on the dial-tone.

"Spidey?"

"Johnny. Yeah, hate to make this a business call, but I got a costumed woman that fell from a portal while I was out on patrol. She's knocked out, at the moment. But I'm a little worried."

"I get it, I get it. Sounds up the Fantastic Four's alley, 'specially the portal part. Bring her to the Baxter Building."

"Thanks, Johnny, I appreciate it," he said before hanging up.

The woman was still unconscious and he knelt down on knee in front of her.

"Hey, if you can hear me, I'm going to take you somewhere to help. Concussions are serious business, you know?"

There was no response, his humor wasted on this audience. He picked her up, hoisting her over his shoulder and starting to swing away.

XXX

I woke up to the rush of wind, aching all over and my stomach turning. The world past me below me, cars and streets rushing past my vision. Disorientation set in as memories of Scion and the destruction that followed quickly shot its way to the forefront of my mind. Past that, there was just this hard block full of headache and memories that stood on the tip of my tongue. I shook my head, reaching out for my bugs, but I was moving too quickly and too high up to utilize them in any meaningful fashion.

And there were no bugs on me to get my captor to release me. From this height, I wasn't sure my flight pack was still functional. Which meant the more rudimentary options at my disposal were reliant on the flight pack's status and how vulnerable my captor was. I reached for my belt, knowing that whoever this was didn't bother stripping me of my weapons.

Before I could do anything, the person said, "Woah, woah, wait. If you can understand me, I was bringing you to some people that can help."

"Set me down first," I demanded.

"You got it."

There was a sharp turn that made my head spin as we landed. The landing was smooth, but I still stumbled as I put some distance between me and him. The motion made me want to collapse on my knees, pull off my mask, and vomit. But I held firm, standing straight as I could.

Pulling on the bugs from the building below, I turned around to face my possible savior. He was in a red and blue bodysuit with a web overlaid the red portion. There was a spider symbol on his chest. His mask covered his entire face with only two crescent-like white lenses.

"Who are you?" I asked, feeling a sense of security in my gathering bugs.

"I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

I swayed a little with a snort. "Kind of a generic name. There might be a dime a dozen."

"Nah. There's only two other Spider-Men out there."

Wait, what was I doing? The apocalypse was going on and I was probably on some unknown Earth. Except I knew, for sure, there were certain gaps in my memory. I pressed a hand to my temples, as if I could feel out the shape of the possible concussion.

"Where am I?"

"The Big Apple. New York," he elaborated.

"No, no, what Earth?" I asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

It was a very shot-in-the-dark question and might portray me as crazy. If I was truly in a different world, then there was a possibility that they had no idea about other universes. Clearly, this place had parahumans, but it might be more Aleph than Bet. But his answer threw me for a loop.

"You're on Earth-616," he said.

Wait, what? Numerical designations seemed… problematic, competitive. Especially if the number of Earths went up as high as six hundred. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to suss out any possible deception.

"Really? Who came up with the designation?"

He tapped a finger on his chin. "I actually can't remember. There's some multiversal groups out there and we do have some experts in the field around. It's just one of those things, you know? Why's America called America? Why do we call our planet a name that means dirt? Just one of those things."

This seemed absurd, but he said it with such a casualness that I was almost inclined to believe him.

"But what about interdimensional war?"

Spider-Man shrugged. "Like I said, there's groups for that, but it varies. I mean, I have a friend from another Earth that attends college here. Though, trouble-wise, there was the time when Earths were colliding with one another, and that certainly caused some… problems. The multiverse is complicated at the best of times. I think it got rebooted once because of aforementioned colliding Earths. Or remade? Then there was this whole business where it got merged with another world that wasn't a part of the normal multiverse. But I wasn't really a part of that." He shrugged again. "I try not to concern myself with the metaphysics of it, tends to give headaches and existential dread."

I tried to push my rampant emotions into my swarm below me, like I could sidestep my deterioration. Either this parahuman was crazy or this Earth was crazy. The former was far more likely… but if he was, then he might have connections to other parahumans.

"Where were you taking me?"

"I was taking you to the Fantastic Four. They're a superhero team." He paused. "Actually, while you're lucid, who are you?"

"I'm Weaver… a her–"

I sighed. There was a strange need to be truthful right now. It was the type of honesty that only came when someone was lost and alone. And to a stranger, who meant nothing to me. In the amidst of so much uncertainty, the only real thing was myself. But who was I?

The need to fight Scion was ever-present, a goal, an objective. I was whatever I needed to be. I had cut ties, I had pushed against the rules and regulations of the Protectorate, I was willing to work with whoever I needed to win.

Yet, the fight had left me behind. Even with my memory frayed, I knew this to be true. I wanted to dismiss this course of events as the work of a Stranger or a Master. But I was alone with my thoughts, that everything I had done had been for naught.

Who was Taylor Hebert, at the end of this?

"I don't know if I can call myself a hero. I'm just someone trying to do the right thing." I looked up to the sky, seeing it clear and free of destruction. No golden light scouring the skies and earth. "But I think I just ended up doing the wrong things for the right reasons."

"I get it. You have the power, so you have the responsibility. And you don't always know how to handle it. You make mistakes. I have been at this superhero business for a long time and I'm certainly not infallible." He sighed, even more tired than I. Then he seemed to renew himself. "But what I can tell you is this: what matters is that you keep trying to do the right thing. To learn from your mistakes."

"Maybe," I said, wanting to get away from all this. "Either way, I had been dealing with a threat. One that's been destroying Earths. So if we can get this check-up over so we can start dealing with the problem at hand."

"Sounds serious." He pulled out his phone and quickly typed out a text. "I'm asking my friend – the one who attends university – if she's noticed anything. Though I'm wondering if this is connected to the current problem that's got the superhero community on DEFCON one."

I nodded, covertly putting some bugs in my costume while he was distracted with the text.

Then we were off again.

XXX

After a small battery of tests, both medical and other, Mr. Fantastic had brought out some Tinker device that mitigated the concussion and allowed me some clarity of thought. Mr. Fantastic was a man in a blue bodysuit with a stylized four in a circle at the center. He had to be some form of grab-bag cape, what with his stretching abilities and Tinker devices. But he wasn't wearing any mask. If I had to guess, this Fantastic Four was like New Wave, with public identities.

While the tests were being conducted, most of which were centered around disease and other compatibility issues, I informed them about Scion. I kept the lead-up vague beyond a villain setting Scion off and how much damage he was doing. They believed me and the wheels were already being greased. I heard the calls to other superheroes, but it still grated on me that I was stuck here.

But at the end of the tests, I was thrown for another loop when he asked, "Did you know you have a portal in your head connected to an extradimensional entity?"

The incongruity of it all caused me to blurt out, "Do you not?"

"No." He stared at me intently. "Is this a cause for a concern?"

"My… power, my passenger. It's…" I took a deep breath. "It's complicated and doesn't matter."

"Perhaps," he replied, unconvinced. He looked like he was about to go on some sort of tangent.

"We looking at a symbiote situation, Reed?" Spider-Man interrupted, with mouth full of banana. At my annoyed glance, he protested, "Hey, I haven't eaten lunch yet."

"The situation bears superficial resemblance." Mr. Fantastic stretched out his hand and pulled a floating monitor in front of us. There were several wavelengths on the display, but on closer inspection, there was something odd. On the highest crests, there was a smaller wavelength matching underneath. "And it is a cause for a concern. It's nothing too drastic, but just because the effects are small doesn't mean it's minor."

"I know there's… some give and take with my power. My friend speculated on this a bit, but right now, it's my power. It's… me, it's mine."

At least, I want that to be the case.

Mr. Fantastic looked at me. "If you are aware of the risks… but even so, I'll be keeping a close eye on this matter. Now, there's just one last test."

"What were all the other tests?"

"Compatibility, disease, etc. Mainly making sure you won't be negatively affected by being here. Some universes are inherently incompatible with one another and universal travelers tend to, ah, what's an understandable term? They glitch out, as their atoms are torn apart."

"Really?"

"Yes. But also the tests are to confirm a hypothesis of mine." He pushed away the first monitor and pulled another one, showcasing charts and other data I couldn't exactly decipher. "It seems Weaver here is from another multiverse."

"You're fucking with me."

Mr. Fantastic shook his head. "The data doesn't lie. It also explains the small memory blocks. The initial transportation was traumatic enough that the brain has briefly repressed it."

There was this nagging sense that those memories were important, but right now, this whole day was turning out to be crazy. I wasn't exactly sure this was all real or that they were even telling the truth. They were laying down the groundwork for me to investigate all this information on my own. If Tattletale was here, I wouldn't have to go through these lengths.

Instead I had to trust, but verify.

"What do I do now?"

"Right now, the Scion problem isn't an immediate concern, though it is a concern. But I think we can roll into this into our current preparations for a problem of a similar stripe."

Didn't feel like they were taking this problem seriously. Or rather, they somehow trivialized my problem. I felt my swarm buzz throughout the building. Two floors below, it was just enough to bother someone, who immediately combusted into flames and killed a minuscule portion of my bugs.

A deathly calm settled over me.

How could they possibly understand? Spider-Man, I could dismiss, because he seemed more like a street-level hero. And yet, it didn't seem to faze Mr. Fantastic, who seemed to take it in apathetic stride.

"Countless people are dead and dying. Heroes, villains, civilians. How can you stand there and be so calm? Is it because what? It's not your multiverse?"

"How are you so calm then?" he asked.

"Because I am not calm."

"Everything dies." Mr. Fantastic looked at her intently. "It's inevitable, it's a promise of things to come. And I am afraid. But I have to manage my fear, because how else can everything endure if we succumb to it? More than anything, I want everything to endure, to live. And I can't do that without a cool head."

I looked away, not wanting to believe in the sincerity. There was just so much trouble, when the going got tough. And here was someone admitting they were afraid, yet going on anyway.

"Just… just keep me in the loop. Whatever you're doing, even if I don't understand it, just give me something."

"Of course." He smiled. "I would never deny someone a chance to learn."

"Oh, you're in for it now. Prepare for some pretty dense stuff," Spider-Man commented. "I mean, I understand the material he gives me, but Richards just has a special way of making me feel like I'm still in high school."

"That's because you can't manage your personal life and your superhero life."

Spider-Man chuckled. "Easy for you to say, there's not really any difference for you."

Mr. Fantastic tapped the side of his head with an elongated finger. "Genius, remember?"

"What about me?" I asked.

"Well, the Baxter Building's crowded at the moment and full of rather sensitive equipment, but we can make room if need be. Though, I think it will be stifling for you. You strike me as someone independent. I can set you up for temporary housing. Won't be grand, but it won't be cheap either."

"I'd chip in, but money's tight at the moment," Spider-Man said.

"See, you wouldn't have this problem if you kept your business running."

"I wouldn't have started that company in the first place! That was Doc Ock's fault when he stole my body. I mean, do you really think it's a good idea for me to compete in an industry with competitors like Stark? Not to mention all the supervillains in the biz too."

XXX

While Mr. Fantastic was looking into giving me a place to stay, I managed to secure a terminal and began my research into this world. Again, I might not be able to trust this network, though I doubted it would be faked. At worst, there would be restricted material that I wouldn't access.

But everything was permitted. I still didn't relax my guard all the way. With my swarm monitoring his conversation with Spider-Man – half of it was discussing options that weren't motels and the other half was about the Avengers – I delved into my research. A more pathetic side of me felt like a dumb cape-geek, almost like those first opening months when I planned to be a superhero.

But this world seemed a little insane, but… a marvel all the same. Parahumans, or rather superhumans, were far more varied on this Earth, coming from various different origins. Some were born, some were made, some were natural tinkers, and others used an esoteric source they called magic. I didn't want to say it aloud, but in the privacy of my thoughts, it was completely unfair. There were no trigger events, no overall consensus on powers. I doubted any would have to go through what I did.

On the flipside, there seemed to be a lot more trouble and public opinion tended to be on the negative. Plus, there were aliens. Honest-to-god alien civilizations, here. But the cost of freedom was that threats popped both frequently and unpredictably. Some of them were more devastating than an Endbringer attack, but they always seemed to triumph in the end.

Moments like Stanford where heroes messed up and the public was proven right were few and far in-between. Any real attempts to weld superhero teams to the government a la Protectorate, the corruption always sprouted up quick and the heroes fought hard to bring everything back to equilibrium.

It almost seemed like they should choke on this freedom, and yet miraculously, they never did. I wanted to think, if weren't for certain factors, my world could have turned out similar. That I could have continued to protect my old territory and I wouldn't be painted wrong for caring those under me.

But our worlds were too different. The variety of this Earth ensured it would never turn out like mine. There was no real establishment to protect and there were many stories of heroes simply standing against the grain. The Protectorate was the lesser of two evils and it had to be maintained, even after all those revelations about them. But I doubted the heroes here would stand for that. They had civil wars over similar matters, holding onto a sort of stubborn earnestness that I wished I saw in Bet's heroes, though they probably would see all this and feel validated about how things went.

I sighed.

"You're Weaver right?" I spun around in my chair, startled that someone had snuck up on me. She was a teenage girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, dressed in casual wear. "I apologize for surprising you. I simply wanted to see if I can navigate without alerting you through your bugs."

"How did you know I control bugs?"

"Simple. Their behavior was atypical, coordinated. But only someone like me could notice when you're being covert." She stuck out her hand. "Hi. I'm Valeria Richards. I'm much smarter than my dad."

I hesitated only for a moment before shaking the hand. "Weaver. Are you a Thinker?"

I was sure she could pick up on the terminology, out of context as it was on this Earth. It was designed to be used a short-hand after all.

"Everyone's a thinker, when you think about it. But I presume you mean that I have some degree of mental ability? Compared to the average human, the answer is indeed yes."

"Did you need something?" I asked.

"Just wanted to see someone from a different multiverse. I have experience with ours, but not yours." She pulled up a seat and sat across from me. "I would like to change that, if I am to help. Can you give me the rundown on what happened? Before the Scion stuff."

I looked at her, wanting her to be Lisa, trying to prop up the superficial similarities and failing. I was alone. But I managed. I endured.

"I come from Earth Bet. The only public information about other Earths was Aleph."

"I assume you used the Hebrew alphabet to avoid any sort of appearance of superiority."

"Yeah. There was a group called Cauldron with access to other Earths. And they kidnapped others to experiment them with our powers, our passengers. The more monstrous of the experiments were the Case 53s and the more successful ones were under their employ. And everything else? They were just misplaced scraps they had to find a use for, like the Nemesis program where they set them up to fail against their agents. All of this was in service of trying to find a silver bullet of sorts against Scion, the crux of all parahuman matters. On the more technical side, for transportation they used a cape called Doormaker and created vials for experimentation from Scion's dead counterpart."

"It almost seems foolish to use only the tools of the opposition, but it nonsensical for judging them for using what they could. But I think we should still judge them for how they operated. Science – in terms of knowledge – is not amoral, but above morals. The way we use science, however, has ethics to it."

"It's a nice sentiment. But what they did wasn't enough. How is being picky going to help now?"

"Of course it wasn't enough. Besides, the moral implications, they tunnel-visioned too hard. Ethics ground us, keep us aware of the bigger picture and the solutions that come with that perspective."

I looked down at my gloved hands. All this… down-time had forced an introspection that was unneeded, but came all the same.

"Maybe we'll do better," I mumbled.

"Of course we'll do better, there's no other choice." I sensed Spider-Man web-slinging over to our location. And Valeria picked up on this too. "Looks like this discussion is coming to a close. But before you go, I would like to offer to upgrade your flight pack."

Should I let her tamper with the device? Tinker-tech wasn't sustainable in the long-run and tended to be more reliable with a tinker around. It wouldn't have a long shelf-life here. But was I really that stubborn enough to resist some help? I knew it was more due to the fact that I knew Defiant, but not Valeria. Either, the flight pack would become defunct or I extend some trust and possibly gain more use out of it.

I didn't want to say anything, so instead I shrugged off the pack and handed it to her.

Spider-Man arrived just then. "Hey Val. Weaver."

He was carrying a backpack and handed it to me. I looked inside, seeing a laptop and a phone inside.

"Reed packed it up with your requested files. Again, it's very dense. And he whipped up a spare cellphone for you. The type superheroes use for business. I loaded up my number with it, in case you need anything. Oh, and my friend, she would like to meet up with you to discuss this whole multiverse issue. If that's okay?" I nodded, zipping up the pack and putting it on. "Okay, good. She's a hero called Ghost Spider. Her number's in there as well."

"Let's go."

As soon as I settled in, I would begin working.

And Ghost-Spider seemed like a good place to start, if she could travel this multiverse.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

Spoiler: What is Bloodrayne?

Bloodrayne is a video game series that holds two entries in the mainline series, following Rayne's adventures in WWII and present day respectively. She is a dhampir that works for the Brimstone Society and is tasked with killing monsters. It had a mediocre movie adaptation that spanned three movies and it also had another game in a separate continuity called Bloodrayne: Betrayal.

Heavy was the crown on the head of… something, something.

Blah, blah, blah.

Rayne was sitting sideways on dear ole Dad's throne, letting her legs dangle from the arm-rest. Day eleven of being empress of the remnants of that ratsucking bastard and she wanted to pull her fangs out. One hell of an inheritance. Bastard was probably laughing in Hell. Now, that she thought beyond the burning rage and tinge of fear of Kagan, Rayne realized that she might have made him more a monster than he actually was. He had no grand ambition after this. He wanted to be at the top only so he could be free to ruin and rape and pillage at his leisure. He expected everyone else to keep his little kingdom alive.

Ruling anything, in practice, was an exercise in not tearing your hair out. Rayne sighed loudly, draping an arm over her forehead. She may have delegated almost all the work to Severin, but a stupid sense of responsibility made sure to look over anything she signed off on. Not that she looked at them thoroughly, but the sheer volume of need was overwhelming.

Honestly, it made her just want to fuck off and indulge her vampiric side. In a way, she wanted to be as free as Kagan to enact on her destructive urges. The confession tasted like bitter ash in her throat. The only thin line between her and almost every other vampire was her human side.

She didn't want to think about this sorta thing. It reminded her of her younger days, before time eroded everything she didn't need to avenge her family. Rayne just turned ninety today, she should… she should… be more? Be more secure in her position in life?

It felt like she missed a part of her life. There had been direction given by the Brimstone Society, but here she was, thrust into responsibilities beyond her. But now, there was a disillusionment to the guiding forces of her youth. She had split from Brimstone Society so long ago. It hurt in its own way, knowing it was destroyed by ancient gods or whatever the fuck. Then she had sealed them away with the Book of the Fifth Sun.

It was over. Things, in their own way, had returned back to normal. Brimstone Society was built back up, but that had been the final straw. She had been jerked about far too often and became a freelancer for the Society.

As different as it was, it was still familiar. She could cling onto the familiarity that she had known for most of her life. It was why, ultimately, she chose to remain as a dhampir, inoculating herself to the vampire cure. It was all she knew.

Now, the latest incarnation of the Society would most likely gun her down, because Kagan succeeded with his Shroud plan. Part of her didn't care, writing them off as just another enemy. And another was just disheartened that the longer she lived, the more things twisted into something unrecognizable.

Thank fuck she wasn't going to live forever, but that didn't mean she got to lounge around all day. God, she wanted to kill someone right about now. She wanted something big to happen, because the closer to death, the more alive she felt. And her powers seemed to get stronger.

Right now, all she could do was wait for Severin to bring something to her attention. And then she was embark on a brief, if invigorating mission that would either end too soon or spiral into something bigger.

She almost wished for the latter.

"Stop moping, Rayne." She groaned. "Come on, come on. Do something. You can't do nothing forever."

Rayne forced herself to roll off the throne and flopped onto the floor. Finally, she managed to get to her fight, stumble around the tacky, spiky, throne-chair thing, and stood in front of the glass plane.

She traced her fingertips along the glass, before they stopped and drew themselves back. They formed a small, delicate pillar, before she reeled it back and shattered the window. It crumbled, cracking and breaking into a myriad of pieces. It rained down below, under a red Shroud sky.

A gas made from the many dead, designed to block out the sun light. Despite the brief novelty of walking in the day, it was not truly daytime. The sunrises and sunsets were marred by a haze of red, like a scar that would never go away. A concept that was unfamiliar to Rayne, given that her genetics did not allow for scarring.

She had never truly known a sunrise, yet she mourned it all the same. Rayne stared at that bloody veil and the ruins of the city and the rocketing comet… wait, what? Rayne took a few steps back, closing her right eye and activating Beliar's left eye.

The vision narrowed, zooming in on the oncoming target. What a great fucking power this was. Ancient demon and first ruler of Hell, and all his left eye did was act as a telescope.

She honed in on the target, a fiery coffin powered by two huge thrusters atop it. Rayne took one, two steps back, then started running from the window with an eager smile.

Finally, she thought, no more monotony.

The coffin rocket smashed through the window, making it rain debris and glass all over her, as Rayne flipped herself to the right. The coffin landed with a crash, skittering across the polished floor, before it smacked right into the giant blood fountain.

It stopped, full tilt, as the lid cracked into two and a figure was flung into the air. She tumbled through the air like a doll thrown by a petulant child. Right up until the body landed back first on a spike, skewering through the chest. The sound of broken ribs rose, before petering out and conceding to the sound of trickling blood.

Rayne stared, seeing herself impaled on the gaudy, blood fountain. Her breath caught in her throat. The dead, anguished face staring back at her was hers. The hair, the shape of her nose, the now dying eyes… even the metal ringlets with streamers was her: Rayne.

The outfit was different, the boots were certainly higher, and there was far more black. The outfit was strapless, yet covered her belly. And the gloves went up to her shoulders, connecting to collar around the throat.

Sleek came to mind, but what was unacceptable of this copy's design were the blades. No handles, no way to get a grip. Practically just knives attached to bracelets.

Rayne stood there, looking at what was functionally her own corpse. Could it be a clone? There was some mad science shit from Xerx's left over below, but most of it decayed away without anyone knowledgeable to keep it functioning. She had dealt with a duplicate of her evil half-sister once.

She squinted at the body, seeing the Brimstone logo. That dismissed the time-travel option and her only foray into that venue was a cyborg vampire that could travel through time…

What the fuck was even her life, when pinned down and tussled up on display. When she was a kid, she had in an interest in entomology, but could never bear herself to pin the bugs. Instead she had used tape, but Rayne was not spared that kindness.

Her wings were pulled until they were taut and then pierced down. She would never fly again and would forever be put on display, never to fly again.

Fuck, she knew a dhampir's mind wasn't meant to hold the weight of eternal time, but she thought herself immune to it. But now that she was actively thinking about it, the uneven and messy tapestry of her life was revealed.

An angry and misspent life indeed.

Rayne cocked her head, taking a few steps closer and examining the body. The blades had none of that magic or oomph her own blades had. Hers was made by Declan Finney, an ex-dhampir, from materials left from a demon.

There was history there, history she didn't think about. Yet, it was there, if she took a moment to breathe. Nobody would care but her. She looked into the dead-her's drooping eyelids. Did anybody care for this her?

Provided this wasn't a weird clone-thing, of course. She stepped into the fountain, wading through blood to reach the corpse. Upon closer inspection, there was a blackened shard in this fake-Rayne's abdomen. Red veins course through it. With the way it pulsated and ran underneath the crystalline surface, it should have given off the impression of healthy and hale.

Instead, it looked like a cancer gaining ground -- plaque on their way to destroying teeth, an inescapable rot. Rayne reached out to grasp it. Call it a casual disregard for danger, call it faith in her abilities, call it not learning from the last time she grabbed a glowing object, but Rayne grabbed a hold of the shard.

Nothing seemed to happen. And nothing continued to happen, up until the shard stopped squelching inside the corpse. It was the inverse like jamming a fork in a socket, everything flooding in instead of out. As the shard touched air and her skin, a sensation overwhelmed her.

It was like the shard disconnected from air and only remained in contact with her skin, her soul. Rayne screamed, trying to let go, but her fingers locked up. It was like hot-gluing her skin to the surface and the pain almost seemed to plateau, until it plunged into depths of pain that Rayne couldn't fathom.

Leaking past the flesh and into the soul, the shard lurched its cancer into her eye sockets. Rayne threw her head back, trying to scream. The edges of her vision darkened and she stared at worlds beyond her.

It nothing like staring into the abyss, but these worlds were perfectly framed in self-contained portraits. It was only when her gaze strayed outside these frames was when Rayne truly known the dark. Outside life, outside reality, there was nothing.

Rayne fell to her knees, sloshing in the muck. Nothing. It was such an alien concept to even fathom. People typically thought of sheer blackness when they thought of nothing. But the true idea of absence of everything was impossible to articulate.

The moment she turned away, Rayne knew the image of nothing would vanish from her mind and reality would flood in. Yet, it would always lurk in the back of her mind as an itch. In the corner of her eye, she saw those worlds again, two of them smashed together.

It was a literal eyesore and Rayne's hands found themselves on her face, nails peeling into her skin. Unbidden by her, they clawed their way up, ready to tear out her eyeballs. And Rayne wasn't sure that any amount of feeding would regenerate her eyeballs.

So, Rayne swerved her vision to the mishmash world, through the looking glass and found herself on an adventure that she had never embarked. A betrayal by Brimstone yet again, a man who could turn into a raven and granting her that power to save her life, an underground castle… killing Kagan all over again.

Rayne would have accepted the self-contained memories solely to savor killing Kagan all over again. The problems arose when her counterpart encountered this shard, just like her. When the other Rayne touched the shard, she had absorbed another Rayne's memories.

Except that Rayne's memories, that world was so off-kilter, so off the reservation, and so far from the norm, that it corrupted the other Rayne. It was a cruddy, gratuitous world, and the way the memories shot through the other Rayne's mind was like every shitty movie rolled into one massive ice-pick through the cranium.

It destroyed her, wedging a wretched present into the past. Like writing over pencil with a black-stained brush, overwriting everything. Except the paper was flimsy, barely able to withstand the press of lead.

And now, the ink was soaking through, crumbling the paper as it did.

It had destroyed one Rayne and now threatened to undo her. For now, the first set of memories were acting as stop-gap, but once Rayne was done subsuming those, the second set would break her just like it broke her counterpart.

The swell of memories was short and the shard shook in her hands, inching closer and closer to her flesh. It vibrated harshly, shaking with an eagerness to fuse, to have two surfaces met, to cross into one another. Rayne's eyes widened. She was going to die. There had been a lot of close calls before, but without a doubt, if the point pierced through… Rayne would die a mess.

She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out for help. Severin would surely hear and come to help her. Dead air croaked out from her throat. An old fantasy came back to her: the illusion of mortality, to find someone to settle down with, and then die in the sun.

This would be nothing like that. Death would not come peacefully. It would be a mess of memories, like a lobotomy. But instead of taking away, it would cram and cram until Rayne exploded. And somehow, Rayne knew, that type of death would be pull at something. It seemed innocuous at first, until it seemed like it would pull the pin out of a grenade.

She didn't care all that much if the ensuing explosion harmed the world at large, but there were a few she cared about. Mynce came to mind. Her mentor, now her mentee. Mynce died and reincarnated. The transition between those two lives were seamless, able to reconcile the old with the new. But what would happen to her, and to a lesser extent the world, would be far more grave.

Rayne finished subsuming the first set and the very second the second set came into play, it burned. The firing synapses in her brain nearly exploded. Finally she croaked out a scream and shoved the shard forward back into her counterpart's dead body.

The onslaught of degeneracy ceased, but her fingers refused to unclench from the shard. She started to peel her skin away and it was like ripping off her tongue after licking a frozen pole.

Gritting her teeth, she tried harder and harder to free herself, not caring if she stripped her skin down to the bone. But try as she might, her vampiric strength was no match for this otherworldly shard.

Her mind race as she felt the second set of memories try to seep in her. She panicked, trying to shunt it all back. Yet, those memories had attached themselves to her and it was no different than hacking off a trapped limb to free everything else.

A darker part of her -- that unconscious, subconscious depths -- was foisted off her and into the shard. It bubbled, darkening the clarity, and then drained into the corpse. Rayne stumbled back, tripping over the fountain's edge.

The body hooked on the fountain twitched, before shuddering to life with a defiant yell. She started to shake like someone trying to wriggle their hand inside a glove, flopping through the air. The pale skin turned even whiter, gaining a corpse-y pallor. Dark, tribal-esque tattoos snaked their way across the skin as the clothing transformed into a dark mirror of Rayne's own.

The head started to shake, the red hair bleeding away to a sickly gray. The eye sprung open, revealing milky white eyes. She pulled herself off the spike and landed in the blood. She thrust her arms out, extending out her blades. Two large ones sprung out, followed by several long spikes, mimicking a bird of prey's wingspan.

"I am Dark Rayne the Dark-Hearted," she declared with eager, childish malice.

Rayne sputtered in disbelief. "Oh. What. The. Fuck."

Then the absence of this darkness led to light flooding into the vacant rooms of her mind. It all came back to her. Dark Rayne's sudden, unexplained appearance after getting her ass chomped by a demon, subsequently meeting Ephemera for the first time and being mistaken for a different sister. And then meeting Ferril under the Dark Rayne alter-ego… despite the fact that Rayne only met the two during this whole Shroud mess.

This… Dark Rayne was a blot on her soul, her mind, her memories. A half-formed contrivance that had no bearing on her life. Should have no bearing. It was a sickness that that threatened to dominate her life. Rayne had learned how to deal with her vampiric nature and she did not need to add split-personality to the mix.

Rayne got up, pumping her arms out. The arm-blades sprung out and Rayne gripped the handles. She thrust one out in a challenging manner at the enemy.

Dark Rayne laughed, clapping her hands, before messily wading through the blood. Their fight would be on equal footing with their arm-blades. Dhampirs always favored these types of weapons, able to close the gap between them and regular vampires. Dhampirs were a little slower and a little weaker, especially in a fight. The blades could cut harder than her nails ever could and would be able to reach the target faster, shortening the gap.

Rayne's arm-blades were designed for functionality, despite their unorthodox appearance. Dark Rayne's blades seemed gaudy, almost unfunctional, but there was an aura of power exuding from her. No matter how unwieldly those blades appeared to be, Dark Rayne had the power to brute-force them into working with her. It didn't matter if they got caught on anything when Dark Rayne had the sheer strength to eviscerate anything and everything.

"Gotta say," Rayne started, circling the fountain. "I don't like the look."

"It is fitting, for what we are." Dark Rayne ran her hands over her body in a sensual fashion, shimmying under a gush of blood. It might have been vaguely erotic if it weren't for the blood and the fact that it was with Rayne's body. "Do you know what we are?"

"A bitchy dhampir with a massive chip on her shoulder?" Rayne asked, stopping.

"We. Are. Nothing." Dark Rayne tittered, stepping out from the gushing blood and ran one hand through her slick hair. The redness ran off her like water and oil, an effect of their vampiric heritage. "I thought I was something. After all, I was imprisoned during the Mage Wars, but that means nothing to you I suspect. Forgotten history is paramount to nothing. We are the trees that fall in a silent, unobservant forest. Nobody to hear us, nobody to witness us. When no one is around to forget, there is nothing to rediscover."

"Blah, blah. Nihilistic garbage. Can we just kill each other? Pretty please with a cherry on top?"

Dark Rayne stepped out of the fountain. For an aching, teasing second, it seemed like they were about to fight. Instead, Dark Rayne sat down along the edge, the blades hugging her and poking the fountain in equal measure. Her numerous blades made the whole scene look uncomfortable.

Normally, Rayne wouldn't have gave a fuck and straight up attacked. But her gut instinct told her to stay her hand. On a hunch and with a blink, Rayne switched to her aura vision. Instead of a ghostly blue aura to signify a presence, Dark Rayne was a literal hole in the universe.

Rayne switched it off, giving her shadow-self a hard look.

"Do you think you can win?" Dark Rayne asked.

"I've killed bigger and badder. I'm pretty sure I can kill a bitchier me. I'm half-vampire and you're half of me. By that logic, you're only a quarter of a vampire."

Dark Rayne smiled, all fangs and sharp teeth.

"Do you know why vampires despise dhampirs? Have you ever gave a second's thought about why?"

"Why do humans hate each other over skin, over blood? I'm impure --" Rayne resisted to give the ole jazz hands; it would leave her vulnerable. "--and so in their eyes, I'm lesser. Honestly, who cares?"

"And this is how things are forgotten… out of apathy." Dark Rayne chortled again and Rayne resisted the urge to throttle her.

As loath as she was to admit, a part of her did want to know why she was shunned. If they hadn't hate her so much, she would have been swooped up by them. Oh! And if she kept the bitch talking, someone was bound to come around to the throne room. They could serve as reinforcements or a distraction, it didn't matter. Whatever edge she could get…

"Fine. Why?"

"Your power fluctuates, does it not? Of course it does. I was a part of you, after all. You have never been so powerful before you embarked on this whole Shroud business. But it's not very reliable is it? That's why pure-blooded vampires hate you. You're inconsistent. For all you know, your newfound powers will fade."

"And? That ain't happening out today. Since you're me, then you know I got to work up a good ole rage for my fancy powers. I don't think there's nothing like venting out a bit of self-hatred."

"Ah-ah-ah. You made a fatal miscalculation. I'm your vampiric nature distilled. I would have been on the lower end of the pureblood hierarchy, but still more powerful than you."

"So?" Rayne smirked. "I killed Kagan. For all his age and power, I beat him."

"I am more than a quarter of a vampire. My vampiric essence, a different you's body, and a version of your spirit. I am you, thrice over!"

Then Dark Rayne disappeared. Rayne's eyes widened, before ducking. Her instincts had served her well as the wing of blades nearly took her head off. The blood in her veins ran so fast that Rayne could feel it press against her skin.

She channeled that adrenaline into her perception and speed, trying to keep up with Dark Rayne's speed. But she hadn't reached that peak yet, to push herself to limits, where she moved so quickly it was as if she stopped time itself.

Her heat skipped a beat, right in tune with the knee to her gut, hard enough to scramble her insides. She spluttered and skittered and then finally sprawled on the floor. Dark Rayne was fast, probably viewing Rayne in slow-motion. At that speed, Dark Rayne had all the advantages and was just toying with her.

Scrounging up all the unbridled fury and started to boil her blood, trying to sacrifice pieces of her for power. It was no different than using her own blood for her guns, the Carpathian Dragons. But it was like outstripping her veins, ripping them from her body to use as a cat o' nine tails.

And she did just that, forcing an excess of blood she did not have outside her body. A whirlwind whipped around her, carrying cold, rustic winds that flung Dark Rayne back. In the eye of her storm, Rayne crawled to the fountain and flopped into it. She would have a few more seconds of reprieve granted by her blood storm. As her face sloshed in the murk, she gaped her mouth wide as she could, gulping blood by the gallon.

She thrashed out, invigorated and swung her gaze to Dark Raye, who was peeling herself off the wall. It did not deter her eager, bloodthirsty smile in the slightest. Instead she casually flicked her arm at Rayne, whipping out concentrated tendrils of red.

Flipping to the side, she nearly avoided being skewered. Landing on her feet, Rayne immediately hopped back. Dark Rayne's smile widened ever more impossibly, splitting the cheeks. She whipped out her arm, with the tendrils following suite and breaking the fountain apart.

Ducking under the debris, Rayne ran through her options. Rayne herself couldn't sustain her stopped time-stop speed for long, but Dark Rayne might not have that exact limitation. Either way, Rayne had to keep Dark Rayne far from herself. To get in close was to lose.

To buy herself some time, she sent out a ghostly, concentrated aura image of herself. It wasn't much, being only able to feed remotely and briefly enthrall the weak-minded. But most vampires could shrug it off.

She just needed a moment to breathe. Dark Rayne watched the ghostly visage float toward her. The aura-ghost briefly grappled with Dark Rayne, before she smashed the aura ghost into the ground, into nothingness.

It gave her enough time to activate the Carpathian Dragons attached to bracers and positioned right underneath the blades. She tweaked her wrists toward her, switching the firing modes into the blood hammer mode.

It was a concentrated, explosive blast. Hence, it was a hammer of concussive force. And Dark Rayne was the nail.

With a roar, Rayne started blasting, quickly draining the reservoirs of the Dragons. Dark Rayne leapt into the air, dodging the shots, which violently pitter-pattered against the wall. While in the air, Dark Rayne shot out both hands, raining down jagged columns of blood at her.

Rayne could only stare, forcing her heart to beat faster and dilating her perception. She desperately looked for an opening, as the tendrils came closer and closer. They closed off any and all possible exit points, leaving only impossible pigeon-holes.

She took one step back, then another. Rayne wouldn't be able to tank the barrage. She simply wasn't that type of dhampir. Rayne spied a tiny, narrow gap and something roiled inside her gut. Memories of another life flashed in her mind's eye, the contagion in her fangs, a betrayal, a redemption via transferring powers…

In a flash of light, Rayne shrunk and melted, before being molded in the shape of a raven. With a burst of flight, a black-coated raven with red-striped wings flew through a quickly shrinking opening.

Once she was home free, there was another flash of light and she was back on her free, circling the now descending Dark Rayne. Her counterpart floated softly down, uncaring of Rayne reloading the Dragons.

Her wrists were punctured by the Dragons, siphoning her of the blood inside. She needed to get closer. Each beat of her heart corresponded with an explosive shot at Dark Rayne, who drew her arms back into an 'x' over chest. The blood from her skin retracted and formed a shield in front of her.

But it still knocked her down to earth. Woozy from the continued taxing on her body, Rayne broke into a stumbling gait, while zapping her blood with every bit of energy she had left. The world stuttered to a brief stop and Rayne crossed several yards in a nanosecond.

Dark Rayne started to flicker away, falling away into stopped time. Panicked pressure compressed her chest, making it nigh impossible to breathe.

No!

Rayne drained herself even further, feeling the skin sag and sink down to her bones. She moved, cutting down the distance like it was nothing. With her arms flopping at her sides, her chest slammed into Dark Rayne.

She rocked her head back, before throwing it forward, fangs first. Her teeth had enough time to break the skin and transmit, but not enough to start sucking.

Dark Rayne stabbed Rayne in the gut, forcing her back. She ripped out the blade, retracting them back along her arm, and then reared her fist back.

The blow… it would have knocked Rayne's head clean off. Should have killed her. But instead it flung her back into the destroyed blood fountain. Dark Rayne wanted to play with her prey, before she finished Rayne off.

With her head partially submerged, she breathed in red and dust. It gave her just enough energy to stand back up.

"We're nothing, huh?" Rayne spat out. "Must be why you're taking your time to enjoy this. I thought it'd be meaningless?"

"Hey, hey. I got two sets of contradictory memories, but does it matter? No matter the journey, no matter the destination, it will always be forgotten. The tracks we leave will be wiped away by the wind."

"Oh, fuck off." Rayne spat out some stony crumbs. "I don't think I was ever this nihilistic or introspective."

"Because you're simple."

"And? I can't be that bad, if I beat you."

"How did you 'beat' me, huh?"

Rayne put her hand forth and flipped her off.

"Cute." Dark Rayne brandished her blades, ready to actually fight and beat Rayne down into the ground. She didn't seem to notice the green, gaseous aura emitting from herself.

Until Rayne closed her fist, activating the contagion within Dark Rayne. There was only a second of fear and fury, before Dark Rayne bloated and festered. And then she exploded in black gore and gray flesh.

Rayne let her body slump, feeling the weight on bended knees.

"Holy, fuck, I'm tired…"

She waddled back onto the throne and collapsed onto it, letting her stomach regenerate. Covering her eyes with a hand, she sighed tiredly and just wanted a moment of rest. Of course, that was when the doors flung open and Severin's voice killed the silence.

"Jesus, what happened here?"

Rayne flapped her other hand dismissively. "You know how it is. My evil alter ego possessed the body of a me from another timeline because of a weird magic shard or whatever."

"You know, I can't tell if you're serious."

"Who cares. I'm trying to recover here."

"Is this the shard in question?"

Rayne peaked through her fingers, seeing the trench-coated man pick up the shard.

"Yeah…" Suddenly, Rayne bolted up and nearly tripped in her mad scramble to reach Severin. "Don't touch that!"

Severin immediately dropped it and raised both hands. "Okay, okay…"

Rayne eyed Severin intently, before looking at the shard. It was as clear as murky water. It longer possessed that clarity from before. And she got the strangest sensation that it had feasted, that it was currently content.

She gave it a stomp with the steel stiletto of her shoe, but the shard remained sturdy, durable. With a scowl, she lifted her foot off and winded up a kick. The shard plodded into the fountain, to be forgotten for now.

Turning to her companion, she asked, "What is it, Severin?"

"We've got good news and bad news."

"Hit me with the bad news."

"We think there's a majorly powerful vampire overlord in the city, mostly likely gunning for the throne," Severin explained.

"And the good news?" Rayne asked.

"We've got several visitors that may be able to help. Old allies of yours."

She liked to work alone… Severin being one of the few exceptions.

"Like who?"

"Valerio, for one."

Ah, Centzouitznaua, the first American vampire. He betrayed her once.

Rayne groaned. "I thought you said that was the good news."

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel

Family was a despicable idea that Rayne just couldn't quite quit. It was the moment someone's hand reached out from behind you. And it could be anything from a friendly pat to a knife in the back. Family wasn't those outcomes, but that single tense second beforehand. Like an abused puppy that flinched away from the hand that beat them. The problem was the hand also tended to be one that fed them.

What was unfair that a small kind gesture amounted to so little in the face of overwhelming malice. It was easy to fall and keep falling than to inch their way up. In this regard, kindness was a tiny, tainted splotch upon a canvas of darkness. Her 'family' had often twisted any and all such gestures, blurring that turning point between nicety and cruelty.

We share the blood of Kagan, serve me or die, blah, blah, as they often went, before she cut them down. As if sharing DNA made them family, but it gave them a connection whether they wanted it or not. Sometimes, Rayne didn't think she'd ever know true, familial kindness. Even now, her memories of her mom seemed frail.

Just barely, she remembered the way her mom ruffled her hair and stared out in the distance, but it was only now with hindsight did Rayne recall the occasional faraway look that mom had in her eye.

Knowing that now made it inevitable the good times -- and the memories of those good times -- would be dashed when mom revealed the truth about Rayne's birth. But she didn't blame Rayne for her existence or shun her as a bastard child conceived from rape. She was willing to shoulder being an outcast: an unmarried woman with a little girl in America, during the 1910s no less.

It warmed Rayne's little, half-dead heart that her mom -- despite everything -- loved her.

And then Kagan came back to reclaim Rayne.

Because, family was a despicable idea. It didn't matter which hand was reaching for you when one glove fit all. Be burned once and even a freezing man would fear a campfire. But sometimes -- just sometimes -- life was kind. When in the face of overwhelming darkness, even a small splotch of light could be like the sun.

When Rayne saw the one sister that had shown her any amount of affection, it was like the majesty of the dawn. And like the dawn, it was an event to be awed and fearful of in equal measures. Rayne had nothing to fear from this half-sister, but family was a wretched idea that she was soured on.

Her sister was waiting for her in the hallway, as unchanged as the day they first met. They shared the same pale, beautiful features that marked them as half-sisters. But she had light brown hair tied back in a braid and hazel colored eyes. Their love for tight leather must have been genetic, though her outfit was considerably more modest with the only skin shown from gaps in the sleeves.

And she had a honest-to-god cape. That stupid, stupid cape that only Dracula-wannabes wore. The last time the two of them talked, so many decades ago, Rayne made fun of that dumb cape and her sister mockingly picked a risque outfit to tease Rayne's own fashion choices.

It wasn't quite a sour note to end on, but one expected last meetings to be super-charged with sickening sweet or badly bitter for maximum regret and loss. That memory was just… ordinary. Disappointingly ordinary, barely noteworthy. It was just a dumb conversation… one of the few that Rayne ever got with her half-sister.

Before Rayne knew what she was doing, she was hugging her sister tight. She buried her face in her sister's shoulder to hide the tears.

"Hello, Rayne," Svetlana Lupescu said quietly in her soft Romanian accent.

She lifted her eyes up, seeing Severin a few feet in front of her. Hidden from Svetlana's sight, he had his arms crossed and wore the biggest shit-eating grin on his face. Rayne flipped him off, using bravado to shield herself from embarrassment, to little effect.

Everything just dawned on Rayne. It was stupid, it was embarrassing, and Rayne was just mortified. Rayne hadn't known Svetlana that long. They only had a smattering of short meetings, bereft of any hostility. And that was made these embers suns in the dark.

It was like a grenade, really. A small, short thing, but full of dynamic energy and change. After all, Svetlana -- on loan from Spookhouse to Brimstone Society -- helped lay the foundations for Rayne's fighting style with the arm-blades.

Did Svetlana think much of these moments like Rayne did? Was it any different than the presumptions made from her other half-siblings, but just a shade more positive?

Before she could make more of a scene, Rayne pulled back. She rubbed the side of her arm and looked away. A stupid sense of shame filled her like never before. Rayne had thought she had no shame, having the boundless confidence to wear revealing and frankly impractical outfits to combat. No matter anyone said, no matter their judgement, Rayne cared little.

It seemed nobody's opinions mattered to her. Except her own, which now it suddenly seemed turned against her.

To move on from the weird melancholy, she quickly said, "What happened? I heard you were dead when Spookhouse was destroyed. The only survivor was that Stranger guy and he wouldn't ever give me the time of the day! What the hell happened?"

Svetlana held a bitter smile and said simply, "The Cult of Kagan happened. And the funny thing was, they weren't even after me. That particular sect was after the Stranger."

"Oh…"

It was morbid on how much meaning could be compacted into a single syllable. A lifetime of tragedy compressed into a sound. Like how symbols hold power given to them by a people. And they gave meaning to this noise, because words could not explain the extent of their tragic history.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Rayne offered.

"The danger was that great to my life that Stranger had to help fake my death. A very prickly man, but reliable." She sighed forlornly. "And ultimately still a man."

The bitter smile turned just a shade cruel. "But you gutted our bastard father. How did it feel?"

"Everything I dreamed of and more." Rayne shook her head, feeling the same bittersweet smile on her face. "The problem was that rat-fucker left me an empire."

"If not you, then someone else would have filled in the vacuum. And I'm glad you killed Kagan, it meant that I no longer had to hide. I did try to keep an eye on you now and again, but Brimstone was compromised."

"Well, thanks," Rayne said awkwardly. She looked past Svetlana, seeing Severin tap at his wrist. "But there's always something going on. I don't think we'll ever get some downtime together."

"Is there no greater bonding activity than slaying monsters together?"

"Hell yeah."

Rayne raised her arm, the blade curving alongside it. Svetlana smirked and raised her own arm with its own blade. There was a sharp clang as the blades bumped against one another.

Severin started walking down the vaulted corridor. As he got ahead, he spun back around and motioned over his shoulder. Then he turned back around not even breaking his stride. Rayne shot Svetlana an apologetic look before quickly catching up with Severin.

"Why the hell couldn't you lead with the fucking fact that Svetlana was alive?" she hissed.

"First off, I only just discovered that's she alive. Second, don't you feel better about Valerio? He would have soured your mood and brought you down. By having this news second, it can only uplift you."

Damnit, he's right.

"Don't be a dick about it next time." Rayne huffed, stuck her tongue at him, and then slowed her pace to match Svetlana's.

Severin led them to a room at the end of the corridor and pushed open the door. It led to some sort of chapel, no doubt where these vampire fucks held weird blood rituals. The stain-glassed window in the back was broken, revealing the red shrouded sky.

Four people were waiting for her.

Valerio, in his dark trench coat and tie, lurked in the corner. He had long dark hair and a desolate look on his face. Valerio looked at her and Rayne looked away, seeing two women at a nearby table.

One of them was from the Red Sun: an off-shoot from the Eastern branch of the Brimstone Society. They had been destroyed and rebuilt in secret, intent on acting as a check to Brimstone proper. Her presence did not bode well for any relations with Brimstone.

Ayano of the Red Sun stood regally and alert in her tight black pants and samurai-like vest, which exposed a great portion of her chest. Though unlike Rayne's clothing choices, which were purely for asthetic reasons, Ayano must have subscribed to the distraction school of thought.

Either a flash of tits would distract people or the exposed skin would draw their gaze to an obvious weak spot. Of course, only fools would go for such an opening. Ayano's sword was at her side, though it gave little indication of her actual skill level. Considering that Ayano could stand on equal footing with Rayne, there was little cause for concern.

Ayano noticed Rayne and nodded. Then she went back to being ram-rod straight, tolerating the second woman invading her personal space. The other woman was crouched on the table and generally being a nuisance.

Tiger Wraith was some sort of revenant or whatever the fuck. She was a deathly pale, white-haired woman with tiger-like stripes around her face. She wore a short leather jacket with an tiger patterned, sleeveless shirt that exposed her midriff.

Honestly, that whole encounter with Tiger Wraith was weird and nonsensical. Even without the Dark Rayne mess, Tiger Wraith just sorta showed up. And then there was a giant demon worm or something. Rayne had actually forgotten about Tiger Wraith until today.

And finally…

A pint-sized girl slammed against her hips. Rayne chuckled softly and ruffled the girl's hair.

"Hello, Mynce."

Mynce looked up at Rayne and beamed. She was a teenage girl of Tibetan descent and the reincarnation of Rayne's old teacher. And their positions were now reversed. Rayne remembered Mynce getting exasperated and worried whenever Rayne did something so headstrong.

And now on the advent of an unknown threat, Rayne found herself hesitant at letting Mynce in on the fighting. Despite Mynce having regained all of her old skills, she had little to no experience. At least not in this life.

She gently pried Mynce away from her and marched to the center of the room. She turned around, sauntered a few steps back with arms stretched wide.

"Well, folks. You know how it is. There's some big-ass threat that we need to take care of. Something that warrants all of us, apparently." She paused, as if to stoke dramatic tension, but really was searching for what else to say. "But I have no fucking clue what it is beyond it being another fucker to kill. So, Severin take the floor."

Before Severin could say anything, Ayano stepped forward and spoke, "The vampire overlord can wait. We have more pressing matters to contend with."

"My reconnaissance has revealed that this vampire is a serious threat. I don't know his exact ability, but he just seems to make things happen," Severin said.

"And we will deal with him in due time," Ayano said, testily. She stepped forward, inching out Severin from the center of the room. "But the Red Sun has received word of an existential threat to this universe."

"How do you know?" Rayne asked curiously.

"Do you truly wish to know? Because I know how you westerners will sum it up: as eastern, mystical bullshit."

"Point."

"You have my respect, Rayne, from one warrior to another. But this such things are not your strong suit."

"Just trying to be polite," Rayne muttered.

"Is it like the old gods?" Valerio interrupted.

Rayne kept her eyes focused on Ayano, knowing she would have glared at him. There was petty antagonism and needless antagonism. Rayne was self-aware enough to know that today she would have fallen on the latter.

Then she parsed through what he said and felt a chill that affected even her half-dead body. Fucking Lovecraft bullshit. In her experience, there was weird tentacle shit and then there was the cosmic horror.

If they were dealing with the second, then they were basically hanging on a thread. Usually there was some old-ass tomes or artifacts that let them stand a chance. Which was how Rayne and Valerio even won in the first place and even then, Rayne was half-sure that the universe was… muddled. Little things that didn't quite align right.

Ayano clarified, "Not ancient, eldritch gods. If that was the case, all of Red Sun and its allies would wage a suicidal charge to ensure the future of the world. No, the problem is much smaller and that makes it much greater. Most of the Red Sun does not believe this threat, for it is a mere dhampir. One of Kagan's, but not quite."

Both Rayne and Svetlana perked up at that.

"I thought we were the only ones left," Rayne said.

"You two are," Ayano replied.

"What do you mean, not quite?" Svetlana asked.

"The reason why this dhampir is a threat because she isn't from this timeline. As far as the Red Sun can tell, she isn't from a radically divergent timeline. She's from a defunct one. It is said that a river may split into two, allowing for coexistence. Every choice made may be likened to a branch."

Tiger Wraith butted in, "But not every choice warrants a river. Little what-ifs that exist in their own bubbles before they pop. They will both exist and not exist. Their presence as a bubble pre-pop will be there, but you can't swim in a bubble like you could with a river."

"And how do you know that?" Rayne asked while Ayano nodded.

"Sorta got caught up in a war of independents. You learn some stuff when you're trying to make your way back to your own universe."

What the fuck, Rayne thought, that explains nothing.

"That is why it is a problem. They aren't supposed to be real in a metaphysical sense and it's why your brief jaunt through time didn't utterly destroy the present. Any real divergence would not have crystallized. And the evidence we discovered of your past presence had no real effect. You're quite lucky otherwise you would have had to create a bootstrap paradox blind."

"That trip was the cyber-vampire's fault," Rayne rebutted.

Ayano ignored her and continued, "Through circumstances we do not know, our world cracked in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. As I understand it, you fought a counterpart of yours, Rayne."

"Sorta. It's really weird. Evil version of me possessing the corpse of a different me, while having consumed the energies of a different me." Everyone in the room gave her a confused look. "Best not to think about it."

Ayano cleared her throat. "Any metaphysical damage your counterpart would have been relegated solely to you. Though from what I sensed, she was from a river. But your Schrödinger half-sister does not exist in this universe, instead coming from a bubble, so any damage would splash into the fabric of reality. Factor in her abilities tied to the ethereal and that damage could be honed to a sharp blade, allowing vivisection of reality's fabric."

"Okay, evil sister. What else is new?"

The Red Sun operative shook her head. "Not evil. The Red Sun hosted the dhampir -- Mora -- for a short while before Brimstone Society attacked us and stole Mora away."

Rayne sighed, closed her eyes. It seemed inevitable now that she would have to go to war against Brimstone. You didn't carry a flag without becoming bit of a nationalistic prick. How many times did Brimstone yanked her chain? And how many times did she crawl back to it after kicking their asses back in line? A memory from the other Rayne came on how easily that version of Brimstone Society betrayed her.

Ayano's voice rang through the dark, solidifying Rayne's decision.

"We believe that they intend to use Mora in a ritual to rewrite the universe by striking the supernatural from this world. Of course, they do not realize that it's because of these elements that make our world a river rather than a bubble."

"So, stupid fools want to cleanse and genocide people like us." Rayne chuckled, the throaty sounds casting her head downwards. "Ya know, I think Brimstone's got a long history of pulling crap like this. Monsters are real assholes, but do we ever give much thought to humanity being assholes? I mean, for fuck's sake, it was like this during World War II. Once we got rid of the G.G.G., did we ever focus on the actual Reich? Nope. Brimstone washed its hands once I killed some demon-god. Too much tunnel-vision on what they deem unnatural, but they seem perfectly okay with using people like us for their dirty work and disposing us when we become inconvenient. I know this is going to be a group thing, but I would like to make it known we shouldn't sue for peace. Brimstone's gotta go down, no ifs or buts."

Everyone looked at Rayne, digesting her radical declaration, and then at each other. It was a harder declaration than they had expecting. It seemed too much like the rhetoric of monsters who see humanity as chattel. But the world had changed with Kagan and the Shroud. It wasn't just vampires, but all manners of creatures were now crawling out the woodwork at this dark dawn.

No longer were monsters relegated to campfire stories and the dark under the bed. It was no longer man's world; they no longer held domain over the watering hole and dictated on how people like Rayne should conduct themselves. They could not just feast until their gluttony was sated and leave only scraps. Now, they had to share and humanity was so very rarely inclined to share.

In Rayne's opinion, a more hardline stance needed to be taken. A coalition, much like this current group, was needed. A mix of humans and the strange, brought together to drag this world into a semblance of peace. If monsters stood in their way, they would perish. And if humans stood in their way, they too would perish.

"I'm with you, Rayne," Mynce declared suddenly. She took a sure step forward and squared her shoulders. "I may not remember everything from my past life, but I seen enough in this life. They did not treat me the best, but there were a few that accepted me. That did not look through a lens of high-and-mighty superiority. So, if some people in Brimstone are discontent or empathetic, then we should spare them. I do not think Brimstone should be destroyed root and branch."

How naïve, a dark part of Rayne thought. The coldness of the thought startled her. Because it didn't matter if she exorcised a manifestation of her dark side. She couldn't get rid it anymore than she could be rid of her shadow. She needed to accept these instincts, not to shove them in a corner and let them fester.

Yes, she thought, it's naïve, but pure.

"Then, please," Rayne started, staring into Mynce's eyes. "Keep me in line."

Mynce smiled. "Of course."

Ayano spoke next. "It is the purpose of the Red Sun to balance out Brimstone. But it is clear that the pendulum has swung too far. And it is time to start anew. I am in agreement with what must happen. Though I am unsure of what comes next. The Red Sun's involvement beyond that is to be decided."

Rayne looked at Severin, who shrugged. "Hey, you know I'm not much of a leading man. But we're partners; I got your back."

She had to resist a stupid, sappy smile. In this long life, people came and went. Affirming these close connections would sweeten these moments for today. And make them all the more bitter later.

And then Valerio ruined it by speaking.

"I know it's not much, but I'm with you."

"Thanks…" Rayne trailed.

No matter her feelings, Valerio could be classified as a fair-weather friend, at this point. Inasmuch as universe-destroying weather could be considered fair. But Rayne doubted there were any personal tribulations that would cause another betrayal. And Valerio knew Rayne would utterly destroy him if he fucked with her again.

Thankfully before the tension could reach critical levels, Tiger Wraith chimed in.

"I go where the winds blow. After this job, who knows."

A ghastly sort of shiver ran through her, a very sure-fire sign of the otherworldly. Fucking ghosts and demons were hell to handle. Rayne eyed Tiger Wraith with scrutinizing intent. Damnit, she should have paid more attention to Tiger Wraith during their first encounter. That information was the sort of thing that tended to become relevant later.

Finally Svetlana spoke, "If Brimstone was more like Spookhouse, aligned to a government and accepting of whoever came to their doorstep, I would have more reservations. But Brimstone has been cut adrift for centuries, constantly breaking and reforming. You should know that fact personally. And Brimstone is at its worst iteration. Are forces like them needed to fight back against the monsters overwhelming the city? Perhaps. But that is what the military and Spookhouse's replacement -- whatever they may be -- is for."

"You sound unsure," Rayne said.

"A little. This strays a bit too close to fighting on the side of vampires. You may hold the throne, but you're like the sun. Something to be feared, rules only adhered to because of the fear of retribution. And even then, the sun isn't as absolute as it used to be." She gestured out the window, where the red stained above. "Vampires are a scourge, a parasite species without humanity."

"I can take it or leave it with my humanity, personally. I'm still a person, fangs or no fangs, but I get it," Rayne said, carelessly.

Svetlana sighed and it felt more like a shockwave. Already, she could feel the tides shift into what might be the first family fight that could hurt her on an emotional level. With Kagan, with her half-siblings, there was a blanket of hate that shielded her.

But here, there was an actual division. Damn her mouth.

"And you shouldn't, Rayne."

Not like I have an option, she was about to retort. The blaséness of the statement struck her. How uncaring, how privileged Rayne must have been to embrace her nature.

Misreading her, Svetlana elaborated, "I'm not saying every vampire needs to die. On an individual level, like you or I or even Valerio, we can be pleasant. On the whole, however, they are like excess sewage that threatens to pollute the ocean. There are dogs and there are wolves. And sadly, we live in a world of wolves."

"I do agree…"

Rayne looked away. It wasn't like they were in disagreement about vampires as a whole, but somehow they were on different pages. Now wasn't the time to mention that there was a dhampir cure and Rayne had effectively inoculated herself against it. Briefly, Rayne thought about not telling her and chided herself for such stupidity. Because even if Rayne feared a long life alone, Svetlana didn't deserve to be dragged alongside her. But she wasn't going to air out family matters in front of everybody.

"How much time do we have before this doomsday ritual goes off?" Rayne asked Ayano, deliberately changing the subject.

"The witching hour. Many mystical occurrences often happen upon that hour. And given it is noon, we have more than enough time to mount an assault. Unlike your foolhardy proclivities of charging in, I would like to do some recon before we do anything else."

"How long will that take?" Rayne asked.

"Two hours at most."

"Okay." Rayne nodded, looking at the few allies she had. "Everybody get ready to move out when Ayano returns. Until then, feel free to wander around the place. Loot it or whatever, I'm sure there's something here to keep you all entertained until then."

There was little else to be said and everybody began to shuffle out. Ayano practically disappeared and Severin actually disappeared, as was his way. Mynce looked at Rayne with an unknown look in her eye before she left. Valerio kept looking over his shoulder as he left and Tiger Wraith looked a little lost when she exited the room.

Before Svetlana could leave, Rayne called out, "Svetlana, wait, I need to talk to you."

XXX

Family was an idea that Svetlana wanted to try. She never knew Kagan beyond his horrid reputation, and mother was more of an idea. Her upbringing was one of cold wealth and freezing sterility. It had chilled her to the bone, rusting the guts and gears of her soul.

She had knew how different she was with every disgusted or pitying look from her mother's family. Spookhouse was the best thing to ever happen to her, but it was a different shade of loneliness tempered only by professionalism. Svetlana could trust them to have her back, but not to hug her and tell her everything was alright. In a certain light, she could almost see them as family.

She remembered meeting Rayne, the first time. A waif of a girl that seemed to waver between cute shyness and headstrong fury. If there was anything that Svetlana regretted, it was letting the professionalism bleed into their interactions. She always told herself that they always had time to rectify that and then life happened.

"Svetlana," Rayne said, quietly.

Suddenly, Rayne seemed like more like a young woman, more like a little sister under this light. A little sister who had gotten into trouble and now had to fess up.

"I…" She swallowed, shook her head. "You…"

"It's okay, Rayne. You can take your time."

Rayne flinched and then exhaled, her shoulders drooping. And then she blurted out, "There's a cure for dhampirs."

The world seemed to hold its breath, deafening everything, and Svetlana could only hear the quiet bellows of her breath.

"What?" The word slipped out, as light as a dust mote and as rough as a tumbleweed.

"See, there was a cure at Brimstone, back when they were, uh crazy. Run by a former Nazi and cultists for old gods, you see. And they tried to take me down, by making me a human. But I made myself immune ahead of time."

Svetlana held her breath. She tried to focus on the prospect of a cure, a chance to finally be mortal. Yet, her thoughts kept straying towards Rayne and how she chose to be a dhampir. The circumstances of their birth could not be controlled, but how they chose to live their lives was something they could control.

And she found herself disappointed by Rayne's choice.

"I see…"

Rayne's eyes met hers and then glanced away.

"You know, it's okay to want to be human. For the brief time that I was, it was pleasant. But it wasn't for me. If you want to be human, after all this, I won't mind. I'd still like to spend some time with you while I can."

It seemed like they were on two different wavelengths on this. Rayne must have seen the two of them as brushed from the same stroke. Svetlana pulled back from the initial gut-reaction and tried to view it from Rayne's high-heeled shoes. It wasn't that hard, given that they were both dhampirs.

Even if they weren't immortal -- most dhampirs were cannon fodder that didn't live past a century at best -- Rayne was potentially looking at several centuries without any proper family. Could Svetlana fault her for that?

For whatever reason, Rayne liked being a dhampir, but… she was a fluke in terms of her abilities. She never really did stop evolving and fluctuating. Whereas Svetlana was on the very, very low end of dhampir power, to the point where just being near a church would hurt her.

Svetlana stilled, realizing that she may be actually jealous of Rayne, like a big sister would with an overachieving little sister. Why would she focus on that when Rayne made it known that it was possible to be rid of her vampiric nature?

"I apologize if I'm being weird about this," Svetlana said, breaking the silence. "It's a lot to take in."

"Yeah…" Rayne rubbed her arm.

Svetlana wasn't used to this, being someone to be looked up to. If anything, it should be the other way around. Rayne was the more successful, the more infamous dhampir between the two of them.

"Hey, me being human or dhampir, you're still going to be my little sister. And we should get to know each other more, if that's okay with you."

Rayne smiled and Svetlana didn't mind the fangs.

XXX

Ayano, second command of the Red Sun, trudged through the sewers of this ruined city. The group followed behind her, trusting in her decision. It was only sensible. Rayne was a leader of them much in a way that ships followed a hurricane.

She created a wave and others followed in her wake.

The ocean would settle soon enough and Ayano would see where Rayne stood after that. Did it matter if a vampire overlord was half-human, if they continued to act within the methodology of those that came before them?

No.

She was generalizing, much like Brimstone did, and the Red Sun had to be better than that. They stopped at the crossroads and Ayano turned to Rayne with an expectant look.

The dhampir hummed, tapped a red-painted nail on her chin. The position of leadership was clearly foreign to her and the next few words would decide Ayano's thoughts on Rayne's current queendom.

"Alright," Rayne said, clapping her hands and hopping next to Ayano. She planted a hand on Ayano's shoulder, purely to annoy her. "I know I'm not much of a stealth expert, so I'm going loud. However, Ayano informed me there's a secondary entrance. I'm thinking that those who are sneakier than I should go through there, thin them out a bit and then go loud. While they're pulling back from the front, that's when me and whoever charges in."

A bare-bones plan, Ayano thought, but what else can you expect?

"A sensible plan, the best we can expect from Rayne," Severin said. "Well, I guess I'm going to lead this second group. I'm not much of a fighter, though."

"Why don't you go with Severin, Mynce?" Rayne asked, facing her reincarnated protégé.

"I'd rather go with you!" Mynce proclaimed, childishly stamping her foot.

Unlike the casual wear from hours before, she wore a dark purple uniform made from a bullet-resistant fabric. It covered most of her body, leaving only her eyes visible much like the stereotypical perception of the ninja. Sliced seams ran along certain areas of the uniform and Ayano could guess that Rayne hacked it together from an old Brimstone outfit.

Rayne, after all, had quite the reaction when Mynce wanted to go to battle wearing something akin to Rayne's outfit. Even now, Rayne was taking a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose with eyes closed. Mynce didn't reincarnate as a dhampir in this life and only held a portion of her old skills. As it stood, Mynce was several levels below Ayano.

Food for thought, if Ayano's own haughty thoughts rebounded and caused her to become someone like Rayne in the next life.

"For me, please," Rayne pleaded.

Mynce huffed out, "Fine."

"I shall go with the second team," Ayano offered, unspoken were the words that she would help keep Mynce safe.

"Okay, good. Anyone on Team Rayne?"

Valerio inhaled sharply, like a boy made to speak in front of a large audience.

"You may decide my placement, Rayne."

"Ugh… fine. You're with me, Valerio."

"It would have been kinder to have died saving you," he muttered under his breath.

"Suck it up, buttercup. You didn't die so now you have to live with your choices."

Tiger Wraith looked at Svetlana and then back at Rayne.

"I guess we're with you, Rayne." She reached down to her boots, grabbed her two ridiculously sized knives, and gave them a twirl. The two stepped next to Rayne, while Valerio kept his distance.

Ayano followed Severin down a different path, hand on the sword's handle. Mynce grumbled behind her, tapping at her daggers.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Ayano held her breath and stayed her hand. She was young once, and her antics were mostly tolerated until she grew out of it. But Ayano could claim that she never once engaged in such tomfoolery in the middle of a mission.

They reached their destination: a small grate in the sewer wall. Severin looked back at the two, smirked, and walked through the shadows -- saving him the trouble of contorting through the narrow passage. The warrior sighed and the teenager was hopping on her two feet, stretching and limbering up.

"Do your duty, Ayano. This no different than wading in the blood and offal of your enemies," she muttered to herself.

"You know, I kinda miss being a dhampir," Mynce said, moving next to Ayano. "You have a great sense of smell and it's markedly different than a human's. This sewer stuff wouldn't bother a dhampir. Unless you're a prissy like Rayne."

Ayano got a grip on one side of the grate and nudged her head at the opposite side. Mynce got the hint and took grabbed the bar.

The two of them tried yanking it out, but it barely budged in its frame. Ayano exhaled and rested her forehead against the wall. Damp hair fluttered at her cheeks as she gritted her teeth. She wasn't quite superhuman, but just barely edged out peak human level. And compared to vampires and monsters, the epitome of humanity wasn't that strong.

"Come on…" she hissed. "We're not trying to break the damn bars, we're trying to pull out a shoddy frame. Entirely doable."

"You okay, Miss Ayano?"

"I'm fine. Just lamenting my humanity."

"You know, it's not bad being human."

"Says the ex-dhampir," she snapped.

Mynce ignored her with a serenity beyond her bodily age. "As a dhampir, I cannot dance in the light of the sun. Under the shroud of stars could I gaze, but that multitude is barred from me and they are no true replacement for the sun. During the day in cities much like these, all of us humans move together. Though we are not close to one another, we are all together. A herd of humanity that does not always sees its strength. When we are not frightened like sheep, we can be a pack of wolves. It takes all of us to take down the prey. You and me? We can accomplish something as minor as this."

Ayano meditated on this and then nodded with stark acceptance. And then the illusion of peace was shattered by Mynce's next words.

"Now, let's get this fucking grate."

And then they heaved, the metal skidding slowly across the brick, kicking up dust. Ayano hissed to herself and finally tore the damn thing off. She didn't let herself huff and puff, instead running on pure adrenaline, grabbed the top of the opening.

Ayano vaulted herself in as if it were a slide. As she forced a momentum through the dark and cramped tunnel, she found herself remembering way back when. Back when her Red Sun trainers let her have some time for a break, to let her know why they fought. Childish stand-offs in the sand and shooting through tunnels and climbing perilous heights.

It almost made her smile.

She burst onto a rather regrettable scene. A heavily armored Brimstone soldier pointing a large machine gun at Severin. He had his back to the wall with his hands up and that damnable smirk on his face.

Ayano would have questioned the man's competence if it weren't for the way his eyes glanced in her direction. No doubt she had some part to play in his oh-so brilliant plan.

Dashing forward and drawing her sword, she punctured straight through a gap in the soldier's armor plating. The man gasped, choking on his own blood. She wrangled him and his gun's barrel away from Severin, pointing him in the direction of the tube.

Mynce sprung from the hole and dug her daggers into the man's neck, further cutting off the flow to his lungs. A dying scream did not get its chance to blossom, instead remaining a pitiful croak that lapsed into nothing.

"Whew, that was intense," Mynce said.

Ayano gave Severin an annoyed look.

"All part of my masterful plan," Severin said, brushing off his coat. "Did you see the big metal door on your recon?"

Ayano glanced further down, seeing a large vault-like door that was wide open. In truth, stealth and reconnaissance weren't all that precise, especially when it was done under a few hours. When she first transverse these sewers, Ayano relied on a crude form of echolocation and tailing a patrol. It did not give her a complete map, but rather some good guesses.

"No, I did not," she gritted.

"Well, it necessitated me drawing them out with a clever lie." He crouched down, ripped a keycard from the Brimstone guard, and briskly strolled toward the entrance. "Now, let's go be a big damn distraction."

XXX

The sudden explosion nearly rocked the trio off their feet. It was the opening volley to this battle. Tiger Wraith's blades seemed to shake, anxious at partaking in this mission. It was certainly a step up from fighting monsters.

Then a strange sort of determination filled her, setting her at ease. If there was any doubt to the righteousness of this mission, the spirit inside of her put it to rest. Were she to stop now or otherwise betray her purpose, the spirit might flit away and leave her nothing but a corpse.

There was no real breath drawn between the three of them. No clear indication of their oncoming charge. And then the two dhampirs' blades were sprung, the hinges grinding in that microsecond of function.

Still, they did not move, save for the vampires' eyes. What did those eyes see that the dead cannot? Tiger Wraith squinted, trying to cajole the spirit inside to give her some insight. What she got in return was dread and doom.

Thanks spirit, how helpful.

As if she needed more surety of this cause. Any more and she could be a veritable Joan of Arc. Rayne and Svetlana shared a look before nodding. It seemed like they had forgotten her. They glanced at Valerio, but their gazes always seemed to pass over her. Was it some weird effect of her state of being?

She cleared her throat and the three startled as they looked over their shoulders.

"Oh, Tiger Wraith…" Rayne said uncomfortably. She rolled her shoulder, the blade drawing circles in the air. "Forgot about you. There's about fifty enemies we gotta worry about. Everyone else is, uh, variable. Just don't wantonly slaughter them unless they become troublesome. Now… we all ready?"

"I'll go first and draw their fire," Valerio said.

Rayne nodded uneasily and then Valerio was off. At the sound of gunfire, they gave him twenty seconds. Then Rayne dashed forward, with Svetlana following suit. Tiger Wraith sighed and then chased after them, only slightly lagging behind.

The screams of the dying quickly filled the air as Tiger Wraith flung herself into the Brimstone compound. She arrived just in time to see Rayne's first strafing run against the grouped up soldiers. Her blades scribed a song of slaughter, bleeding red on black.

The crescendo wavered as another song tried supplanting Rayne's song. But Svetlana carried the tune, cutting the survivors down in the wake of Rayne's charge. Svetlana stalked to the left as Rayne faced the right, firing bloody explosions at the reinforcements coming in.

The vials along her blades drained quickly, leaving an empty sort of clarity. Her back was exposed as trained Brimstone assassins crept up with their own blades. And Tiger Wraith leapt into the fray, cutting them down.

Unlike the violent rhythms with a coherence of malice, there was only a nonsensical flow to Tiger Wraith's actions. Like writing a bunch of words that held meaning when singularly read, but truly meant nothing when combing through the entirety of the work.

She killed and didn't quite understand why.

The spirit inside never gave an overarching reason beyond slaying evil and if pressed, Tiger Wraith would have claimed she killed for her survival. But Tiger Wraith was dying in a strange way, just not fully dead yet. Fully crossing over was something she didn't truly fear.

As she parried a blow, pirouetted away another, and stabbed, she had to truly wonder why her body acted as it did. At that thought, a blade swam toward her. Tiger Wraith ducked and then slammed a blade through the base of someone's skull. Well, she could always trust it in the matters of her survival.

These were joyless matters. Rayne, however, grinned widely as she stabbed someone in the gut and brought them to their knees. And then she raised her head up high, then snapped it low, fangs first. Tiger Wraith would have felt a churning stomach, if she was still alive. She had to wonder if this Rayne was any better than that Darkrayne character.

Then an alarm blared and three elite soldiers stepped out from a hidden room, with miniguns in their hands. They started to rev up, spinning cylinders of death that prepared to breathe lead.

Tiger Wraith knew her limits and there was no possible way to dodge the bullets. She prepared to embrace whatever came after, if the spirit would permit her to die.

And then Rayne disappeared from where she was standing.

She barely had enough time to gasp as the three soldiers were suddenly headless. Rayne was heaving, hands on bent knees, and bloody blades drip fed the linoleum floor.

"Ain't nothing to it…" she croaked out.

Rayne stood on shaky legs, gave her a thumbs up, and then walked off to kill more people.

XXX

When all was said and done, Brimstone was taken down fairly easy. It was actually sorta refreshing, because usually Rayne was working against the clock as she arrived just in the nick of time to stop the universe-ending ritual. Talk about timing… and fortune favoring them.

Though Brimstone stood little chance, in hindsight. They did all their best work in the shadows… and by utilizing the supernatural against the supernatural. The moment they shifted their M.O., their death warrants were signed. They couldn't have expected to win a full-on war, but Rayne knew they would have gone guerrilla… and against the entirely wrong people.

If they weren't taken down, they would have been like a gangly, siphoning wart. It would just drain at the most inopportune time. Any victory against Rayne would be made into more than it was, as they focused on the easy targets while completely ignoring the real threat.

And if they ever won against Rayne, they would have thrown a fucking victory party and be promptly fucked the next day when a vampire overlord came by to take her throne. They would have none of her qualms and Brimstone would see a real monster for the first time in their miserable lives. Well, besides every time they looked in the mirror, of course.

The noncombatants and survivors of the Brimstone cowered in the main floor of this place. Another fucking problem she wasn't equipped to deal with. Rayne looked at her blood-splattered, nigh nude self, and realized how fucky all this was.

Rayne sighed and looked at the masses before her. The… subjects of her kingdom. God, that sounded pretentious. She made a mental note never to speak that phrase outloud.

"Okay, people!" she called out, "This is all sorts of fucked for everyone. I know I pretty much killed your saviors and they probably told you I'm queen-bitch of the vampires. All that is objectively true. But these guys were kinda assholes. I should know. I worked for them and just because I failed to stop the Shroud… the red sky stuff, if they haven't told you. It isn't my fault! I was literally the only one fighting to stop the Shroud, but the original bastard who did the Shroud had more fucking shit! I'm one woman! And then these assholes leave me high and dry with the bill! Never let it be said that I leave someone else with the bill. So, I'm willing to take you as my subjects!"

Jesus fucking Christ, Rayne. Control your damn mouth for once.

"Or what? Will you leave us to die?!" a voice called out.

And like a broken dam, more voices flooded out.

"Wait, you caused this?"

"You're a vampire?"

"I want my mom!"

"It's your fault that my wife died!"

The sounds started to seethe with incomprehensibility. Rayne sighed again, raised her right arm, and fired a Dragon. She only just remembered that it was set to Blood Hammer mode. An explosion raked the ceiling and she shuddered as flaky bits rained on her shoulders.

But the desired results were achieved and they were shut up.

"To answer your questions. Hey, man, I won't leave you to die, but if you don't want to be saved then what can I do? And no, I didn't fucking cause this. I happen to like humanity's world and now it's gone. This was gonna happen with or without my involvement. If I wasn't queen-bitch, then it would have been a bastard-king that would have treated you like cattle. Let me stress this next bit."

Rayne took a deep breath and then bellowed out, "I don't want this fucking job!"

The crowd grew even more quiet, adding another layer to suffocate sound. Rayne shook her head and continued, "Really, I have been trying to run things for the last couple of days and it hurts my head. And now? I have to take you ungrateful people in! Look, if you think you can do some of my job better, then by all means! I will let you do whatever you think needs to be done! But please, don't assume I'm more competent than I actually am. At least, when it comes to anything but killing people."

A little boy pushed through the crowd and spoke with a seriousness unbefitting his age.

"Why couldn't you leave Brimstone alone? They saved me."

"Kid, if they made contact with me to take the reins, I would have let them. But they did not respond. And then I get word that they plan to exterminate me." She waved pointed fingers at herself. "Me! Again, let me stress this to you people, I don't want this job. And if it isn't me, a full-blooded vampire's gonna swoop in and make things even worse for you."

Something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She let the speechly gravitas that had built up fade a bit as she turned to look, only dimly aware that the crowd followed her gaze. Svetlana was escorting a shaking, alabaster pale woman with white hair. Svetlana's cape was wrapped around her, but it got caught on something.

And then Mora, Rayne's newly discovered half-sister, was unveiled for the world to see. Ritualistic symbols had been carved into her body, scarring and branding her into a tapestry of mutilation. Svetlana glared at everyone, picked up the cape to cover Mora, and continued to escort her away.

"Did Brimstone do that?" the boy asked.

"Yeah," Rayne said, her throat suddenly dry.

"But why?" His words were just like every other little kid whose heroes turned out to be less than perfect.

"A magic ritual to rewrite reality or something. Trust me, doomsday plots get a little old after your fifth one."

"Magic isn't real!" A voice called out.

Rayne could already tell the clamor was going to get worse again, so she raised her arm again and the crowd fell silent again.

"I'm half-vampire! There are vampires and monsters running about! Is magic really that hard of a stretch?" She rubbed her temples in frustration. Fucking… who the hell ever wanted to be queen? "Look, Severin and the others will lead you to our tower. It's safe, more or less. You're welcome to stay there or run or do whatever. Right now, I just want to go to my sister."

Before they could say or do anything else, Rayne walked toward Svetlana and Mora. She caught up to them and held Mora's shoulders, searching for something in those indigo eyes.

"Rayne?" she murmured in a hoarse voice.

It broke her heart, seeing a connection that wasn't really hers. But… was this how estranged parents felt when meeting their child for the first time? Wanting to expand upon an unearned, undeserved connection?

"You saved me again," Mora continued.

It didn't matter, at the end of the day. Rayne hugged her sister tight and even Svetlana joined in.

Rayne felt like she could take on almost anything, in that moment.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

Spoiler: What is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure?

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a manga series broken into several parts that each follow a protagonist connected to one another through some form of familial lines. The first part is called Phantom Blood and features the feud between the step-brothers, Jonathan Joestar and Dio Brando, involving a stone mask that can make vampires and a power called Hamon. Later parts will shed this power in exchange for the much more versatile Stand. This struggle will have series-defining repercussions throughout the following parts.

Spoiler: What is Bloodrayne?

Bloodrayne is a video game series that holds two entries in the mainline series, following Rayne's adventures in WWII and present day respectively. She is a dhampir that works for the Brimstone Society and is tasked with killing monsters. It had a mediocre movie adaptation by the notorious director, Uwe Boll, that spanned three movies and it also had another game in a separate continuity called Bloodrayne: Betrayal.

Even Death itself cannot contain the likes of him. He, DIO, would not accept death. In the very instance his Stand, the powerful and magnificent「The World」, was destroyed and the damage reflected onto his now ruined self… DIO fought against his own death.

Fate had degreed him finished, with the penultimate link -- his Stand -- to the physical reality gone, his will was… overcome, pushing him past the rivers of life and into the lands of the dead. That was the endpoint of him. He would never reach Heaven and as the seconds into death stretched, where he was but one final step into that unknown country. To him, a man who has experienced life eternal, there couldn't be anything in the afterlife.

Heaven was an ideal to be crafted by the worthy. No one was his equal and there were only a precious few that he trusted to carry out his will. As his soul untethered itself from his body, he had hoped Enrico Pucci would have succeeded and this defeat would be made retroactively worthless. A grand disappointment filled him, a strange sort of mourning for everything that could have been. He didn't blame Pucci, not truly.

Fate had won and he, DIO, had died. This had always been his destiny and any attempts to break free from the chains that bound him were mere mewlings from children. But was he not great? Did he not conquer? His mark had been left and the Joestar family wouldn't dare to forget the likes of him. This had been his fate. He knew this as he passed into the comforting enormity of nothingness.

Until there was a tiny, imperceptible crack within the impenetrable wall of fate. Nobody would have noticed it save for someone like him. A man with a fractured Stand, who in turn had a fractured soul.

The spiritual wounds had not yet healed. If DIO waited, fully gave into the end, then he would forever lose his chance. Perhaps his one true act of freedom would be one of hollowness that spoke of hesitation.

And let it be known to all that DIO did not hesitate.

He grasped onto that fleeting thread and tore a hole in the patchwork that formed reality. Within that tear, he subsumed all that was DIO, all that was Dio Brando and pushed out. The strings of fate broke from him as he entered a fateless existence. As the strings snapped from everything that was him, they snapped back like lashes.

Were he not careful, it would have struck his identity from the ledger of his soul. Surely he would reincarnate into another form, with the same drive, same passion. But whoever that person would or would not be… they would not be DIO.

And that was an injustice that must never be committed.

He immersed himself in this opportunity, turning his back on the existence that had known him all his life. To reach Heaven required strength. To be free required sacrifice.

One day, he vowed, he would be strong enough to return and enforce Heaven onto the world of his birth.

XXX

DIO… no, he had been too waylaid for that magnificence. Dio Brando breathed his first breath in a new world. Only in the privacy of his own mind would he refer to himself as such. There was an abstract feeling of… not quite freedom. Detachment. It was like the first few moments when he was recovered from the sea.

His greatest nemesis, Jonathan Joestar, was dead and his body was now Dio's! It was the substance of poetry! And yet… he had languished for years in the dark with only the sounds of the ocean to keep him sane. When he was recovered, there had been this huge, rushing berth of turbulence. At that time, he was as free as an anchorless, rudderless ship caught in the storm.

There may have been a horizon to give some degree of direction, but he had been so turned around that he didn't know where to start. Today held similar markings. The first stretch of any undertaking was always the most tumultuous.

He breathed blood and shuddered. His blond hair was matted with sweat, running down his clammy skin. He sucked in red air, forcing life back inside him. Skin became a little more flush and he felt confident enough to slick back his hair into a more acceptable style.

Dio rubbed his mouth and splayed his hand out, seeing splattered red and smeared green. He tried moving, but a stiffness enveloped his muscles and he fell to his side.

Unacceptable!

He wrenched himself onto his elbows, staring at the ruined buildings in front of him. Dio pushed himself back, letting himself rest against a shattered piece of rubble. He was in absolutely dismal state.

His tight, black-tank top was sullied with blood; the bright-green straps connecting the chaps were torn, threatening to slip from his legs. Not at all the impressive, fashionable look he strove for.

It reminded too much of the days before the bizarreness started to creep in. When he was just a poor boy, trying to find a way out of poverty. And when opportunity came, he seized it with every bit of determination he possessed.

This?

This was nothing.

Before he had never truly tasted power and it showed when he ran rampant with his vampiric abilities, drawing too much unnecessary attention to him. Now, he had known power and how to wield it. Dio had clawed his way back up top once and he could do it again. He started to push himself against the wall, using it as leverage to get himself standing. Every inch was an exertion, every breath a condemnation of weakness.

Hissing as he reached heights that once seemed so normal, he rested at a leftward tilt, both knees pointing to the right. The back of his right hand was flung back over his forehead and he stared upwards.

The sky was shrouded a dark red, with the light of the sun shimmering behind it. Dio had to laugh, a strange delight that hearkened back to the vultures. He had not conquered the sun in his world; it had been one of the many side-objectives he hoped to accomplish. But here, he would build upon the works of others, sup upon the feast laid out before him.

As he basked in the not-light of day, a thought occurred to him. Before he could proceed any further, he needed to assess his bearings. The air in his lungs could barely suffice for what came next.

"T… za… World…"

His Stand did not manifest. There was a brief spark in the air before it dissipated into nothingness. Dio pulled his hand from his forehead and swung it down like a pendulum into the wall.

It cracked as Dio repeated, "The… World!"

One spark, two sparks of energies swirled around, before popping into existence. His beautiful Stand no longer held the opulence it deserved. Though the figure before him stood tall, stood strong, it had been ruined. The golden gleam had lost most of its luster and the headpiece was broken. The top of the piece, normally in the shape of an inverted triangle, was broken in two. It left the left side of the face-piece exposed, showcasing a grey face and a blackened eye.

The cylinders on the back were gone, though the ridged straps that ran down the sides of his chest were still there. Every green heart symbol on the World, from the chin to the waist to the knees, held a crack running down the middle. A very on the nose representation of a broken heart. Dio would have dismissed it out of hand, but this was his Stand -- the representation of his fighting spirit.

On the back of the World's hands were clock-faces, the hands twisting counterclockwise. More ominous signs to consider.

"The World! Time, stop!"

The effect of paused time tried to balloon out, desperate to encompass everything and anything. Were he but a mere mortal, he wouldn't be able to see the distortion distilled into a sphere. The air had literally stilled within a small space. It was only with the absence of movement could he discern the lack of time flowing through within that bubble.

However, it was misshaped, warbling and wobbling in its flight path downward. Dio rubbed his chin. Could time possibly hold any weight to it? If air -- oxygen -- could have a solid form, then it stood to reason so could time. Was it any different than water freezing into ice?

The World reached out with both hands and held the bubble, holding it much like a fortuneteller and a crystal ball. His Stand guided it back in front of him.

Dio analyzed it, keeping the thoughts of his former glory objective. It was infuriatingly clear that his Stand no longer possessed the prodigious power of before. Whining and whinging were unbecoming of Dio. Though fate held him bound no longer, circumstances were another matter.

The problem of his Stand would be rectified soon or later, but it was best to get a grasp of these lesser abilities.

Tapping into his old vampiric abilities, he modified his index fingernail, lengthening it by several itches. With a bored air, he swiped the nail through the bubble. Dio held a calm, cold composure as the nail broke in twain, suspended within the area of frozen time.

He regenerated the nail back to an acceptable length. The World then moved the bubble and the broken piece of nail then clattered on the ground.

"Ah, it's only natural. I'm not stopping space, just time," he mused aloud.

The World then dug its fingers into the bubble, trying to grasp and stretch it out. At first, his Stand's fingers passed through easily. It was only when Dio drilled more willpower into his Stand, to flex its solidness much like a person flexed their fingers, did something happen.

As the World pulled back harshly, a layer of its surface was peeled off. Dio could feel the skin of his fingers rip off. A layer of flesh was gone and Dio could feel the ghost of outrage.

"Time resumes," he muttered.

The bubble disappeared, but his anger still remained. It wasn't about the damage, but because of the regeneration that would occur. The blood within him ebbed away, suffusing into the damaged areas. If Dio had fed, it would be less than a breeze to him. As it stood, it was a waste of energy that Dio couldn't afford. Already, he felt himself sag downwards.

He needed a direction. A man with a purpose would walk a hundred miles before thinking about giving up. Tease him with progress and he would walk a thousand miles more. And if a man believed that there were no other alternatives to the destination, the miles ceased to matter.

All he needed to do was pick a direction. It was only with the absence of fate did he recognize that he was no longer caught in its whirlpool. Though he could swim in any direction he pleased, Dio stood little chance against of fully escaping its pull. Eventually, he would have ended up where fate had decreed him to be and any true victory gained would be a small, temporary one.

No matter were he went, his course would have been righted. Once, he would have thought it a kindness for people to know their fate within their souls. That was before he experienced a reality free of fate.

It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

XXX

After pitifully hobbling down the downcast and destroyed streets of this American city, Dio came upon an a person in an even sorrier state than him. A small child, no more than nine years old at most, sequestered in a small alley. He was a scrawny thing, dirty and ragged.

It reminded Dio of his own childhood, though he carried far more dignity than this child. Dio stared into the boy's eyes, trying to find a similar fire that hearkened back to Dio's own. There was only the dull, depressed glaze within them. He entertained the notion of sparing the boy out of some misplaced sentimentality or pure apathy. After all, the boy would have hardly enough blood to matter.

And if Dio was caught in the act, it would set him a few steps back. Nothing manageable, but Dio couldn't afford to be sloppy. Yet, grand ambitions were often made up by smaller deeds. For every great empire, the bricks laid down were composed of singular atrocities. All to lay down a foundation worth building upon. He continued to stare at the boy and nothing changed between the two.

In a span of twenty seconds, Dio had already decided that the boy's death was acceptable and was now merely debating any potential downsides. What little there was, it was nothing that flattery or lies or power or strength couldn't overcome.

He approached and the boy stilled. There was no need for extravagant cruelty. He couldn't afford it. Dio stood over the boy, before kneeling down and jabbing two of his fingers into his neck. There was only a small gasp before Dio stole every ounce of his blood and the boy little more than a corpse.

The effect on him was slow as a strangled exhalation. But once it was done, Dio felt remarkably better as his senses started to settle back to their usual state. And he froze, sensing someone behind him.

Small openings appeared in his pupils and he felt the bodily fluids' pressure behind his eye sockets. For a small moment, he lamented the lack of the World's power. He could have simply stopped time and place himself behind the intruder.

Instead, he was planning on shooting beams that could rip and tear. Dio wasn't going to kill them outright, not yet. But whether the person dodged or got wounded, it mattered not. Only if they were cowed into line.

He spun around, feeling the liquid behind his eyes burst out into twin beams. It sketched out a harsh, ugly line that started on the ground and ended ten feet on the left alley wall.

Still, the woman stood calmly in the midst of the sudden attack. The right foot was wrapped behind around the ankle of the left one, showcasing a casually strange stance. Her chin was propped up on the heel of her right hand while the left one was over her chest; the thumb and index finger practically fondling the ends of her clavicles.

He would have thought her among the majority of quivering, weak women. It was a product of the culture they were raised in. They would in turn produce the same sort of cowering weakness. It was due to this that he only beget children with a different sort of women: cold and cruel, to stymie that issue.

Still, even between weak-willed submission and cruel apathy, the culture of the world only ever produced a small number of women who had the grit to stand proud in the face of adversity. And it produced even fewer than that that had Stands.

It made it easy to determine whether a woman was worth his time rather than trying to sift through the majority to find the few guile ones. The ones with that sort of grit hid too well, much like the Erina of his childhood. Though she was the model image of the woman of the times, she had a fire to her that rarely she showed except for when she spited him, Dio!

Dio saw the potential of this woman immediately, identifying her as someone to take notice of. She wore a light blue bodysuit with a apron with a red cross on it. The chest exposed, obnoxiously displaying large breasts. Dio suppose a lesser man would have been distracted, but he was more preoccupied with certain trappings of her uniform.

She wore an iron cross necklace and a black officer's cap. On the sides of her long black gloves were patches of the SS bolts. She had bright blue eyes and blonde hair, to hammer in the point of her Nazi appearance. Secondly, she wore a medical mask and had bloodied surgical tools along her belt.

Was he in a world of WWII or was this just a bizarre woman?

"Why do you dare gaze upon me, Dio?"

She pulled her arms close and clasped her hands together next to her cheek.

"You're a vampire, are you not?" she asked in a Germanic accent.

"An astute deduction," he commented, wryly. "And why is my being of interest to you?"

"My name is Dr. Báthory Mengele. And you can say that the supernatural is of some interest to me. Your being is of interest is due to the fact that you are a vampire of an unknown breed."

Dio put one foot forward and pressed down, feeling it rock on the dusty ground.

"Oh, ho. And what will you do now with that information?"

"Dissection is so drab when you don't know what you're doing. What good will popping out your eyes do? What good would taking your fingers do? I do not have the lab nor the equipment to do so." She spread out her arms. "Why deny myself the opportunity to see you in action? Why not work together?"

"For what purpose?" Dio shifted his foot back, a deliberate sign of submission to set her at ease.

"Power," she replied, simply.

Troublesome, if she saw it as an end rather than a means. To the dimwitted, Dio may been interpreted as power hungry, but that was because the end he desired required near impossible means.

He kept his face neutral and passive as he asked, "What for? What drives you? For every goal, there must be a catalyst behind it. It is what dictates our actions, almost as much as fate."

"I desire what power brings. Freedom to be. Pristine and eternal."

Dio tilted his head, humoring a thought that would test her merit. "Do you wish to be made a vampire?"

She chuckled darkly. "Even if the modifications made upon my body didn't interfere, I know there is a high chance of being made subservient to you. So, I must decline and warn you that the blood in my veins would destroy you."

Ah. A declination of two parts. One of impossibility and one of rationality. Dio had no need of unwieldy servants. At least not when the power balance was not skewed in his favor and especially since he couldn't see a deeper benefit at the moment. And then there was the threat, a way for her to ward off a future attack whilst giving her a measure of self-assured control.

"And what can you offer?"

"Knowledge." She inclined her head at him. "Before me, I see a great man brought low. A conqueror of men. Unlike another great man I once knew, admiration does not cloud my view. And I see you won't just… give up. No matter the loss, you will persevere. The question is whether that journey is going to be unnecessarily hard."

"I can obtain knowledge elsewhere," he said airily.

"I have been alive for more than a century and my knowledge has only compounded since then. Plus, I can tell you more about the current situation more than any citizen here. And should any need arise, I can work strange sciences in your favor."

A tempting offer, covering all three bases of time: the past, present, and future.

"All because I am unique?" he scoffed.

"Like I said, I can see your greatness. And I know my capabilities. I am no leader. So, use me as you see fit."

But you are opportunistic, Dio thought. A small smirk wormed its way onto his face. Then again, so am I.

If her use dried up, then Dio would plunder what she knew and then finish her off. Until then, he was not one to wantonly discard tools when they could still have a use.

"Tell me about the red skies," Dio commanded.

XXX

Dio digested the information given to him by Báthory. A vampire overlord had launched a campaign to defeat the sun and had succeeded within the bounds of this city. The red sky was a product of this Shroud, which negated vampires' main weakness. It would have cemented the overlord's rule were he not promptly killed by his dhampir daughter.

It reminded him of the Pillar Men debacle, in a way. Though he was not present, he was still informed about it from his rather extensive network. A stronger species defeated by a more determined and crafty opponent.

Defeating the Pillar Men would have taken a much more… active effort. Because the Joestar family and their allies seemed to be lesser, Dio had been content to let them come to him. That fit of arrogance had been his undoing.

This dhampir… this Rayne was the current vampire overlord and everyone else fell in line. If Dio wanted to cement his position and security on this new world, it needed to be from a place of strength.

And this city was a place of strength.

The sun would never boil his skin here. If only his Stand wasn't fractured! The World had been one of the most powerful Stands out there! A clear indicator of his fighting spirit. And Dio was not daunted… but had death taken something from him?

Dio stared at the high tower that housed the dhampir. Rayne. It wouldn't be a rivalry of legends and Dio much preferred it that way. Taking down this dhampir should be a simple matter, though any powers of this half-breed tended to flux unreliably. At least according to Báthory.

It was something to be wary of and Dio had to approach the oncoming conflict as if Rayne was at her best.

No matter, Dio would overcome her.

He felt Báthory approach behind him. The gall on this woman! But he didn't make a move as she draped her arms around him, letting it hang on him like a stole. Though it was natural for both men and women to flock to him in such a manner, but if Dio were to indulge in base matters, it would be with a real sort of passion.

For a moment, he cursed the lingering influences of Jonathan Joestar. Whether it was from the body he stole or the ashes of the bizarre bond the two of them had, Dio would proclaim it did not matter. But in the dark recesses of Dio's heart, he would privately admit that he wouldn't sully Jonathan's body like that. He was a worthy adversary and was one of the few that Dio held respect toward.

Though even a kindhearted fool like Jonathan would know that Báthory intended to seduce him. The notion would have made him laugh, but he decided to let the witch play her games. It was only when she made the wrong move would he snap her up like she was nothing.

Even without the World's usual abilities, a Stand was a great ace in the hole when it came to non-Stand users. Since this woman claimed mastery of strange sciences, it was possible that she could adapt and then counteract his vampiric abilities. After all, it was absurd that a non-Stand user could defeat him.

Except… he needed to cover more of his weakness.

"Tell me, Báthory," he started, pulling her just a little closer with two quick tugs. His skin was pressed against the rough fabric of her clothing and beyond that, he could feel the rush of blood, the minute movements of the muscles. "Does the word hamon mean anything to you?"

Báthory's bodily functions didn't even stutter.

"Hamon, Japanese word for blade pattern. Rather self-explanatory," she mused aloud. Then Báthory leaned in further into his grip, practically exulting in it.

Dio breathed out, mimicking Jonathon's breath exactly. The World manifested behind the two and Báthory remained oblivious.

"And the Ripple?"

"Beyond the definition of being ruffled by small waves? No. These words mean nothing."

This could prove to be a miscalculation if Dio had effectively set Báthory on discovering the Ripple. Even if she didn't dare use it against him, the introduction of such a concept would lead others to discover it as well.

The World reared its fist back, aimed directly at the back of Báthory's head. It would be too easy… unless the woman had tricks up her sleeves.

He couldn't quite discern the use of this woman beyond information. She had claimed to possess greater, more applicable knowledge, but Dio had yet to see it. It was why Dio didn't use a flesh bud on the woman.

While it would be of some comfort to have complete control, Dio didn't have the strength to create more than one flesh bud. And if her claims of strange science and altered biology held true, it would only serve to alienate her.

No, Báthory still held a hypothetical use. The problem was finding out what it was. The World was dismissed, disappearing behind them.

He suddenly stood up, the arms swinging off him. Dio walked toward the edge of the rooftop and Báthory trailed behind him as was natural in the world. He stared down at the ruins before him.

"Tell me, Báthory, who opposes this Rayne?" He left an opening of silence and just as she was about to speak, he continued, "Surely, there must be something or someone. The universe slants itself toward 'justice.' But the question is whose justice. I doubt humanity at large will accept such an open vampiric ruler."

"Rayne," Báthory's lips furled in distaste, "Used to work for an organization called the Brimstone Society. From what I… gathered, they are on the outs."

Dio nodded, seeing the fallen forest of concrete and steel.

"I take it that they are not outwardly powerful."

"No, but they had been a thorn in my side for quite awhile."

Báthory said nothing else, letting Dio gather his thoughts.

Admittedly, this Brimstone Society seemed like a non-problem. A bug beneath his notice, but Dio learned from his mistakes. If anything, this Society reminded him of the Speedwagon Foundation. An utterly unpowerful organization in terms of straight manpower, yet it was far from inconsequential. It had been far too entrenched by the time Dio resurfaced.

Though they were easy enough to squash in direct confrontations, they were like a swarm of bugs, harrying him at the most inconvenient times.

When Dio killed Rayne and usurped her place, he could see how the Brimstone would entrench itself here during his rule and act much like a guerilla force. And Dio couldn't afford to let it play out as it would.

To cement his reign, they would have to go. Right now, his objective was to secure a position of power. From there, resources would come to him in that groveling manner and he could mold them into the tools he needed.

As… free as this world was, it wasn't his. If anything, it felt like a consolation prize. He had lost and been tossed aside. It would have been preferable to be thrown into the pits. At least he would have clawed his way back up by his own strength.

But being granted this… a strange sort of venomous envy poisoned him. It took him a moment to recognize it. The feeling started off as a bright sunny day and after a bumpy carriage ride, Dio's feet had just touched down onto the stonework beneath him. He had cleaned himself up as best he could, having washed his best clothes in advance.

And then the feeling crystallized when he first laid eyes upon Jonathan Joestar. Everything about him spoke of an effortless, careless prospering of undeserved wealth and adoration. Jonathan would later show that he deserved such a status through his unwavering tenacity, but in that moment, Dio found himself utterly despising this boy. He had everything, by no virtue of his own beside his birth. The feeling ended with the swift kick of satisfaction at that mangy mutt's end, a grim sort of feeling that smelt of ashes and tasted of salty tears.

But there was no dog to vent his frustrations about, to exert that small amount of control in the face of undeserved majesty.

Now… now… Dio held that undeserved majesty. He sated his hunger brought on by his vampiric transformation by the stone mask. He endured the tribulations brought on by the isolation of the sea. And he worked tirelessly to achieve a Stand worthy of his ambitions.

There had always been an upwards momentum, always climbing a perilous mountain.

Here… here… Dio had been granted an undeserved status like Jonathan.

He would earn this position, much like Jonathan. Any half-formed thoughts of skulking back into the shadows died furiously. Dio would never be content. He focused on the high tower, knowing that Rayne wouldn't be looking down at him like he was glaring up at her. She knew nothing of his existence, while he knew everything.

Her time would come soon, but not at this very moment.

"Báthory, I have need of you," he spoke.

XXX

Báthory Mengele would have settled for a glass of wine and a bathtub full of blood. Yet, life didn't see it fit to give her such simple pleasures of life. Organizations like the Brimstone Society hounded her with an intensity like no other.

If she were a regular serial killer, they wouldn't have bothered. At the very least, they wouldn't have sent a dhampir after her. It was all because of her passions in regards to the supernatural and that interest had been cultivated with Elizabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess.

It was only natural to pursue the advancement of the human body, no matter the cost. Not to boast of her own achievements, but through her experimentation and daily bathings of blood, she was as strong as a turned vampire.

But she still couldn't match the power of a natural vampire. Báthory Mengele couldn't even compare to a mere dhampir, considering Rayne had bested her twice before. Though Rayne was something of an outlier with fluctuating power levels, allowing her to take on vampires much more powerful than her. She speculated it was some form of vampiric adrenaline that allowed such feats. A giddiness surged through her blood like a cancerous sugar that tore and ruined her veins. She would relish in Rayne's defeat. It may not be at her hands, but still…

As she skulked through the ruins, her thoughts turned to that vampire… Dio.

There was a certain… air to him. Magnetic. If Báthory wasn't aware of the exact chemicals firing off in her brain, she would be certain that Dio was influencing her thoughts. There was a raw… erotic feel to him. Made her want to touch him, to let the fingertips graze upon the surety of his flesh.

If her sexual reproduction system wasn't made redundant, she would have made an undeniably overt attempt at seduction. As it stood, she only thrusted herself like a virginal schoolgirl onto him to assure herself of Dio's implacability.

He was a conundrum and it wasn't just his unique vampiric abilities. Báthory had deduced how his eye-beams worked and had drawn up tentative modifications. Hell, she already thought of ways to upgrade it for herself. It was a simple matter of changing the composition of her blood.

She hopped along the ruins of broken walls and dreams, utilizing them as the platforms they currently were. Dust and death filled the air, a wonderful smell. Shame it was too spaced out, instead of condensed and distilled like a wondrous perfume that clogged the nostrils and changed the world to just those sensations.

Up in the sky, an unfeeling and tasteless Shroud dominated the sky. It was just so… impersonal. Sure, it was wonderfully crafted by the hundreds bodies of the homeless and prostitutes and other undesirables. It should have reminded her of the old concentration camps and the horribly wretched smell of bodies made into ashes.

Shame, that there was no such smell here. Atrocities should have a spark of death to them, impose the unnatural onto reality and make it natural.

No matter. She would indulge soon enough. Báthory stood at the edge of a crater, seeing a black-clad squad of soldiers rummaging around in the decay and destruction. Dio had saw it fit to thin out the ranks of the Brimstone Society.

For now, she would march to his beat and see where his tracks lead. If he even matched one-fifth of his promise, then it was a trek worth taking. It wasn't like Báthory had any overarching plans to take over the world or anything.

She counted the bodies down below -- seven in total -- and her hands hovered over her instruments strapped along her waist. Killing Brimstone bastards was nothing new and it had been a necessity since she arrived in this city. Though she never outright and pre-emptively attacked them before.

Her hand paused over the ice-pick. A silent, deadly thing used to surprise in short bursts. It was good for one, maybe two enemies. But it required precision. Then, it grasped the handle of her amputation knife. The name was rather self-explanatory and was a good item to possess against a larger foe, able to hack them to bits one swing at a time. It was a powerful thing, but left her too exposed with wide swings.

But she solidified her hold nevertheless. With her other hand, Báthory grabbed the bonesaw. It was a rougher thing, with a hungry maw that cared not for efficiency. But a blade was a blade. The bonesaw could be her shield.

She pulled the two out silently, thankful that she didn't bother with sheathes. Old rustic blood splotched an odd, chaotic pattern along the edge.

Let it breed all manners of disease and filth on the battlefield. She would sterilize it later, if she were to engage in medical malpractice.

For now, it was time to engage in medically precise murder.

She leapt down, brandishing death. Her high heels -- tipped off with cold steel -- punctured through one of their helmets. The landing was satisfying with a tasty crunch of bone and the squelch of flesh.

To the soldiers' credit, they all immediately snapped the angry glares of their guns at her position. But she was no longer there, the overwrought adrenaline glands working their magic on her systems.

The snap of limbs parting, the rough sawing and pushing of metal into bodies like lumber, and the sound of deafness… the moments of war were fleeting. As she killed and slaughtered in equal measure, life skirted by too short. It was like someone skipping ahead on the film of life.

And the moment it stopped on was one of a tittering edge. All she could do was turn around to see the shotgun blast slam into her chest. Báthory flung back as if she were a ragged doll rejected by a impish, little girl. There was a distinct lack of a crunch of her spine, but there was a heavy thud that skittered across her back, mauling her with the vibrations.

"Fuck," she gasped at the gaping hole in her chest. Her head lifted up and the skin felt the strain of a craning neck.

"Fucking monster," the soldier snarled quietly, stepping up to blow her brains out. He had the sense to double-tap, but not enough of it to do it at a distance.

She smiled as she launched her head at him. His eyes widened behind the goggles, before her projectile of a skull headbutted him. Broken noses and disorientation were now his peers, and it blinded him to the true danger.

Her spine trailed along her head, the bottom of it tipped like a scorpion's stinger. The veins trailing from her neck swished around the top of his helmet like a particularly vicious sea anemone.

Lifting herself up, she plunged her stinger in the small weak spot between armored vest and full-frontal helmet. It dug in, tearing through until it touched the soldier's spine. And then it sucked, first the spinal fluid. Then the nerves. And finally, she digested the bone and substituted hers.

There was a series of clicks as she settled her spin into place. Something was off as she rolled her shoulders. It took her a moment to realize what was wrong and it was only when she raised her new hands that she figured out.

Though she knew her hands were held aloft, she saw nothing but the crater. Then she grasped her head and twisted. The world fell back into place and she shuddered in delight. One of her experiments after Rayne fucked her over for the second time was to make sure that there were no more close calls. The daemites were an interesting breed of demons, parasitic… long-living.

Báthory couldn't turn herself into a true daemite, but rather a very, very close proximation. For example, she didn't have the digestive enzymes that devoured the insides. Instead, she used a virus to convert the body into an exact copy of her own. There would be a great many interested in such an operation.

Briefly she mused on the idea of actually using capitalism to spread her science out for the good of people. Báthory snorted. Why would she?

She enjoyed killing degenerates too much for that.

And Dio was the exact type of person that would let her do what she wanted.

XXX

Dio was somewhat amused.

Clutched on up high in his hand was a ball of time and purple veins were sprung from her wrist and into the ball. The image of his newest follower had just managed to intrigue him. It seemed this was Báthory's hidden ace up her sleeve. Much like this additional Stand of his, though Dio wouldn't claim such overt ownership over it. He didn't even name it.

After all, it would have been Jonathan's Stand, were he not gone. A Stand was the fighting spirit, but it needed a connection to the physical world to be worth anything. Ghosts would be a much bigger problem otherwise. So, this additional Stand was a weakened half-formed thing that could only handle two uses before it laid dormant for weeks on end.

The surveillance wasn't that useful, but if Dio ever terminated Báthory's services, she wouldn't be able to fake her death much like he did once upon a time.

He pushed the bubble away, the tendrils letting go with a tenderness. The bubble tapered off into a stationary position a few inches away.

"Time stop," he muttered.

The World conjured up a bubble and dissatisfaction rankled at him.

Too slow, too slow for my plans. Useless!

"Muda!" he spat and the Stand responded to the unspoken command.

A rush of air was the only indication of the Stand's furious punch. It was delivered with all the righteous fury of a frustrated messiah and it slammed into the bubble. And then it split into two separate bubbles. The miracle of bread and fish that fed thousand came to mind. Dio smirked to himself and stood up high, the World cracking its knuckles.

After the barrage of fists and half-whispered mutterings, Dio was assured there was no limits to the number of bubbles he could create. There he stood in a fog of distorted time and with but a simple command, parted clarity unto the world like Moses split the Red Sea.

All of the bubbles popped and there were the small snorts of displaced air, save one. The one he focused on. Like blood marked upon a door, the firstborn bubble was spared from his wrath. It still hung in the air, showing Báthory mucking about with the dead bodies.

He willed one more bubble and let the purple vines infect it, etching the future onto it like the way light shimmers across a soapy surface.

His enemy was lounging on a rather impressive throne, but it held the air of a tired slacker. She was a red-headed woman in a tight, black leather corset vest with red trimmings. Two blades ran along her arms, attached to two bracers. Green eyes stared dully ahead of her.

"Gooooood, just kill me now," Rayne was saying to another. A tall man in an overcoat shook his head ruefully at her, but otherwise remained silent. "Who the hell ever wants to rule, let alone this ash-heap?"

"You're the one who went along with this course of action," the man pointed out.

"Severin, Severin, I thought there'd be more fighting. I have seen my share of regime changes and they are almost always the most shaky. Instead I got to work on fucking logistics of food and room and board and bleh."

"It only stands to reason that all the other vampires know this. Instead of regime changes, they would have seen empires and civilizations fall."

"Yeah, yeah. And when that happens, it's gonna hit me hard." Rayne straightened up and hopped out of her chair. "At least it'll be something. I mean, what else are you suppose to do once you accomplished your life's goal and everything you knew is gone?"

"You keep on going," Severin said.

Rayne didn't say anything and Dio waved away the bubble, ruminating. Despite the impropriety unbereft of her station, he wasn't going to underestimate her. Having known of and battled against the wily Joseph Joestar, he knew appearances were deceiving.

A poor ruler she may be, but Rayne might still prove to be a threat in combat. But she was merely a waystation to reach, a leg of the journey yet to be finished. Still, she was unawares of his presence, expecting a more detailed and overt frontal assault by other vampires. That was the least ideal scenario.

She didn't strike him as someone who could outmaneuver so many conflicting forces of personality. Instead she would let them come and it would inevitably fracture whatever empire laid here. Even if she won, the cracks would be sown and Dio would inherit the pieces.

Sloppy.

His disdain for Rayne grew a little more, that she wouldn't put in the work to rule. And like most immortals, would flit off when their latest venture ceased to be. They could afford it. Everything Dio had done, every atrocity, every death served a purpose. A man like Dio did not do things frivolously.

Everything in service toward a greater goal.

Then he thought what would happen once he succeeded. If Made in Heaven succeeded and everyone knew their fate… would he, Dio, be content? Even if his own fate was to clash and be defeated against the Joestars and their descendants?

Though Dio wanted to believe he would have worked up after the Made in Heaven plan… make his ideal world over the heaven created by his hands. But he hadn't seen past beyond that. What came after victory, after the slate was wiped clean… what then? How would he judge a perfect world? Would others decree it from their lowly stations?

No matter.

The philosophical pondering about morality, rewritten by his supremacy or not, did not matter. Dio was here as the winds of fate dictated. Though these shores may be fateless, when he headed homeward… the tug of destiny would become apparent.

It… behooved him to become as powerful as he possibly could before he returned. And it all started with this measly empire of dirt and shroud. This was to be his new start, the first clasp of the Stone Mask before he found his Stand Arrow.

Though he wouldn't be… flailing as much when he first became a vampire. With the long distance of history, Dio could currently state that he was foolish with his abilities. The reasoning and the means were sound, just the execution was at fault.

By seizing this empire, it was to be both a proclamation and a bulwark. A place of safety whilst being a target for the strange to come to him. In time, he should find the next set of means for his Grand Undertaking of destroying fate.

Until now, he had to act slow and cautious, but it would not be groveling. Never groveling.

It was merely… stepping aside and creating circumstances instead of seizing them.

Dio abruptly stood up, feeling the ragged clothes on his form. It was time to change that while he could. His machinations would not bear fruit yet, allowing him to embrace the extravagance that he deserved.

The next time Báthory saw him, Dio Brando was decked out in layers of wool. A black tunic top that left most of his shoulders exposed before the fabric tied down back down around his forearms. A gray set of balloon pants where the material around the waist were circled by frozen ripples. Topping it all off was a yellow sash connected from his left hip to the small of his back.

His neck was bare to see, the old scar circling around his flesh. The only visible besmirchment, the only other sign that this body was not his beside the star-shaped birthmark on the back of the left shoulder. It was a passable outfit that only just scratched the surface of his greatness, but he had to make do with the ruined clothing stores.

The outfit would suffice for his first public appearance to the world at large.

May all those who crossed his path tremble in both fear and awe of his majesty.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

Being a part of the Brimstone Society meant going against some pretty despicable creatures, no matter the cost. For too long humanity at large let the dark shadows fester, but this commander came from a long history of those who fought back. He was the latest Brimstone warrior to bear the callsign, DarkMan, like his father before him. But before he was a warrior, he had been a learned man of the lore. And, because of this, he knew that Brimstone was in the right.

He peered through the binoculars, through the window and under a world covered by a red-scarred sky. They had made a temporary forward base camp in this dusty apartment of brick and blood. There were no bodies within, only desperate and angry scratches on the wall. Here and there, there were a few dotted holes, marking a futile struggle to survive.

Poor sods didn't even stand a chance.

His gaze focused on the last area Squad 5A answered their check-in. It was too risky to send more than one scouting group. This city had fallen under near anarchy, despite the self-proclaimed vampire empress trying to impose order.

He only held the tiniest amount of sympathy for Rayne, the now former Brimstone operative. Rayne, because of her monstrous nature, was blinded. She didn't know that this was about to set a precedent. One warlord would beget another, either here when she was killed by another or somewhere else, where a monster got the bright idea to follow in her footsteps.

It mattered not whether or not Rayne was a good ruler — though even that wasn't guaranteed, who could tell how the dhampir would act a hundred years from now.

Just look at Brimstone and its own conduct. It had strayed, as all organizations do, when the old forgot themselves while they ruled. Rayne helped cleanse them of Nazi and eldritch influences once before, but reconstruction needed a firm hand. They had strayed as the South did, appearing to cede victory but were really feigning defeat.

It was only in amidst the chaos could DarkMan and the others do what needed to be done. Brimstone had cleansed itself once more, taking advantage of the horrendous loss the Shroud and Kagan imposed on them. If they didn't think about it too hard, they could almost imagine that their brethren died with honor.

"Sir?" a voice called from behind him.

DarkMan put down the binoculars and turned to his subordinate. Both of them were clad in plated armor, faces covered by a bandanna and helmet. The only discernible facial feature were the eyes, but even that was hidden by a dusty pair of goggles.

"Yes?"

"Several things to report, sir."

"Speak."

"We have reports that Rayne is gathering allies. I have compiled each of their files here." The soldier held out a sizable folder out to him. DarkMan took it and started to flick through it as the solider continued. "She's consolidating her rule and we need to act fast if we are to establish Brimstone as a proper authority."

His eyes scanned the name of the files: Ayano, Mynce, Tiger Wraith, Centzouitznaua, Svetlana Lupescu. They were all known quantities and it would even be a shame to kill a few of them.

"Noted. Once our forces are mobilized within our main base only then can we move."

It was a dramatic, flashy move. But they needed hearts and minds to win the long war. A short-won battle didn't mean a whole lot when it led to anarchy within and a siege on the outside. They needed a clean, yet public victory. And they needed to trap Rayne on all sides. She had a penchant for winning against foes she had no right to. Nothing less than a tight entrapment would work.

"But we first need to clear the way," DarkMan continued, a signal for the soldier to press on.

"Yes, it starts with rumors of a blond haired vampire, along with confirmed movements of the Butcheress."

"Mengele," DarkMan growled.

"The same. I don't know if there is a correlation between the two. Besides, the rumors have intensified so quickly. There are whispers on the wind that he's a vampire overlord, a stark contrast to the rumors a mere hour ago. I do not whether it is the nature of exaggeration or if it was cultivated."

"Fear is a powerful motivator, but an unwieldy one. It can't last forever. If the vampire wants to keep its momentum, it's gonna to capitalize on it soon enough. It is evident that Squad 5A was a casualty of this vampire's plots."

"Correlation doesn't imply causation, commander," the soldier offered, hesitantly.

"Call it a gut feeling then."

The soldier sighed almost imperceptibly and then asked, "When do we move out, sir?"

"Immediately."

XXX

Moving through an empty city was an eerie experience. The bustling life, the smell of exhaust and unwashed masses... those were the things that they took for granted. The details they tucked away into the back of their minds, filed under 'Things to detest', when really they couldn't imagine a world without them.

They moved quickly and efficiently, more as a system rather than separate individuals. Words and stray gestures couldn't be afforded. They were stronger together, but were so liable to splinter like twigs upon the ground. Discipline was a must, in such situations. Chaos was an inevitable fact, in war. With structure, they would fracture permanently and be cut down in the chaos.

But there wasn't any rush of monsters coming in to slaughter. They had gotten their fill in the initial slaughter, murdering a great many of humanity. They had dominated the watering hole, laying claim to it and driving all from its conquest. Vampires, and monsters in general, had so little self control. Left unchecked, they would have consumed everything like a swarm of locusts and left behind a concrete corpse of a city.

DarkMan hated to admit that Rayne was a good enough stopgap. Vampires viewed human as prey and troublesome prey. There was very little in-between. Though they viewed Rayne as an upstart, they still afforded her the respect one needed to have when faced with a worthy opponent.

Things had settled into the calm before the storm. It had granted them a reprieve, allowing Brimstone to save those remnants of humanity and consolidate its resources, both material and personal. They were organizing a sustainable, defensible society that can easily dam the power vacuum once they killed Rayne.

Humanity had to peer past its shortsighted nature and plan for the future.

These are perilous times, he thought as they all clambered over hills of crashed cars and the shedding of buildings, and we put all our eggs in one basket. We lose the base, we lose our fighting chance.

Before they disposed of Rayne, they needed to take an accounting of any other overlords in the wings. Whether to quickly and preemptively dispose of them, or prepare for them for a successive show of force after the take-over... DarkMan couldn't say. They needed to find the scouting group. Hopefully to save them, but more likely... and more practically, to recover any information they may have possessed.

There was a crease in the road, a noticeable downwards slope in the road that was marked by a myriad of cracks. Eventually, it dipped sharply into a crater. He would have directed his squad to go around it were it not for the floating body parts down there. No... that was bit of a misnomer. Floating implied it bobbed up and down as if they were discarded items at sea.

Each body part was utterly frozen in place and his stomach lurched at the static sight. Specks of blood had fallen from the gaped wounds and red meat. DarkMan's eyes flicked down at the ground, seeing a few drops of blood scattered each of the floating body parts.

But not directly underneath.

He felt like a kid back in the science classroom, seeing disgusting pieces of animals float in jars. They had ceased to be parts of a whole and became these revolting things that had smaller meanings, but they had lost a greater symbolic meaning.

Violation!

The word struck hard and it crystallized, allowing him to properly articulate his outrage. Before he knew it, he had ordered two of the soldiers to set up a perimeter and the others to follow him as he slid down the slope.

They had reduced and desecrated a person into pieces of meat and that put them on display. Though most of them were just floating torsos with scattered limbs and heads like a parade of bubbles.

And others...

They were propped up like incomplete scarecrows without a pole to keep them upright. There were large gaps of spaces between the limbs and the torso, like something a child would piece together in a crude shape of a human.

DarkMan reached out, took a firm hold on elbow split half, and gave it a tiny shake. Like stone from a statue, it refused to give an inch. Rather than the object moving, his hand moved around it. However, when his hand hovered on the fingers, the very tips, he could wiggle them as if it were a wart.

What strange magic was this?

He pulled back, trying to recall what little magic there was in the world. If magic wasn't so muted and so conditional, maybe it would have become widespread. But right now, it was too risky to delve deep into the forbidden knowledge. Maybe it would always be.

DarkMan liked to think he was no superstitious fool, fearing magic and all its ilk. He was just... cautious... But without arcane knowledge, Brimstone would be reduced to razing everything to ground. Without even hands, they would have to do with hard fists. If they couldn't figure out who the perpetrators were, then they needed to cleanse this place. Because it was clear this was a threat, a scare tactic to bully them into fearful compliance.

Line the hills with crucified criminals and no one would dare fight against that empire.

A sound strategy, but one that was used against them. He turned to order one of his men to lay down explosives to bury this abominable work. A glint in his peripheral caught his attention and he turned, seeing a spot of light move across the crater.

At first he thought it a beam of his light and his eyes darted to the apparent source, thinking it a flashlight. Or god forbid, a tactical light clipped to an assault rifle. But that was his fatal error. By the time he turned around, the glint was inches away from a soldier's chest.

It seemed like a discoloration of light on initial examination, like a wisp in the light of day. But DarkMan looked closer, seeing that it was a matter of stillness, not coloration. An orb of light stilled across the ambience like a drop of dew traveling down the stem of a plant.

And it settled in the soldier's chest.

His stance wavered, legs becoming like hardened jelly. The solider became something akin to an actual scarecrow, propped up by something. The soldier's arms went slack, falling to his side and dropping the rifle down to the ground.

"Everybody stay still!" he barked out.

The four soldiers stilled as DarkMan approached. He pressed two fingers on the man's neck and there was nary a pulse. If he hadn't known any better, DarkMan would have thought him dead from a heart attack.

He gently grabbed a hold of the man and laid him down. It felt like he was prying a scab in an vain attempt to pick it bloodless. A matter that was reliant on whether the wound was fully healed or not.

Thankfully, it went off without a hitch and he laid down the man down. Still, there was that circle of not-right light hovering there without a care in the world. Something had shifted, specks of dust left and debris that had fallen from this soldier's uniform.

He squinted at it, the gears in his head slowly, but surely turning. Just as he was sure of what was going on, a soldier broke rank, and started toward DarkMan and the body. He did not see the spatial aberration cast down low by their feet.

Unlike before, something happened. His leg moved too quickly through the bubble of stilled light and pieces lagged behind. The skein of the boot was stripped, as was the flesh. Reality had lagged behind for the most barest of instances, as if it couldn't decide whether it should be here or there. It flickered before finally peeling away in a frenzy.

The soldier cried out, tumbling into a screen of those stilling bubbles. And they continued to scoop portions out of the man, who couldn't even cry out as one of those bubbles robbed him of his jaw.

"Arhkrakrkaraaaaaaaa," his cry turned into a pathetic little croaking.

He twirled around like the last moments of a spinning top. And he collapsed unceremoniously, bleeding from too many

"Contact! Contact!" one of his three soldiers shouted, all of them ready to maneuver into cover.

"Nobody move!" DarkMan barked out, wrangling command.

He held out one hand in a forcibly controlling gesture, while the other hand tightened around the grip. His finger so much wanted to feel the tension of the trigger to reassure himself of the security he possessed.

Holding out an ear to the winds, he could no longer hear his soldiers around the perimeter. Brimstone soldiers were good, but not that good.

Still, he had to check and switched to their channel.

"Report," he hissed.

And only static responded.

DarkMan swore, turning to the survivors of his squad.

"Keep an eye out for any bubbles of weird-looking light," he said. It was a bit of an oversimplification, but it conveyed the warning clear enough.

"What do we do?" someone asked.

"We have to leave. Come back with the napalm, scorch the area clean, and hope we either force the perpetrator back or we somehow do them in. We need to leave now! Quickly, but carefully!"

The four of them scrambled back up, doing their best to keep their eyes open for any more of those bubbles. When they came up back to the even ground, one of the perimeter guards was suspended in the air. He was a small thing, huddled in a ball like a child crying from the wicked lessons a father instilled in him. Grenades dangled from his belt and the rifle hung limply from the strap.

Whoever did this had shot him through the neck, through the lungs... he had died a slow, pitiful death choking on his own blood. He had to. Suspending him like a trophy...

A righteous anger burned his breast, slamming underneath the skin, harder than any beating heart. And for the good of the survivors, both here and back at base, he had to still the rage before it blinded him.

"Sir, I think he's still alive," one of them said.

"Impossible," DarkMan muttered.

He squinted past the goggles and focused on the casualty, seeing the frozen face of fear. And he knew that rigor mortis hadn't set in yet. The bubble was clearly larger than all the rest down in the crater and he had to ponder the capabilities of whatever dark magic here. Another detail nagged at him, born from a hunch.

DarkMan turned on the tactical light on his rifle and shone the light onto the body. No shadows were cast and the light was caught within the bubble, further adding to the mismatched lightening inside.

"Is it possible that these bubbles freeze time within them?" he mused.

"Correct!" a grandiose voice called out.

Then the bubble popped, light snapping back into place, and the body fell. In the chaos of it all, DarkMan heard several pins dropping.

"R-r-r-run!" the fallen soldier gasped, as the grenades rolled off him.

But it was too late.

The shock was quickly wiped clean by the suddenness of impact. Though his body was belted by shrapnel, the pain was secondary to the sheer shock. Did the pelting rain matter when you were crushed by a tsunami? DarkMan clung onto consciousness, or at least he tried to. He couldn't tell if he was actually blacking out or if his eyelids were just too heavy to hold up from the onslaught of pain rocketing across his body. The way it pulsed made it feel like acidic rain drizzled across his body.

His head lolled and he saw one soldier blasted to red paste. Only one soldier had came out unscathed by some miraculous chance of luck by hunkering low to the ground. He stood up, hyperventilating from the close brush of death.

Then he snapped into action, blurring into a firing stance against a foe DarkMan couldn't see from a position. It didn't matter anyway. Something struck the rifle thrice, breaking it into three pieces. A shockwave of force then slammed into the man's gut causing him to keel over as sure as someone punched him in the gut.

The impact went even further beyond, pushing past the armor and the flesh, through the meat inside and out the back. The mess and the viscera painted a picture of a red-stained arm, bulldozed through an entire human being.

It yanked itself back out. The soldier fell, not even being able to scream. That mass behind that red-covered arm suddenly vanished, letting the mess drop down like paint. The ground was painted crimson and stained by dust.

When he blinked, a pair of pointed yellow shoes came into view. And a man that exemplified the Adonis ideal crouched before. It was almost inhuman how beautiful he was. The memorizing jawline, the toned cheeks... the luscious blond hair.

In the ebb of fleeing thoughts, DarkMan tried to rail against it all. Some dim part of him recognized the fact that certain vampires could hypnotize people. The clarity in the man's eyes dissuaded him of that notion. He was more than a mere vampire; this was a man who could be a veritable Adam, who could tend the Garden better than God Himself.

"You will obey."

And obey he did.

XXX

Standing atop of a fallen statue of some unnoteworthy man and positioned above a critical juncture, Dio couldn't help but let out a booming, self assured laugh.

At first he thought Brimstone's little base a farm full of resources. Humans to transform into creatures of the night to do his bidding. Admittedly, it was a very crude way to increase his manpower. He would very much prefer a more varied... group.

Though that was mainly due to the nature of Stands.

Before he discovered Stands, he had experimented greatly with his vampiric ability to shape flesh. No matter how strong or how grotesque he crafted those creatures, there was an inherent upper limit on what they could or could not do. If Stands were modern armaments, then his creatures were downright prehistorical.

It would be fitting, for this backwards little world.

To indulge in the savagery for a pathetically savage universe. The only difference was that Dio would have uplifted this setting to the highest echelons of order. But the revelations that the solider told him... well, this Brimstone Society weren't complete fools. They had a failsafe if they couldn't take the city.

It was a rather drastic measure, truth be told. A real scorched earth tactic that would have world-wide consequences. Because Dio wasn't the only universal exile in this world. Brimstone had, somehow, acquired a vampire named Mora that wasn't native to this iteration of existence. He hadn't quite understood the incessant blabbering, but unlike Dio, who came from a universe dictated by fate, this vampire came from an offshoot of this reality and that paradoxical nature made her an intense foci.

Dio shouldn't be in this world, but this Mora shouldn't exist period. She was like a parasite clinging onto this universe, so undeserving. If his world was a far-away branch, then Mora's plane of existence was a paltry, little leaf — easily discarded. It didn't even warrant being called a universe.

But he could only speculate how multiversal metaphysics work. For instance, would he spontaneously be destroyed if he touched an alternate version of himself? Perhaps, but it did not matter because this world — upon initial observation — was vastly different than his own.

Though there was a logic to these matters.

He was real, but currently weakened; the girl was unreal, but chock full of magic and temporal potential that she could not use herself. Brimstone had planned on tapping into that well of power and trimming this timeline clean of monsters if they failed here.

It was an immensely dangerous plan that had a high risk of destroying reality as they knew it. But it made sense. If humans couldn't hold a single city, did they deserve the world? Only someone like Dio deserved such a responsibility. But this world was below him and truly conquering it was not worth the effort.

Which made it all the more expendable.

Oh, no, he wasn't so blind to try their little ritual to create a version of this reality more suited to his whims. But he was more than enough to tap into that source of power to propel him to another universe. Preferably his own universe, but he would settle for another. He had decided, after learning the extent of Brimstone's knowledge, that this world held little means to grow stronger.

Finally, he heard his little soldier's pitter-pattering towards him.

Dio graciously stepped from the statue and down the ground, dust wooshing away from his feet like gnats scurrying from their betters.

The hypnotized man skidded to a stop and rambled his report.

"Master, Brimstone has lost the base and the woman. It is evident that former Brimstone asset Rayne, with the aid of her allies, has sealed the Brimstone's Society fate!"

Foolishness!

He had dismissed the dhampir as a crude, lazy woman only motivated by her own impulses. Rayne, while having several feats to her name, didn't seem too proactive. She had lacked the fiery spirits of the Joestar bloodline.

But that was folly on his part. After all, Joseph Joestar, after reportedly defeating the Pillar Men, didn't embark on any equivalent adventures on his travels. And when the time inevitably came that Dio and the Joestars clashed yet again, he was no lesser formidable as an opponent.

Foolishness, he cursed yet again with less heat.

He brushed past his thrall, staring at the tower, at the heart of this city... the seat of Rayne's power.

"Master, what should— urk!"

The head flung from the neck, blood gushing like a pathetic little fountain. It squirted in three little waves, each one weaker than the last. Some of it splattered on his face, much to his annoyance. He licked it from his lips idly.

And finally, the corpse collapsed. Dio unextended his arm and examined his blood-stained nails, before promptly cleansing them with a concise flick.

"Neat party trick," Báthory commented from behind.

He ignored her, dismissing her with a practiced gesture.

She vanished from his presence, but, with his vampiric senses, he could track her easily. Báthory knew her role well enough, but would only pull it off with suitable demonstrations of power to keep her in line. A rat would flee what they think was a sinking ship, no matter how stalwart their hulls.

Dio pondered his options.

He needed to be loud, he needed to be bold, and he needed to make a statement.

No.

Dio Brando needed to make a declaration of war.

If the World had its full capabilities, it would have been a trivial matter. But with his Stand weakened, he had to look for other avenues for strength. And this world was severely lacking in such pathways to power.

As it stood, the time-bubbles the World made weren't all that effective. Sure, they could be combined and the largest area that could be affected was a nearby ballroom. And Dio knew the time-stop effect was still persisting.

But the time-stop wasn't perfect. If only part of an object or person was inside, no damage would occur if they were gently pulled out. Damage only occurred if the object in question was pulled out too quickly as the desynchronization between the two timestreams could not be reconciled.

What was once a powerful Stand had promptly been downgraded significantly. It didn't diminish the usefulness... he just had to reorientate his thinking. Despite the bubbles not affecting space outright... items could still be affected in a more roundabout way.

Damage only happened with the temporal desynchronization...

"Time-stop!" he hissed, conjuring a bubble and examining it.

He pricked his thumb with a finger from the same hand, letting it swell until he flicked it into the bubble. The blood was caught in the bubble, a jagged line of crimson.

Despite it not affecting space, spatial effects still applied in a vague manner. He hummed to himself, a low, almost baritone thing, and focused. Then the lick of blood in his stomach burned, and the bubble bobbed and swayed for the barest of seconds.

Ah, how blind I was. But no longer!

His true death had left him rudderless far more than the close brushes of death he was used to. Dying disorientated him, making him subject to the whims of circumstance. Though it was a far different beast than fate, he was still bound by it. But now, he knew the limits he had to transcend.

His thirst for blood was not just a bodily need, but a spiritual hunger as well. Dio knew he couldn't recover the full strength of the World by sating his bloodlust, but it would certainly almost power what abilities the World possessed.

He knelt down next to corpse and jabbed two fingers into the ruined pool of blood tilted on its side. Dio could feel the blood trickle in his stomach, like gasoline in a vehicle. He breathed out, igniting that fuel.

The bubble continued to sway in a single direction, still holding the blood perfectly in stasis. He gritted his teeth and tried to wrangle the bubble in the opposite direction. It still seemed that he could not directly affect the spatial matter inside, though the circumstances around it were another matter.

A stark contrast to the World's previous ability where all of time was frozen and he could manipulate as he saw fit. But how was the bubble moving? And then it came to him.

The Earth rotated in which direction? He turned toward the tower. Ah, that's right... to the East.

XXX

Rayne rubbed her head in exasperation as she leaned on the railing looking over the lobby. Allies had gathered in preparation to hold the city against vampire overlords and a turncoat Brimstone Society. They had succeeded against the latter and now they were stuck with the bill. The more human of her little troupe were trying to herd the panicky civilians into the rooms of this tower in an organized fashion.

Not only was this the most defensible position in a monster-rich city, it held all the resources for reclamation and reconstruction of a society. Before she gutted her bastard of a father, he had planned to rule from this high-rise. He had knocked down all other skyscrapers, leaving only his to lord over the lands. And such a building had to be full of bounty. Useless, useless bounty unless used by proper hands.

Hands that had to be directed by an overseer.

Rayne could almost feel a vein burst in her temple. Seizing this would-be throne and declaring herself ruler was based on a very impulsive decision. And now she had to reap what she sowed.

As a dhampir, could she direct these people as easily as her allies?

Ayano, a modern-day samurai warrior from a Brimstone offshoot called the Red Sun, was easily identified as an authority figure. And this was despite her armor being consisting of a too-wide metal vest with spiked forearms and shoulder plates. And they couldn't forget the tight black pants.

Not like Rayne could criticize too much given her own fashion choices, but she was a dhampir that rebelled against the societal norms of her time. She could get away with it, both in attitude and in battle. Still, it spoke of Ayano's demeanor highly, that she managed to pull the stern authority figure well. She held the line well enough. Severin was infinitely the more personable one, doing his best to quell the panicky masses with mixed success.

Mynce, her reincarnated mentor and current mentee, was off to the side. She wore a much more conservative version of her old uniform, because she was still young. It still held the same dark purple coloring of yesteryears, but it made her resemble a ninja. Which... well, she didn't know how to think on that since Mynce was Tibetan. But regardless, she still possessed her old knifework skills and would be able to restore order if the crowd turned riotous.

Tiger Wraith, a stray monster-slayer that Rayne encountered one time. She was bit of a mystery with her deathly white skin and black jacket with some minor tiger motifs attached to it. Rayne couldn't afford to turn her away.

Two people settled on both sides of her.

One was a vampire with long dark in a long trench coat. He said nothing, as he should. He was Centzouitznaua, the first American vampire. As in, he dated farther back than the European discovery of the New World.

Since his name was a handful, he was Valerio to his friends. And he was no friend of hers. Not after he betrayed her awhile back. And no amount of amends would ever change that. Rayne, however, would be a fool to reject his aid. And Lord help her, she considered just that every time he opened his mouth.

Her half-sister, Svetlana Lupescu, was a much more blessed comfort. Though Rayne hadn't known Svetlana that long, but when all of their other half-siblings were evil, conniving bitches... well, it was no choice at all to take comfort in their sisterhood. And what also kept them apart was that they each had their own respective loyalties. Rayne's to Brimstone, Svetlana's to Spookhouse. But but both were gone now. Hopefully, they had the time now... except they also had a newly discovered half-sister to deal with.

Rayne asked, "How's Mora?"

Svetlana, who resembled Rayne to a good degree in both in look and fashion, frowned.

"She's settling in... but..."

Rayne turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "But what?"

"I don't quite understand how... stuff works. She isn't from this timeline, yes? She just feels off."

"I wouldn't really know either. All I know she's our sister and she needs help."

Valerio cleared his throat, clearly begging for attention. Rayne just groaned and planted her forehead on the railing. She took a deep breath and then asked, "What is it, Valerio?"

"I think I can extrapolate on Mora's nature."

"And how would you know?"

"Because of that business with the old gods..."

And my betrayal, he left unfinished.

Rayne groaned, rolled over so that her back was to the railing, and she groaned again. The sight of too fancy ceiling bothered her. It was too smooth, too pristine for a building that was run by a vampire and helped broadcast propaganda amongst other sins.

Or maybe it was perfectly fitting.

"Okay, okay. I wanted to forget that little incident, because honestly, killing dear ole dad ranked higher than that eldritch mess." Rayne tasted the harshness of the words and how bitter it felt upon her tongue. "Fine. Fine. What is it?"

"Well, this half-sister of yours didn't exist in this universe. It would have been intensely problematic if she were more like those old gods, having come from a previous iteration of the universe. I don't think reality would have liked that, because their natures goes against the natural flow of things. If she was from a different universe, there would be little discrepancy. An apple is an apple, even if it's a different color."

"And what makes Mora different?" Svetlana asked.

"I don't have a good analogy. If the universe preceding backwards is forbidden and it's unlikely we're going to deal with another universe that stands to the side. The problem, I think, arises because she's more like she's from a diagonal offshoot. She's from further up ahead, from something not quite a universe. And reality doesn't quite know what to do with her. Which is why she's chock full of ritual potential. But the longer she stays, the more that potential fades away as reality integrates her into its tapestry."

"So, from that boring exposition, what I'm getting that is the longer we keep her safe, the less likely assholes are going to exploit her."

Valerio only nodded, while Svetlana mused, "Does this mean we are going to retroactively remember her as our sister or... will this weird feeling that I get around her finally cease?"

Rayne frowned. She didn't feel much unease around Mora. Though Svetlana was a much weaker dhampir, she was a far more sensitive one to the point where being around holy ground physically hurt her.

The dhampir turned around, seeing Mora curled up on the couch by the corner. A black blanket covered most of her thin, silky white frame. Her white hair shadowed most of her face, hiding away her pained expression born all the prepared ritualistic scars.

Rayne switched to her aura vision, the world going just bit brighter and a bit darker all at once through blueish hues. She was seeing the world through a spectrum composed of more mystical energies. She looked down at her hands, unable to see her own aura. Rayne glanced to the left, seeing the glowing blue outlines of Valerio and Svetlana. At the core of each of them, threads of red woven into their auras like veins and arteries.

Though Valerio's was far darker than Svetlana's, but she could some of the intensity fading slowly yet surely. She huffed, turning to focus and Mora... only to see nothing. There was no aura, in fact Mora herself was gone. No shadow, no sign of her ever even existing. The blanket that was covering Mora was laying flat on the coach, utterly empty of life. She blinked, restoring her vision back to normal and Mora was still there, still slumbering as if nothing happened.

That just confirmed the gravity of the current situation.

"Well, great," she muttered to herself. "More bullshit I gotta deal with. How could things get worse?"

That was when the bus crashed through the reinforced glass lobby doors, way too fast for the human eye to track. Before she even knew what she was doing, she leapt off the railing and burned the blood in her belly, enhancing her speed and perception. To her, the bus went from a split-second blink to a normal speeding bus that was on a crash course in killing all the squishy humans.

She landed right in front of the bus and threw out her hands. The metal crumbled beneath the palms, the momentum only being halved upon impact. The force had to go somewhere, so it went right through her.

Strong as she was, her body wasn't that strong. She could feel the fractures in her arms before her vampiric heritage healed it in short order. After the first half-second of the sheer stupidity of stopping a bus passed, the momentum ceased so abruptly instead of pushing her back a few more feet.

Instead, she felt something wash over her and the world stuttered for the briefest of seconds. It felt like when she pushed her adrenaline to the max, moving so fast that time practically stopped. Except she couldn't move. Hell, the only reason why she was aware of this feeling was due to her still pushing her perception hard.

She switched her aura vision back on and turned to behind her, seeing a spacious, bubbly mass encompass the crowd. It pulsed with a sickly yellow aura and it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was freezing people in place. Tiger Wraith had somehow sensed the bubble and yanked Mynce out of the way. The two of them examined the frozen masses while Rayne rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the kinks and switching back to normal vision.

She unfurled the arm-blades attached to her wrists. They snapped from a parallel position along her arms to a frontal position. It extended her reach as though they were human-sized pincers. These blades were the core of her fighting style, meshing a brawling style with bladework. And that made her a truly unique fighter, giving her a edge.

"Mynce," Rayne called out. Mynce's attention snapped to her. "Keep Mora safe."

"Raaayne!" she not-quite whined.

"Mynce! Please!"

Her mentee groaned before doing some fancy agility movements like a cat, leaping from wall to wall. And she reached the railing, vaulting over it. Valerio and Svetlana leaped down, joining their ranks. All four of them gathered in front of the destroyed entrance. Cold winds bellowed from outside along with the dim red lighting from the Shroud.

And in front of the destroyed entrance was a man... a vampire.

He just exuded that feeling. The vampire was blond man with a fancy tunic-looking thing and a yellow sash attached to his side. He was posed in an aggressive posture, with his broad right shoulder tilted back, hand resting just above the waist. All of this preening to better showcase his rather impressive muscled body.

Big whoop.

She took down bigger.

Rayne stepped forward, only for someone to grab her shoulder. She glanced back, seeing Tiger Wraith with a concerned look on her face.

"He's got some sort of spirit with him, standing right by his side," she said gravely.

"Oh, ho... you can see Stands." The vampire boomed. "It will not help you. Not when you face Dio!"

Rayne switched on her aura vision, seeing a yellowish figure floating next to Dio. The details of it were hazy, unable to discern the figure... this 'Stand.' It was like seeing a marble statue worn by time and being painfully aware that this wasn't the real deal. Not truly.

"Doesn't matter!" Rayne shouted back, keeping her eyes focused on the vampire. "I figured out your schtick! So, fucking what you can throw freezing bubbles or whatever! I killed nazis, vampires, and demons! You don't rank all that high." Her shouting voice drew to a hiss. "And we outnumber you, asshole."

He shook his head in amusement, as if she were a particularly stupid dog.

"You misunderstand my ability, though that is forgivable as it was not my Stand's original ability. These bubbles freeze time within them and cannot affect space outside of them. But the space around them is still a factor." He smirked and raised her arms up wide, going for that crucified Jesus pose, but filled with extravagance and sinful pride. "Did you know the Earth rotates roughly a thousand miles per hour?"

That was when rubble and rebar launched at them at blinding speeds, like it was raining sideways.

"Keep them off the civilians!" Svetlana shouted, letting loose her own arm-blades.

Rayne had to growl. Sometimes it just didn't pay to be a good guy. She kept burning the blood in her belly, feeling the rage and the adrenaline intermix. It was only in battle did her true abilities shine through, being powered by bloodlust and berserker rage.

She threw her perception to the forefront, feeling it squeal behind her eyes. The muscles screamed and then turned numb with deafness, as the world slowed to a near crawl. She moved quicker than she had any right to be, smashing the rubble and casting aside the rebar with the swing of her arm-blades.

Rayne had realized the bubbles were the true source of the speed and didn't need to bother too much. Svetlana managed to deflect a piece of rebar in a frontal charge, while Valerio was prioritizing large swaths of concrete.

Tiger Wraith hung back, watching everything with a keen eye. She stood close to the civilians, but outside the yellowish bubble. Tiger Wraith watched as a large chunk of rock neared the group of frozen panicky humans.

Rayne turned to shout at her, but held her tongue. It would just come as white noise gibberish; she was just moving too fast. She looked between the vampire and the civilians. Rayne was just about to prioritize the vampire, when a kid caught her eyes. His eyes wide with fear, the mouth arched into a rictus scream... but no amount of sound could capture the terror his little heart must have felt. His fright was still for the oncoming bus, but the fear was still fitting.

Goddamn it.

The fear... the confusion... it reminded too much of herself. When she was just a young unwanted kid born from rape. And Mom... oh, Mom... it was fraught with tension at times, but she tried. And she was succeeding, until fucking Kagan — her piece of shit father — came back. The screams that day...

In many ways, she was still that little girl scared out of her mind. In time, that fear turned a bitter, raw anger.

But this kid wouldn't even have the luxury of a miserable, spiteful existence. Never to get a chance to move on.

She stopped and turned, trying to reach the kid.

Rayne was just too late and she wanted to howl at Tiger Wraith, to curse herself for trusting —

Then the concrete stopped harmlessly inside the very edge of the bubble. Tiger Wraith slowly looked at Rayne and flashed a thumbs up from the waist. A palatable relief threatened to undo everything.

Fuck! The rage building in her heart needed an outlet, demanding to kill and slaughter her enemies. If the rage died, her abilities would lose that essential oomph.

She dipped out of the hectic frenzy for a second to shout, "It's a ploy! Just dodge!"

Dio smirked and then fired fucking lazers out of his eyes. Rayne tried to dive back into that heightened perception to dodge. They struck hard, they struck fast, hitting her in the collarbones and flung her toward Tiger Wraith. She leaped to intercept Rayne, preventing her from being trapped in the bubble.

That bastard knew how quickly she moved and waited for the right moment to strike. He must have studied her... or had inside knowledge.

Suddenly, amongst the clattering and fighting, she could hear the clash of blades high up above.

Mynce!

She had wanted to keep her free from the worst of it. Rayne had every bit of faith in Mynce's abilities... when it came to protecting herself. But Rayne had charged her with protecting Mora... dividing her attention.

Rayne leapt all the way up to the second railing and her collarbone had healed by then. But her reservoir was seriously running low.

She landed just in time to see Mynce be forced back by the Butcheress's wild swings. Mynce was highly skilled, having drawn upon the previous lifetime of skills, but she was younger... human. And the Butcheress was a bad bitch who refused to stay dead, becoming something a little more than human.

"Mengle!" she roared. "Why the fuck can't you stay dead?"

"Too much to see, Rayne! Too much to do!" the Butcheress sang.

Mynce was huffing, swinging her blades to match the Butcheress in tandem. She was good enough to see that she was outmatched, to see the killing blow that snaked under her guard... toward her heart through underneath the ribcage.

I won't lose her again!

Rayne overclocked the rage in her blood. Felt the strain on her heart as the world literally stopped. But it was enough to tackle the Butcheress down to the ground and sink her fangs into her neck, draining the fire from the murderer. 'Stopping' time was an ability that costed much, one that ebbed more than it flowed. And so she had to drained the Butcheress dry, not wanting to deal with the woman anymore. Too much history, there.

Rayne stood up and wiped her mouth with a quick swipe of her arm.

She looked at Mynce, who nodded with unspoken understanding. Mynce went to Mora and scooped her up into her arms. Rayne went up to the railing, ready to leap back into the fray.

Only to see Ayano drop from the air, sword swinging toward Dio's neck.

Holy shit! Rayne totally forgot about Ayano! That woman was too sneaky for her own good.

Something caught... that invisible Stand caught the sword, but Rayne wasn't too surprised when Severin emerged from the shadows beneath and sliced Dio's Achilles' tendons wide open before disappearing.

"You dare?!" Dio shrieked.

That was the opening Ayano was waiting for, as the onslaught of concrete and rebar slowed down to a crawl. She, with either supernatural strength or human leverage, slammed her palm into the flat of the blade and snapped it into two. With her spare hand, she drew a Japanese dagger — a kaiken — from the sword's handle. And with a dagger and a half a blade, she delved deep into Dio. It was a good plan, with the deception and the feints.

Ayano had stabbed at the heart and severed the spine through the throat.

Any other vampire would have died. Rayne could have maybe come back from a stabbed heart if she drank enough blood... but she would have needed a whole lot of blood. Yet... a knife through the throat and spine would have killed her.

Dio started to choke on his blood, but he refused to die.

Instead he growled and the air turned chill. The moisture in the air was visible as it turned slurry, then cold and hard. Ayano realized the pressing need to flee, but Dio managed to grab her wrists hard. Bone had been audibly broken from the grip.

And ice began to coat Ayano's limbs.

"It seems like I regained this ability when I was resurrected," Dio mused, his wounds already healed.

Ayano gasped for the barest of moments, before accepting her fate. She took one steady breath and closed her eyes, as the ice quickly and literally froze her solid.

Dio pulled her off him, the blades sliding out of him. And then he threw her like a case of heavy luggage toward the ground and Ayano — warrior of the Red Sun — shattered into big, blocky pieces.

She looked nothing like a corpse... just a miserable ice sculpture that lost all of its brillance.

"Ayano!" Rayne shouted.

"You can submit to me and your lives shall be spared. Continue and perish," Dio announced.

Valerio said, "What do you want?"

Rayne could only sputter in indignation, frustration, and barely concealed sorrow. Valerio eyed her from the corner of his eyes, beseeching her to trust him.

She heaved with exertion, not knowing what to do.

Dio spoke in the silence.

"I have need of the vampire named Mora. My designs do not involve you."

"She's my sister..." Rayne hissed, heaving harder, desiring death. "And I won't let you take her."

"I know of the... attachment one forms with family. And the ones you discard when certain family members fail to leave up to that ideal. Are you willing to risk more allies? All for Mora? Mora, you know less. Mora, who shouldn't exist. Are you really willing to risk your actual sister?"

Svetlana stepped up. "It is my life and I decide what to do with it. And killing vampiric filth like you is a worthy goal. If I die doing it... well, Rayne knows the type of lives we live. I won't blame her."

Dio laughed. "Very well. I did not want to expend any unneeded effort. Come, then... and meet the only fate in store for those who go against me!"

Valerio shifted his footwork, prepared to make a fatal charge. Rayne could practically see the way his mind was working, heard the gears turning. These were very bad odds and it would take the unthinkable to change them. He'd rather die and leave one last good memory than walk the treacherous road of redemption. A road where one hoped to put enough distance, make better memories, from the weight of the wretched sin they tried leaving behind. And before, Rayne only cared enough to keep Valerio going, just to see him miserable in penance for betraying her.

Now, she was tired.

Rayne hated getting close. Despised it really. She had always been a solo act. Severin had been a necessity in an increasingly complicated world. But having so many people around... people she worked with, bonded with over the blessed act of monster-hunting...

Fuck!

Stupid feelings.

"Don't do it, Valerio," Rayne found herself saying.

He turned a fraction.

"Don't be stupid." She stepped forward, settling into a modified boxer's stance. "You're my friend. A friend I'm still very, very annoyed with. But still a friend. And I'm not losing anyone else today."

"Brave words," Dio interjected. "Perhaps if you were another person in another place, fate would be on your side. But here. Now. There is only strength. And you won't encounter a stronger individual than I, let alone a stronger vampire."

"Killed bigger, killed badder," Rayne proclaimed.

Her arms snapped up, the Carpathian Dragons attached underneath her blades clicked and clanked as it switched to what some asshole called Blood Hammer mode. She didn't name it; she just stole the upgrade. Hardened projectiles of blood fired out from the guns. That Stand of his moved quickly in her aura vision, managing to punch quick enough to catch the volley. Shame for him that the projectiles were quite explosive.

He had deflected two in quick succession and got two explosives in turn. Dust and blood kicked up a mighty impressive cloud.

But Rayne didn't stop firing.

More explosions rang out and she could sense Dio being propelled back by the strength of the Dragons.

The guns started to click and she quickly stopped firing before the Dragons started draining her for more ammunitions.

The dust had settled and left half of Dio was a ruined mess. The right side of him had clung onto the broken, jagged glass around the hole in the entrance.

"Wrrrrrrrryyyy," he seethed.

He waved a hand and more of the bubbles started to zip in.

Except they weren't concrete and rebars, they were bullets and grenades. The moment the bubbled bullets passed the threshold, the time-freeze effect was let go. It caused a confusing stuttering as the bullets suddenly went even faster. The Earth may have rotated a thousand miles per hour, but bullets traveled a few hundred faster than that. It was, more or less, easy to expect flying bullets. But their initial approach let them subconsciously clock the somewhat manageable speed and then be somewhat surprised when they suddenly accelerated.

Tiger Wraith wisely disappeared, while Svetlana was doing her best to dodge and weave. However, the bullets still scratched at skin as though they were hard-raked nails. Valerio and Rayne were the only ones quick enough to make a joke of this bullet storm.

A bubbled grenade came zipping in and she rushed toward it, snatching it free and lobbing it at Dio. He smacked it aside as he laboriously continued to breathe, to regenerate.

But still, he was foolish enough to leave cooked grenades...

Another bubble flew towards her, but this one was carrying a frozen explosion. Shrapnel and fire was poised at the inner surface of the bubble, ready to resume its destruction.

A trick?!

Rayne's perception was just enough to see it coming, the way the bubble didn't just burst. It just vanished, leaving only the aftermath of the explosion.

Valerio had dashed in front of her, sheltering her from the damage. It was entirely survivable for a full-blooded vampire given Kagan survived a similar situation. But as Valerio was flung far, chest wide open, Dio seized the moment and separated Valerio's head from his neck with those eye beams.

Rayne hadn't ever heard of a vampire recovering from just a head.

Valerio was dead, no ifs ands or buts.

"NO MORE!" Rayne screamed at the top of her undead lungs and fell upon Dio.

She fought like the worst type of monster: something not quite human, but human enough to hate. Her blades cut into him as though they were her claws. Dio hardened his skin with layers of frost and ice, denying her that sweet sensation of severance.

Rayne oh-so needed to butcher this thing, to make it hurt and bleed.

She could see the Stand's aura, saw it rear its fist back to cave her head in. Rayne had no other option but to tank it and then continue on.

Tiger Wraith intercepted the blow, her blades snaking underneath the fist and circling around the arm, cutting in deep. Rayne's enhanced perception saw the damage mirror on his arm, bypassing his frosted armor.

"Fuck up his Stand, Tiger Wraith!" Rayne cried out.

Svetlana joined in the fray, having circled around to impale Dio through the backside. She pinned him place, allowing Rayne to get a few blows in. Cursory, nonsensical blows that only served to vent her rage. But she was smart enough to move onto more smaller, more vital areas and denied him his left hand. As he howled and his left hand just flopped onto the ground, she could see the cornea split open, most likely to shoot more of those beams. This close, it would blow her brains to mush.

Svetlana roared, jerking Dio to the left, causing his eyebeams to go off kilter, skewering the walls. Rayne exploited the opening, jabbing her blade toward the side of his head. Dio threw himself further back, further impaling himself on Svetlana's blades to avoid what would have been a finishing blow.

But the very tip of her blade blinded him, creating a deep line of red across his eyes. He howled further, the sound turning harsh and angry. He fell limp into Svetlana's embrace and only as Tiger Wraith cried out did she realized that he was putting all his efforts into his Stand.

Tiger Wraith had gotten a firm lock on the Stand's arm, staring forward and standing directly underneath the armpit, and was doing her best to saw it off one upwards cut at a time. Rayne moved to help her, but Dio's disembodied hand had grabbed her by the heel hard.

Bone broke and she faltered.

Dio's invisible Stand punched Tiger Wraith in the face, neatly caving her head in. And still the woman stabbed at the arm...

The next blow would punch her head clean off, Rayne was deathly sure of it. So, she gathered up her energy, her aura, and shaped into a mirror image of herself. Rayne flung the specter at the Stand. She couldn't do much with that power beyond feeding on blood via proxy and enthralling the weak-willed for a short period.

But she gave it a purpose, to pull back the killing blow on her ally.

The specter landed on the Stand's shoulders and grabbed its wrist hard, doing its damnedest to keep Tiger Wraith alive.

Then the Stand vanished, sending her specter skittering into nothingness... and it reappeared behind Svetlana. It grabbed her harshly and tore her off Dio, before flinging her upwards.

Another bus came crashing through, a few feet higher than the last. The front of the bus was not encased in the bubble, allowing it to crush Svetlana against the far-off wall unimpeded. The bus stopped suddenly at the wall, leaving only the legs exposed, but they were outside the bubble.

They dangled for the briefest of seconds, before them, and only them, dropped down the ground.

"Svetlana!" Rayne howled.

The Stand smashed her throat in, the force sending her flying back. And then impact struck spine-shattering hard against the end of the first bus. She slid down, dazed, just in time to see Dio grasp Tiger Wraith's head with his hands. He flash-froze her head and then crushed it. The body dropped unceremoniously.

An after-image of something fled the body of Tiger Wraith.

Rayne didn't have enough time to ponder the implication as she was currently suffocating to death. Couldn't even move because she was sure her back was broken.

Dio picked up his hand, reattached it, and then looked down in irritation at his ruined red outfit.

He clicked his teeth. "Sloppy."

Rayne wanted to shout obscenities at him, but couldn't even draw enough air to wheeze.

"This was the inevitable conclusion. Be grateful I give you enough time to mourn your failures."

Rayne raised a shaky middle finger. Dio scoffed, closed one eye, and blasted the offending appendage clean off.

Couldn't scream.

Couldn't do anything.

Consciousness started to fade.

But not before Dio performed one last twist of the knife.

"My Butcheress has already stolen Mora."

And then nothing.

XXX

And then everything as someone slammed a needle into her heart.

"Stay with me, Rayne!" Severin shouted next to her.

Animal instinct was wrestling with the wheel and she thrashed on the operating table. Severin, fighting against her, shoved a blood bag into one of her flailing hands. The grip slipped slightly as it was the hand missing a finger.

"Drink! You won't recover otherwise!"

She had enough sense to glare at him and then slap at her crushed throat.

"Oh..." Severin trailed off, eyes darting everywhere before affixing on something. "Oh!"

Then he slit her throat wide open. She would have gutted him if he didn't immediately shove the blood bag at the new orifice. She squeezed the blood down her throat. Stupidly, her body tried to seal the open throat wound first instead of the crushed throat, so she clawed it open to continue chugging down the red.

Once she was sure she was no longer about to die, she shoved Severin away and got up, stumbling about the medical wing of the tower. She blinked blearily at the lights and then her vision finally adjusted. Only to see Mynce with an oxygen mask over her face. Her black and blue face, with uneven bruising was barely the full extent of the damage.

Her outfit was torn to shred as haphazard sutures, stitches, and bandages were applied liberally all over her body.

It was obvious she wasn't going to last the next hour.

"I didn't kill the Butcheress..." Rayne whispered in dismay.

"It wasn't your fault, Rayne. She's always been a slippery character —"

Rayne's fist slammed the wall, denting the steel.

"I should have known!" Rayne took a shuddering breath. "It's time to end this. I failed so spectacularly..."

"Rayne...."

"Don't deny it. The people are still frozen down there, right?"

"Right."

"I have no choice." Rayne looked at Mynce and brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. "I have no choice with Mynce..."

"You're going to turn her," Severin muttered, aghast.

"No choice. I don't think I'll survive the fight with Dio. But I'm hoping to bring the bastard down with me. Someone has to lead... and no offense, Severin, but you're bit of a side-man."

"Some offense taken, but I agree. Just not like this."

Rayne sighed. "I know. A turned vampire by a full-blood is still gonna be weaker than the lowest of dhampirs. A turned vampire by a dhampir? Might barely be above human, might even be a little below. Maybe it'll enhance her abilities, maybe it'll make her weaker. But it doesn't matter. She'll be alive."

"A turned struggles with their urges far more than any dhampir or vampire. There's a reason why they're used as cannon fodder."

Rayne closed her eyes. "Mynce is one of the strongest people I know, both in her last life and this life."

With her eyes still closed, she knelt down, close to Mynce's neck.

"Forgive me, Mynce. Just know... I loved you like a sister."

She chewed the inside of her mouth, feeling the blood well upon her tongue and fangs. Then she bit into Mynce's neck, feeding her blood and draining her in equal measure. It was through this weird combination of events that made one a turned vampire.

Rayne felt Mynce's pulse suddenly stop, then start back up again. Mynce started to breathe more easily.

The dhampir's grim job done, she marched to a window, only turning back to say, "Make sure Mynce is fed."

"Are you sure about this?" Severin called out.

"Someone has to finish this." She turned on her aura vision, easily locking on Dio's signature... who had not gone far.

Then she clambered out the window, turned into a black raven, and flew into the night.

XXX

Dio stood on the floor overlooking the frozen ballroom, holding Mora by the wrist. She stood as limply as a doll, eyes glazed over.

He looked at the Butcheress who was deciphering the ritual scars on the woman's back.

"What is with this vampire's demeanor?"

"I can only speculate, Lord Dio."

"Then speculate. And do not refer me as such if you do not mean it. Sarcastic attitudes are the little deaths of respect and reverence."

The Butcheress hmmped loudly as her gloved fingers traced a particularly long scar. "Unlike you, Dio, she hails from a reality close to, but not quite the same as this one. It's a matter of blood-type, really. You don't register as anything, really, but her? She's the wrong blood-type. The more she stayed with Rayne, the more a bond developed and the more the world started to see her as the right blood type. Since we have taken her away from that, she's regressing."

Dio nodded. "And will this and the ritual scars affect my plan?"

"I doubt it. One has to mean it with the ritual under certain conditions. It will not interfere."

"Good. Once I leave this universe, this city will be yours with no one to defend it."

"Are you sure I cannot travel with you?" the Butcheress asked.

"Try it and die. You seen how easily I dealt with those fair defenders of the city. I do not trust you, Mengele. If you figure out universal travel, then by all means. Go ahead. But this is a journey I must embark myself. Any 'companions' I bring will only serve to weaken me. My undertaking must be undertaken by my hand alone."

He heard the flapping of frantic wings and a harsh landing that shook the ground.

Dio turned lazily to see a crazed Rayne poised to charge and dice him to pieces. He summoned the World by his side, knowing that it was quick enough to deflect any attacks made by the dhampir. And now that he was no longer swamped by multiple opponents, Dio could readily crush Rayne.

Then she disappeared and Dio recognized the signs enough to know it mirrored the effects of the World's true ability. At that first split second, he thought he was too late and would be diced to pieces.

Only for Rayne to materialize suddenly, one blade stretched toward his head and the other pulled back for a follow up blow. Then she dropped like a sack of potatoes and in the throes of a seizure. Green lines pulsed underneath her skin and she groaned, but still she reached out to swipe at Dio's legs.

Dio took a casual step back, yanking Mora toward the edge. If nothing else, he would give her credit to her determination. But determination did not always translate to strength. Jonathan's old sweetheart, Erina, had the will to spite him, but he could have easily snapped her neck, even as a human.

The Butcheress let out a cackle.

"You should have not drank from my veins, Rayne! The poison was designed to trigger when you pushed the blood and the rage in your blood. Did you not think I would improve myself to your abilities?" The Butcheress cocked her head. "And it seems you have improved in other ways as well. I look forward to dissecting you and learning how you turned into a raven. I think that would be a quaint power for me."

"Yeah... I got an upgrade awhile back. And it wasn't just the ability to turn into a bird. Shouldn't have let me bite you, Mengle!"

Rayne reached out toward the Butcheress, whose eyes suddenly went wide. A green gas started to leak through the pores of her skin before she suddenly exploded in guts and gore. The World shielded him by quickly counteracted the force by slamming its palms together. The worst of it was nullified... for him.

The same could not be said for Mora, who tumbled off the railing and down into the frozen ballroom. Rayne cried out her name, but Dio cared not. Despite the abruptness, his plan was more or less fulfilled.

The way Mora fell into the large bubble was like the way a knife cut into cloth: easily tearing into the fabric. After all, if this woman didn't really exist in spacetime, what did it mean to be frozen in it?

The answer was a hole in the universe. Already, the outline of Mora was nibbled away, like erasing the lines of a drawing, but leaving the details unscathed for now. She became a water-paint stain on the portrait of the world.

And Rayne dove in after her.

Dio had no idea if the process was too far to be stopped, but he wasn't about to leave things to chance. Rayne had stopped hard inside the bubble, frozen mid-dive. She was fast, but not fast enough —

Then she started to fall gently down to the ground, about a quarter slower than normal. Dio gritted his teeth, not knowing whether it was an innate facet of her speed or the unique situation brought on by the burgeoning hole in the universe.

And Dio did not know if he retained the freedom to move within stopped time. He had to risk it lest Rayne ruin everything. He had shattered her ties and would most likely flee with Mora until she was no longer viable.

While Dio would triumph in the end, he would have lost the victory he truly needed to achieve. So he dropped down into stopped time. As he did, Dio focused on burning the rest of his blood reservoir. But he reorientated his thinking. Instead of letting the tethers release the bubbles, he let go of his tethers.

And lo, Dio could move once more. Oh, how he missed the freedom that he alone should possessed. Until he saw, the way Rayne staggered so freely within stopped time enraged him as much Jotaro did. It was like watching a hobbled horse try and match wits with a prestige steed.

Dio summoned the World to beat Rayne to a pulp, but he could feel it stop just past the surface of his skin. It came to him: he was sacrificing the World's ability to move in exchange for his own freedom.

He considered his Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, but immediately dismissed it. Within stopped time, it might blow back on him somehow.

So, Dio settled for brute force. He jabbed hard at her stumbling form, aiming at her face. She moved slow, too slow. It struck hard and he made sure to jam his thumb into her eye, blinding her. Rayne tried screaming, but the sound couldn't move quick enough.

Not before he struck her sternum. Cracked it. He pushed further. Knuckles touched her heart. Fingers outstretched, tipped off with claws. Scratched the heart, feeling it bleed. He pulled back, taking a good chunk of vital muscle she couldn't leave without.

She tried anyway.

She died anyway.

Dio breathed out, feeling the sweet taste of victory.

Mora was gone, leaving only a three-dimensional hole in her wake. Something that was not quite black, but was dark nevertheless. Instead of empty space, space itself was empty. There was no guarantee that he would not go mad in the dark.

Even less chance of arriving to another universe.

But he was Dio.

And he feared nothing.

Dio Brando stepped from this universe into sheer nothingness, with nothing but the strength of his will to armor him. And what bonded him to this universe was undone.

XXX

Rayne died and death had contained the likes of her. Try as she might, she could not fight against inevitable death. Her life was forfeit. In this strange state of being, she wondered if she would be reincarnated as Mynce did.

She drifted toward that state of mind, until the idea and soul of Rayne realized there was a tiny, imperceptible crack within the impenetrable wall of the universe. Her soul drifted toward it, knowing it was a purgatory of sorts. Dio was long gone. By passing through the dwindling hole, there would be no chance of finding him again and making him pay.

But there'd be a chance of maybe coming back to life.

Dio passed through alive; Rayne was going to pass through dead.

As she felt a life of hers be taken as a toll, as if she were a cat with multiple lives or this was a spare life taken after a game-over.

Then she passed through, banking on a small chance with no guarantees of anything.

Rayne was gone.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

Spoiler: What is Doctor Who?

Doctor Who is a British television series that focuses on the Doctor, who is from an alien species called the Time Lords. He travels through time and space in a ship called the TARDIS, which takes on the form of a blue police box. As part of being a Time Lord, he can regenerate into a different form, allowing different actors to portray the character.

Spoiler: What is A Hat in Time?

A Hat in Time is a video game platformer that follows Hat Kid, an alien time-traveler that looks like a little girl, and her adventure to find all of her missing time pieces that her ship uses as fuel. On her adventures, she encounters a colorful cast of characters that include a mustached girl who rebels against the mafia, a DJ penguin, a cat yakuza boss, and many more.

A little girl in a spaceship made out of wood spun around in the captain's chair. Bored out of her mind, she kept on spinning.

Spinning and spinning.

In fact, this little girl spun so fast that her top hat flew from head. And she kept on spinning.

Bleh, bleh.

Who would have thought a safe voyage could end up feeling so boring after several bouts of child endangerment and all-around mayhem?

This kid had a taste of adventure!

And maybe a itty-bitty part of her craved more. Just a tiny, tiny part of her that was nestled next to her tiny, tiny heart. She didn't want to lose her time pieces again, but there must have been a way to pass the time. Especially since the ship's engine needed to cool down before it could speed the rest of way back home.

Why not a quick side-trip to a normal planet and have a little fun?

Surely, nothing would make her eat those words.

Right?

The girl without a hat stopped spinning and stared out into the vast nothingness that was outer space. In the infinite void where whole worlds crumbled and died, where stars would eventually extinguish, she wondered if someone was having a more exciting time than her.

And, somewhere, somewhen, a mad man in a box was crashing through quite a number of time rifts and several layers of reality.

XXX

The TARDIS, torn between fighting through a hurricane and fleeing a storm. She struggled through a spatial sea with tidal waves of time.

She could cut through the hurricane as though it were nothing, but the energy had to go somewhere. It was a scale inconceivable to a flapping butterfly and nigh-incomprehensible to the TARDIS. But she could calculate, run the numbers faster than the birth and death of the universe.

All of it grim.

The chances of survival for her and her Doctor were slim; the only solution was just to power through, regardless of the consequences.

Instead, she ran farther away from one universe and into the next. The tethers that bound and connected began to fray. Once gone, she would be adrift in the space between universes. The TARDIS would be a watership without a North Star. Instead of facing and breaking the vortex, the two of them ran.

Some might consider it cowardly, but it might be even braver. She ran not for her own safety, but for the safety of others. To buy time and find a better resolution, because of what they were capable of. Maybe it would make things worse, but that was the Doctor's job.

"Geronimo!" the Doctor called out, as the two of them spun out.

Like always, the two of them tripping through time. It was a partnership between the two of them. Though it may seem like he was the musician and she an instrument, it went deeper than that. Beyond words. Indescribable. He piloted her beautifully. If she had the capacity to smile, the biggest damn grin would be on her face.

But he grinned enough for the both of them.

If the Doctor could smile for her, then she could something for him.

He pulled a lever that would have the TARDIS half de-materialize to smooth the trans-universal migration. A dangerous maneuver, that if done wrong, would scatter their atoms. Of course, he was banking on the fact that it would take less than thirty seconds. And that would be true, if they had somewhere to land.

So, she nudged things, just a little.

Sometimes he noticed, sometimes he didn't. Did it really matter if a few steps of their journey were not his? They still traveled together.

And, now, they were about to crash land somewhere with a lot of temporal energy.

XXX

"Another happy landing, eh, Sexy?" the Doctor said, nudging his elbow against the console.

The TARDIS let loose a groan that whorled through the air. The type of exhale that went everywhere from sheer exhaustion. It looked like the landing was harder than both of them cared to admit.

"Well then, time to see where we ended up."

He hopped down the steps toward the door, stole his fez back from the railing, and stopped. He plopped the headwear on and straightened out his bowtie like he was in his Sunday's best.

The Doctor strode out, ready for friendly first greetings, only to get whacked in the knee by an umbrella. He looked down, seeing a little girl in a top hat waving a blue umbrella menacingly at him. She had a yellow cape with a huge zipper in the front with a purple outfit. White pants adorned her stubby, little legs held apart in a precariously precious stance befitting a kid her age.

"Hey!" He held up his grievously assaulted knee and gave it a soothing rub. "Very rude."

"No!" the girl squeaked defiantly. She pointed back at the TARDIS with her free hand. "Go!"

"Sheesh…" The Doctor put his foot down. "I'll be going soon. Gotta let the old girl air out a bit."

She glowered at him, looking at the blue box behind him. With a mumbled fine, the girl turned to look out the giant window to her left. She crossed her arms and started tapping her foot rapidly. The Doctor took a moment to examine his surroundings and found it very homely. There was a television set propped up near a wall with a pillow to lounge on, a rotating display of a giant hamburger beanbag, a tube that very well might be a slide, and a few stickers plastered over the walls.

The Doctor glanced at the captain's chair where a pink pillow was stuck to it. Homely indeed. It looked like this child was the owner and captain of this ship he found himself on. Or at the very least, was allowed to operate the ship under supervision. His eyes wandered to a large vault door on the second door and something behind it twigged his Time Lord sensibilities.

He started to reach inside his jacket and the girl hopped into a sloppy shooting position with the umbrella as her rifle. The penchant for violence was troubling, but then again, he was a stranger that suddenly appeared on a kid's spaceship.

Not every kid could be like Amelia Pond and tolerate his post-regeneration cravings.

The Doctor smiled measuredly and as reassuringly as he could, trying to hide the tinge of sorrow. "I'm just taking out my sonic screwdriver."

She raised an eyebrow. Her eyes flickered to the vault and back at him. He almost missed it. The kid lowered the umbrella and rolled her hand, as if to say, get on with it, you geezer. The tension in her only subsided slightly.

He scanned the environment, starting off broadly before narrowing it down. The first scan didn't reveal much. The spaceship was made predominately out of wood, of all things. Annoying, but fascinating.

Then he focused on the vault and the screwdriver registered an overabundance of temporal energy. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought this ship contained a Heart of a TARDIS. Then he sorted through the data and saw how false his assumption was. It was like there were a myriad of temporal water sprouts and they seemed to resemble a Heart, only by the sheer number of them.

It would have been worrying if it weren't so regulated. This ship used miniature time vortexes for fuel, in a rather inefficient fashion. Then he took a quick look at the flight log.

Oh!

Oh.

"You are responsible with these…" He held the sonic screwdriver close to his ear. "Time pieces?"

"Duh."

"Hmm…" The Doctor didn't like letting wanton time travelers mucking about. It was why he grounded Captain Jack and why the Teselecta could roam about. According to the flight log, she rarely used the time travel aspect, barring one outside incident beyond her control. And the kid had a good reason for using time vortexes: going home.

He thought of Gallifrey and how could he think of depriving a child of her home?

Plus, he wasn't even in his universe. Would he dare think himself the sole Lord of Time here? He may be old and experienced, but he was inexperienced about the metaphysics of this universe. Was he so arrogant to write the Laws of Time anew here in a different universe? He knew the answer and declined to respond.

With a sudden, energetic nod, the Doctor then clapped his hands together and said, "Well, then. I'm super sorry for crashing in on you. Absolutely didn't mean to and I apologize profusely."

He spun around and sonicked the TARDIS, confirming that it was now ready to go.

"All good to go," he declared.

The girl nodded and the Doctor zipped back into TARDIS, giving her one last wave to her. Then he flipped two levers simultaneously and prepared to jump through time and space, through relative dimensions. And then the TARDIS let out a grinding groan.

The Doctor immediately pulled back the levers.

"So sorry, old girl." He circled around the console, shedding the fez and coat as he did. The Doctor pressed a variety of buttons to trigger a diagnosis. Standing next to the chair, he pulled a screen down, looking at the numbers.

"Oh, dear. You're entangled in this timestream, aren't you?" He peered closer at the screen. "And you spatial-locked yourself to the ship to keep us from breaking down. Ah, the problems of not having the right atoms for the right universe. We might be stuck here."

"Ahem…"

The voice startled him and he turned toward the source. The chair turned around, revealing the girl wearing his fez with a decidedly unamused look on her face.

The Doctor laughed uneasily, scratching the back of his head. "Looks like I'll be stuck here for a bit longer."

She huffed and hopped off the seat. The girl stopped just outside the TARDIS, before looking back at the Doctor with annoyed look. It was the sort of look from someone that faced setback after setback. Honestly, the girl would be will within her rights to boot him from the ship.

The problem arose solely due to the fact that the TARDIS was stuck here and the Doctor wasn't going to leave it. It was the sort of situation that could quickly either escalate to a Cold War, at worst, or just uneasy neighbors, at best.

The girl stared at him, sighed, and waved for him to follow.

He took it for the answer that it was.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel

The little hat kid was definitely not human. Not that it mattered all that much. It was just an interesting fact to note to the Doctor. Like how the little alien girl had bones inside her ponytail, making it an actual ponytail. Though could it really be called a tail if it was placed on the back of the head?

Food for thought, as was the actual food he was preparing. The Doctor double-checked the recipe by the aptly-named Cooking Cat. It had found on the fridge as a whole notepad glued on the fridge with a message that 'a little alien girl should have nutritious meals to eat.'

Several of the recipes were cat-nip based.

While he may have been welling to try it out, he wasn't so sure about the girl. But there were quite a few that were serviceable. Prime of which was pancakes. It was no fish fingers and custard, but pancakes were a great catch-all. As he readied the peculiar mix, the Doctor wondered how long he was going to be stuck here.

Admittedly… it was a nice distraction from… losing the Ponds, but he thought about retiring for a bit. Probably in Victorian London. But ah, could the Doctor resist poking at a spatial-time anomaly? Now, he was in a different universe. Maybe he could putter around here for a bit, but the Time Lord in him knew he wouldn't be able to stay for a protracted amount of time here.

Plus, it was just poor manners to bum around in someone else's spaceship. Hence, the breakfast as a peace offering. The hat kid was content to just let him in on the ship and then went right to bed. The Doctor should be a mite concerned about how blasé the kid was being about an adult stranger coming onto her ship. But it might be a difference in cultural behaviors.

It wasn't like the Doctor was going to betray that trust, but would he be overstepping his bounds if he tried explaining stranger danger? He would wait off on that until it became prevalent to the matters at hand.

First pancakes.

By the time he was done, the hat kid slugged into the room and hopped well above her height onto the counter. That feat was certainly beyond human norms. He paused, pursing his lips as he put a pancake on a plate. Oh, dear, he was certainly being a bit human-centric about things again. The girl walked along the counter, reaching for a mug.

She placed it down with extra care before taking out a bag of powder. Her eyes met his before darting back to the cup. There was a challenging gleam in her eyes. He opened his mouth to offer to make a cup of what was probably chocolate milk.

Then with reckless abandon, she poured a very sizable helping of the powder into the mug. The Doctor opened and closed his mouth several times in succession. His upraised hand followed a similar beat, the index fingering flexing up and down, as if trying to find a hill to die on.

Wrangling his hands back to function, he decided to focus on the pancakes. That much he could do. But the Doctor had to ponder. Was he really that frazzled? The prospect of retirement seemed more enticing than ever.

Losing a companion always hurt and the Doctor flitted onwards. He suddenly remembered what he told Amy Pond once when she was on the cusp of forgetting Rory. The good didn't negate the bad. But vice versa, the bad didn't negate the good times either. Surely, he should follow his own advice?

But the Doctor lied. Even to himself, sometimes.

He was fine.

Turning around with two plates, he saw the kid hunched over at the table. Two hands cusped around the mug and she took a ginger sip from the cup. The image looked reminiscent of a grad student coming back to life with the power of caffeine.

"You like pancakes?"

She looked up and responded thusly.

"Meh."

"Everybody likes pancakes."

"Meh."

The Doctor failed to resist a cheeky grin. "So, I should have both?"

"Nope."

He took that as the victory it was and gave her a plate. She finished her cup of dubiously chocolate proportions and started digging in.

"Don't you want syrup?" he asked.

"Bleh."

"More for me then."

He poured more than enough syrup to make the pancakes tolerable to his palate. He took one soggy bite before pointing the fork at her.

"Got a name, kid?"

Her face grew red and she looked away, clearly shy. She mumbled something unintelligible and quickly shoved a big piece of pancake to have an excuse not to talk any further. Definitely a child, even by her unknown species standards. Or so he presumed.

"Hey, it's okay. I don't like giving out my name either. But I go by the Doctor."

She swallowed, looked away, before gaining a resolve reserved for the shy. For them, it was an inch not so easily given. Maybe to some it wasn't all that big of a gesture, but if it was impressive for her then it was impressive for him.

The girl scribbled something down on a napkin and shoved it over to him. The alien script refused to be translated by the TARDIS.

"I, uh, can't read this, but I appreciate it nevertheless."

She nodded, only slightly downtrodden, as if she hoped that he could read it. A troubling thought flitted through his head. What if, and this was merely a hypothetical possibility, her unknown species were this universe's equivalent to the Time Lords? Or at the very least, on the road to becoming them.

He looked over the kid again, seeing everything a kid should be. Innocent with only a dash of smugness intermixed with a lack of self-assurance about their place in the wider universe. The Doctor also could see just a touch of shyness underneath all of that. Sure, she may have be bravely blasé about a stranger coming aboard and bumming about, but talking to the stranger? Might be a step too much.

Scratch that, if she had to talk to him -- the Doctor -- it might be a whole staircase too much. Kids knew, deep down, whether or not they were being talked at rather than talked to. Rather patronizing thing, all things considered.

He couldn't really do his whole flappy hands and babbling about rather impressive things he did. It would be suffocating and overbearing and so many other things that could wreck a child's self esteem. After all, what had this kid done to even compare to even his most recent endeavor?

The Doctor, who had decided to poke at a time-space anomaly. The Doctor, who had vastly underestimated the depth and damage. The Doctor, who had it been anyone else, would have not survive the trek to this universe.

In was in those moments that he could forget the pain of loss. Because despair was the trench hiding underneath the lake. He had waded through, mourning the Ponds, and sank even deeper. Remembrance of those that came before flooded back, like water swirling in his lungs.

The Ponds… River… Donna… Rose… then the gap of years filled in, so many companions. And it ended on a barbed point, it seemed. Because he remembered his granddaughter, Susan. They all had been so young and he so old. But who was still left? He knew, deep down, the Doctor had to keep moving, but a tiredness had wracked at him.

Would this current universal exodus be any different? Perhaps it was for the best, if his stay here with the kid be nothing more than a flash in a pan…

The Doctor should never be left alone with his thoughts.

But he was fine.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

She was back at the helm again, feeling nice and comfy in her very dignified captain's chair. The weirdo stowaway puttered about with Rumbi. Hat Kid wasn't jealous that her robot companion slash vacuum cleaner was spending time with him.

No sirree.

But she wasn't so sure that man even had the proper credentials to be a Time Lord. Where was his identification that allowed him to call himself a lord? However, there was no dispute in him being a doctor. The bowtie was what sold it.

Plus, she took this wonderful cylinder-hat as payment for passage. Hat Kid thought she knew hats until she laid eyes on this beaut. Darn the Doctor's attempts at trying to reclaim it, the fez was hers now. Luckily, he'd been a little baffled when she switched out her hats with a puff of smoke and dropped the matter for now.

And then when he started babbling about explanations that were probably correct, she went out to star-gaze.

By random instinct, Hat Kid pressed a button and chirped out, "Boop!"

The ship made all the right noises in response and all was well. At least until, the Doctor finished up whatever riveting conversation he had with Rumbi and hovered behind the chair.

"Almost home?" he asked.

"Yep."

"Think there might be anything there that might help dislodge my ship from yours?"

She shrugged.

"Splendid." He slapped his hands together, a meaty sound that harkened back to umbrella striking the flesh of the mafia. All in all, not really an unpleasant sound, but it depended whether you were on the receiving end or not.

Before he could say anything else, Hat Kid pinned a badge to her top hat. His flappity words were flipped on their head, turning into vague mumbles. It might have even be considered melodious with how much breadth and depth his tangent had.

But Hat Kid wasn't one for that. She wasn't about that life. Maybe he was. Good for him, she suppose, but it wasn't her. The thirst for adventure grew as did her actual thirst. She smacked her lips, desiring for adventure to quench the desire.

And maybe another cup of coco.

Yeah, that'd be great. She spun around, forcing the Doctor to stumble back a few steps. Hopping off and skipping back toward the kitchen, she plucked the badge off her hat and let it disappear back into the invisible backpack all kids have.

Rumbi followed behind her. Walking with a nonchalant air, she waited for the most opportune moment. Then with a roguish smile, she hopped back onto Rumbi's back. He sputtered and sparked with the sudden weight placed atop him, but Rumbi continued on in good faith.

"Forward!" she declared with childish abandon.

He was rather used to these sort of antics. But when they reached the stairs, Hat Kid stepped off and then in one swift action, swept Rumbi into her arms. She was a rather smol kid and with the way Rumbi was held, it could have dwarfed the kid. You know, if Rumbi was able to drink milk and grow tall.

With the additional weight, she was forced to take the stairs with one step at a time. When she reached the top, she set Rumbi down with a pat on the head and skipped into the kitchen.

It took five minutes to perfect the coco and when she stepped up to the banister, a terrifying sight was beholden to her. Past the glass, through the darkness of space, and positioned in between the light of stars was a great shining void of gray. A void right where her planet should have been.

Something shattered and liquid spilled over her boots.

"What did you do?" she screeched.

The Doctor turned to her with a sad, slack expression. One of many miles traveled and not all of them were happy travels.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Her mind reeled, trying to think of what this Doctor could have possibly done. Rationally, there was nothing. But he was there when she saw it and he apologized. She leapt off the railing, scrambled over to him in a sloppy charge, and assailed his legs with puny fists. Incoherent babbling spilled from lips, one language mashed into another.

Slowly, but surely, he came down to her level. She slowed down her barrage and forcibly stopped herself when it became clear she would be hitting his face. They were both conscious of the fact that if she wanted to inflict bodily harm, she would have used the umbrella.

The Hat Kid wiped away tears and looked away.

"I know," he whispered. The Doctor waited, patiently, not forcing his words on her now. He waited for her to recover, to let her decide whether she wanted to listen or not. With a sniff, she turned back. "I know what it's like to lose a home, a people. It's horribly, horribly hard. No words can ever come close to even scratch the surface of what we know. Because when it's gone, you won't be able to ever see it again. And each time you remember, the details seem to blur."

Hat Kid looked at this man raptly, seeing traces of grief warring with nostalgia.

"I can still remember the sunrise on Gallifrey and how bright it seemed and how the air cooled on my skin… but it gets less vivid each time. The colors, duller. The awe, less. I can remember it perfectly, but it gets less realer with each passing recall."

He paused. "And if I have the chance to prevent that from happening to anyone else, I'll take it. No one should have to lose a home and their people."

"You have something I don't have." Then the corner of his mouth quirked into the repressed smile, the one that either serial killers wore moments before they revealed themselves or when someone had good news they just could wait to share. "Hope."

He sprung back onto his feet, flung his arms out the window, and framed the horrific image in a different perspective. The Doctor exuded an aura of positivity that, an impressive technique that all doctors should have. How else would they be able to give bad news?

But this Doctor had good news.

"See, this anomaly here is like a black hole, but it isn't formed when gravity warps spacetime. Instead, it's like, like, like --" He gestured for Hat Kid to make some sort of suggestion.

She made none.

He waved her off and went back to staring outside.

"A gray hole, for a lack of better words. Something or someone scooped up a chunk of spacetime and threw it outside the universe. That, right there, is a gateway. And since this reality doesn't know what to do, we get a gray hole. In all likelihood, it'd be like passing through a beam of sunlight. But instead, there isn't any electromagnetic radiation or atoms or protons to pass through. So, reality will probably let us just shuffle through, for a lack of better options."

"Will you make options?" she asked quietly.

"We," the Doctor stressed, "We will make options. No doubt the TARDIS has the technique, but not the power. You have the engine and the steering wheel. I'm not going to just butt into the driver's seat. Rude etiquette, hijacking a kid's ship."

Hat Kid looked at her hands, trying to figure out how to articulate complicated quantum mechanics via pantomiming.

She settled for steepling her fingers together and pulling them apart. Then the kid gave the Doctor an expectant look.

"Ah, yes! I'll be able to untangle our two ships if we pass through the gray hole." She steepled her fingers again and the Doctor cocked his head. He perked up in recognition. "You wanna know if we'll go our separate paths once that happens."

A nod.

"Ah, that's a question. One you must answer yourself. Will I be keeping an eye on you? Probably, but I'm not going to trample all over you. I know the old me wouldn't have liked it, fresh after the moment…" He shook his head, dropping the topic. "Would I like to stick around? Of course! Peas in a pod we are."

She gave him a flat look.

"Peas in a pod, we could be," he amended sheepishly. "But that's beside the point. I know what it's like. It doesn't just have to be misery that loves company."

Hat Kid turned around, folded her arms behind her back, and marched up the window. Oh, how she missed the previous adventure. It seemed so much smaller, due in part to it being localized on some planet. Didn't matter that she did some cat crime or crashed a cruise ship or lost her soul or had to fight a mustached girl who tampered with the fabric of time. She just had to get the Time Pieces and everything would have worked out in the end, one way or another.

But she had no idea to go from here. Were Time Pieces involved? She knew what to do with them. This situation was like graduating from drawing with crayons to woodworking. While she might be able to muddle along, she'd probably lose a few fingers. They waggled and squirmed behind her.

Unacceptable losses that, though far more tolerable than the loss of her home.

Hat Kid was many things: an explorer, an alien, a little girl, a movie star, technically a criminal, and legally a bird. And she was also out of her depth. Of course, she wouldn't say that out loud. She didn't want to tag along with the Doctor. If anything, he should tag along with her. After all, it was her planet that was missing.

She stared at the gray nothing that replaced her home. A knot formed in her guts, knowing that this whole ordeal went deeper than she could ever fathom. And here, she thought that might not have enough fuel to get back home. Sparing a Time Piece to the mustache girl was a split-second decision that she made. It wasn't like Hat Kid made mistakes before, even if the other girl messed up so much worse than Hat Kid ever could. Honestly, it was kinda impressive on how much the girl screwed up.

They were kinda friends, at one point. And kids like them had to stick together. Abruptly, she wondered where Bow Kid was. As close as they sometimes were, Bow Kid was an occasional enigma that dropped in for a lark or two. And other times, Bow Kid left her to solo whatever objective that needed to be done.

Hat Kid realized that whatever gravitas she cultivated by staring out the window had now turned awkward. It went as long as one of the Doctor's tangents.

Truth was, Hat Kid already made her choice and was just waffling about to stall. This was a cliff's edge with a drop as high as a skyscraper and Hat Kid needed to drop off. While she knew her umbrella would save her, the fear of the fall did not abate.

But she had to take the plunge.

"Okay." Hat Kid turned around. "Stay."

"Excellent. I'll give you the signal." The Doctor snapped his fingers, opening up the doors to his TARDIS. He ran through, he shouted, "Geronimo!"

Hat Kid went back to her seat and grabbed the two nearby joysticks, ready to dive headfirst.

"Geronimo," she whispered to herself, tasting how the word reverberated in her throat. It tickled in a rather pleasant way.

"We're good to go!" the Doctor called out.

She started to laugh as the joysticks slammed forward violently. Her childish squee resonated throughout the ship.

"Geronimo!"

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

Prison for someone like Doctor River Song was not made up by mere walls. Instead, it was more like she was trapped in her own mind. A jail built brick by brick with subconscious biases and thoughts.

It didn't matter if she logically knew about it; she could not break herself out of it. There was no way to escape. And the actual prison she was in didn't help matters either. A prison of drab gray walls and tight halls and even smaller cells. Truthfully, once you've been in one prison, you've been in most of them.

And the same applied to supermax prisons.

There were no windows here and only a heavy metal door in front of her. Only the sound of the howling winds spoke amongst the silence.

It was nothing less than she deserved.

Because some time, in her future, she was going to kill the Doctor. The knowledge was like a heavy yoke, binding her to a timeline that she could not escape. The worse part of it all was the fact she had to see it out.

Not only to avoid a paradox, but because a part of her wanted to progress further. If only to see more of the Doctor and all the marvels he would show and how delightfully infuriating he could be. Yet, there was always a cost. Their timelines ran opposite of each other. The more she knew about him, the less he would know about her. And vice versa.

It was the kind of thing bards and sappy romance writers frothed about it. And it did hold a certain romantic zest to it. Oh, if only River Song wasn't living it.

She sighed wistfully and started throwing a ball against the prison wall. It was a little game of hers: hide a fairly harmless item whenever the Doctor broke her out for an adventure or… something else. The game ended when the guards took the item and truly sent her back to jail.

River Song rolled the crystalline ball betwixt her fingers. You wouldn't tell from looking at it, but it had actually saved the Doctor's cute little rear on their last adventure. Already she could visualize the way his hands and dainty fingers seemed to wiggle and wrangle through the air, shaping a sphere as though it was clay.

And his voice seemed to echo in this mental prison.

See, this is a spatial seed. Unlike your typical seed that sprouts and grows, everything here is already prepackaged. It just takes some time to grow.

Her reminiscence was cut short by a very loud bang!

River bolted to her feet, facing the entrance with her arm primed to toss the little ball. She may have had a small ulterior motive in bouncing the ball. The spatial seed could be triggered early if the crystalline surface was cracked open. So, instead of a neat and tidy little ecosystem, it would be a disastrous mess.

And from the chaos, a solution could be found.

Briefly she wondered if it could be the Doctor coming in with a crash landing. The childish cackling quickly dissuaded her of that notion.

"Down with the oppressive, overcrowded, and frankly unnecessary prison systems of the worlds!"

Another explosion. River backed up a step, trying her best to calculate the best way to shelter her body in this confining cell.

"Wait, hold on, that's too long." A cleared throat and another explosion. "Bring back the guillotine!"

Great, it was probably another maniacal mastermind. It meant that diplomacy wasn't an option. She always tried to talk things out, but she was absolutely prepared to hash things out with a measured amount of violence. The only consolation was that the Doctor wouldn't be here to see it. But he would know. Already, she could imagine him outside her figurative cell, judging her with a shake of the head.

She gritted her teeth. The hypothetical Doctor and the real Doctor would just have to deal with her choices.

The voice grew louder with each passing sentence and River could read more into it, assigning it a more feminine identity. At least until it was proven otherwise.

"Nope! You're not the right one! But…" The intruder hummed. "Possession of… well, I can't read this. And it's probably something like… space weed or something. That doesn't sound like a bad guy at all. Today's your lucky day! You're free to go! But if you're a bad guy, I'll come back and blow you up!"

An explosion. River calculated the distance. Two cell doors down. A brief respite.

"Woah! That's a very, very long list of bad deeds. Clearly a bad guy."

Two explosions now, one after another.

And finally her cell.

River Song readied herself to attack and run in equal measures.

In-between the small, barred opening near the center of the door, a face appeared with two tiny hands pulling it up to view. With the chubby cheeks of a child, blonde hair hidden by a hood, and tawny eyes, it was clear that this was the intruder.

"Hey. You River Song?" the girl asked.

"In the flesh." She gave a very convincing smile that had disarmed more than one set of bounty hunters after her head. "You here to kill me?"

"No… not yet, I don't think… unless it's a bad guy thing for me to say that?" The girl exhaled harshly. "You ever think you were the goodest of the good guys and then it turned out everyone hated you, thus making you the bad guy?"

"Nope. Kinda… an ex-bad guy here." Like you, but River had enough tact not to say that. The horse had to lead itself to the water, after all.

"Yeah… I guess I'm an ex-bad guy too. And I need your help. This place doesn't have many time people."

"And how would you know about… time people?" River asked.

"A sort of ghost demon that makes deals to steal souls."

River's smile turned a little strained. "That doesn't seem all that wise."

"Well, I don't like him and he doesn't like me. Some people might like him, but those people are craaaazy, if you know what I mean."

River nodded at the only slightly crazed girl. "I know what you mean."

"Anyway, since time's kinda got messed up in my world, I thought it was the time piece this hat kid gave me, though I hadn't even used it yet! Unless future me did, but I don't know how time-travel works. I'm sure I was given this piece out of pity and I do think I should return it to her before I do something bad with it."

"And the soul-stealing demon?"

"Snatcher? He's… kinda harmless, I guess, once you kick his butt. He's more of a BFF in servitude to the hat kid, not that it got him to help me out. But I beat his butt too and I didn't get the bff offer! Still… after blowing him up with blue paint bombs, he agreed to help."

"How?"

"Oh, I time-traveled to this world… galaxy? Universe! Yeah, I time-traveled to this universe like a century ago, told him to get me leads, and time-traveled to present time. Apparently, there's this Doctor person who's like an uber good guy. Killed a whole race of bad guys! But they're hard to find. So, I then asked him about people who can find the Doctor. This Jack guy was unavailable and that left you! So, here we are."

River's smile definitely turned brittle and then shattered throughout the girl's explanation. As much as heart wanted to leap out and drag her by the heartstrings into the next adventure of the Doctor… inevitably it would be one step closer to her causing his death.

Killing him.

Part of her wanted to refuse this child and her casual demeanor toward genocide.

If the girl ever came up to the Doctor as a fan of what he did during the Time War, he'd either be terrifyingly furious or go into a depressive spiral. And River wasn't sure which one frightened her the most.

And she couldn't allow that.

She needed to stick around this kid, no matter. Her understanding of right and wrong was seriously skewed. The only consolation was that she was aware of this fact. But instead of rethinking morality from the ground up, she merely shifted focus.

"And what do you plan on doing once you find the Doctor?"

"Hope they're able to find my fr… sorta friend? Frenemy? An ex-enemy that I kinda want to be friends with again? Once I find the hat kid, I'll give her the time piece and she'll probably fix things."

The girl turned quiet, her eyes losing focus as she got lost in her memories.

"Ah… I get it."

That seemed to snap the girl out of her funk and she preened.

"Of course you do! I explained it so eloquently. And by helping me, you're making yourself less of a bad guy and more of a good guy!"

That was River Song's exact plan with the girl.

"Thank you for affording me this opportunity of redemption," she stated with the utmost solemnity.

"Of course! I am the most gracious of good guys." The face dropped from view. "You should probably step back."

River, knowing how prison breaks usually went, stepped to the side and pocketed the ball. The explosion rocked the door out of its frame, causing it to collapse onto the floor. Walking astride as if it were a plank for a raiding pirate, there was a little girl, posing triumphantly on the fallen door. She wore a simple pink tunic with a purple sash and purple pants underneath it. Keeping her red cape close was a medallion with a star engraved in it. And there was something strapped to her back.

Though the most peculiar thing about here were the two long strands of blonde hair above both sides of her upper lip.

A mustache.

Just so she didn't step on any gender identity, River asked, "Do you identify as anything?"

"I'm a girl," she said, dumbly. Then she touched her mustache. "Why are you aliens so weird about my mustache?"

Ah, gender norms. She was being very 21st century Earth about this.

"You're right. Girls can have moustaches. I was just being dumb."

"Darn right! Now, let's go find the hat kid and this Doctor guy!"

"No, no, wait for a second!" River reached for the girl, practically diving toward her.

But the girl was quicker. She pulled the object from her back -- an oversized time piece with unknown, glowing energy -- and immediately smashed it down to the ground before River could protest. The two of them were ripped from the time-space continuum, leaving this plane of existence as abruptly as possible.

The girl laughed manically as River frantically tried doing the spacetime equivalent of breaking her fall.

 

[Dead Beyond]

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel.

The Doctor wasn't exactly sure what was going to happen when they plunged into the gray hole and that made it all the more exciting, once the turbulence settled down, of course. His dual hearts thrummed with anticipation as he peered past the captain's chair to the new sights.

The skyscape was one of void and emptiness, with only blaring white tears that dotted the blackness. He hummed, knowing that this place was like a little pocket of air in the dark depths of an unforgiving ocean. He counted the reality tears — six in total, aligned as if they were toys on a shelf — and pondered on why they didn't collapse this little bubble. He took out his sonic screwdriver, fiddling with the settings so the scan bypassed the ship's window.

Once he was done, the Doctor parsed through the data. Hat Kid turned to look at him with a quizzical expression writ upon her face. It was clear that she understood what he was doing, but not the how. Considering that all signs pointed to the fact the girl built this spaceship by herself, it wasn't a lack of smarts on her part. Not everyone could interpret the combination of sounds and flashing lights his sonic screwdriver emitted. Especially since the hardware tended to change how the software interpreted said output, making it a tad inconsistent.

He opened his mouth to clarify, but she gave him a look.

"Gonna babble?"

The Doctor smirked a little. "Just a little."

She sighed and pulled out her umbrella. With a flourish and a puff of smoke, it turned into... a larger version of his sonic screwdriver? It was slimmer and more elongated than his own, and a quick looksee made it clear that there was no tech what so ever in it.

It was purely aesthetic and the Doctor had to wonder when she could have acquired it. Some sort of specialized forge? She did disappear deeper into the ship for a bit and came out with a few different badges on her person.

She hopped onto the ship's dashboard and started waving the screwdriver-staff like she was a maestro.

"Beep-boop-beep-beep-boop," she droned on, faux-mechanically.

Then she held it out horizontally in front of her and gasped dramatically.

"Oh my gosh," she deadpanned.

With one last flourish, she turned the screwdriver-staff back into an umbrella and hopped back into his seat.

"You don't have to be so snarky, little miss," he teased back.

"Not my first rodeo," she shot back, just a little too testily.

It was the nerves, he realized. Whatever adventures she had went on before, they probably weren't too high stakes. Maybe a little dangerous, but adventure had a way of insulation. There was a time and a place for them, yet the girl had been denied a reprieve.

He pocketed the sonic screwdriver and held out his hands placatingly.

"I don't mean to come off as patronizing, but I do want to make sure you know what we have to do."

She gestured for him to continue.

"Okay! Good." He slapped his hands together, rubbing them together furiously. "This 'place' —" The Doctor air-quoted. "— isn't really a place. It's supposed to be a nexus of sorts. Each of those rifts connect to... well, I don't know if it's worlds or universes or multiverses or, heaven forbid, omniverses but that's all semantics. Boring stuff for the layman. The point is, this is a seed about to sprout and those rifts are the holes from which they take root."

"Bad," she said simply.

"Indeed," he muttered solemnly before continuing. "Whoever or whatever did used your home planet as a rift... but hmm..." The Doctor stared at the navigational systems in front of the Hat Kid. "I won't bore you with the quantum mechanics talk, but your homeworld is both here and not here. The rifts are sorta hiding it away, hence the void bubble, and we have to disengage them —"

"Collect-a-thon," she interrupted.

"Excuse me?"

"Go in, get stuff, come back," she summed up.

"Well.... yes, it's highly likely that whoever did this needs anchors to keep the rifts active. The longer they are active, sooner or later, these worlds are going to slam into one another. Tied together by both temporal and spatial paradoxes. It will take at least one-fourth of a Big Bang to even untangle them. And even then, it'd be... catastrophic. I don't think we have the equipment to channel such energies, not without making some rather grave concessions."

He could probably do it by sacrifice the TARDIS, but he wouldn't risk Sexy like that. Not unless he had a way to get her back. And even then, she'd be really displeased with him.

"Uh-huh," she said in the manner of children that conceptually understood the problem but not the depth.

"Okay. So, once we pass through the rifts, my ship will untangle from yours and we can efficiently find these anchors."

"Time pieces?" she asked.

"Most likely, otherwise why your home planet?" He scrubbed his hands anxiously. "But it is not a guarantee. Do you think you can find your time pieces by yourself?"

She pulled a badge from her hat and spun it around her fingertip.

"I'll take that as a yes." He paused, debating whether more affirmation of her capability was needed. Too much positive enforcement could easily turn into patronization. "I'll defer to your experience then, but if I detect something other than a time piece, then I'll go gallivanting off... if that's okay with you?"

It was always good to show people they had autonomy. She made a show of pondering before trying to roll the badge along her knuckles. It tumbled from her hand and clattered to the floor. Hat Kid quickly scrambled, doing her best to snatch it up and pretend it didn't happen. She smoothed out her outfit and pinned the badge back onto her hat.

The Doctor pretended not to notice. She waved her approval with a dismissive air.

"Okay, good!" He pointed at her excitedly to punctuate whatever point he was trying to make. And then quickly pulled it away when he remembered pointing was rude. "So, you're the captain. Which rift are we going to?"

She pressed some buttons on the keypad on the arm-rest and a reticule appeared on the screen, floating above the middlemost rift. Hat Kid flickered through the rifts, the red circle settling on the one in the far left. The one with a burgundy aura to it.

The little alien girl frowned, pondering.

"May I?" he asked, patting where his sonic was stashed.

She turned to him, an eyebrow raising and lowering in quick succession. Then, she nodded.

He plugged in the sonic into one of the outlets by her feet and below the blinking lights. The Doctor gave it one-two-three bursts of sonicing and then pulled it out. The ship's system registered the data packet, compiled it with its own scanning systems, and threw up a barebones display.

Next to the reticule was a smaller window with a number two atop, with accompanying shadowy outlines underneath. One was in the shape of an hourglass and another in the question mark.

"It looks like that rift has the least amount of anchors," he noted.

Hat Kid quickly flicked through the options again, the total number of each multiplying by two. Though it wasn't a one-to-one split, with some of the rifts varying greatly with the types of anchors they held. She settled back onto the first one and pushed the dual joysticks forward, her decision already made.

"Excellent choice. The sooner we deal with the rifts, the quicker we can your home back."

Her eyes were focused solely on the rift as the ship picked up speed, but there was a small hint of smile at the positive reinforcement. Soon enough, they crossed the threshold.

It didn't feel like anything at all when they entered the rift.