I rose from my slumber in a panicked state, the scene of Damian's body falling forcing me to awaken.
I found myself in the garage, on the couch, alone. My heart aching, my head hurting, my hands shaking and perspiring as though I had just emerged from a swimming pool… with a voice in my head saying:
"He's dead, Felix. You're just going to let that slide?"
And anger crept into me once more. Michaelis Miller, The Easter Bunny…
He deserves to die, just like Damian died.
I want to rip his heart from his body and watch the air leave his lungs as he takes his final breath. However, I can't do that. Not before our scheduled battle. Otherwise, Natalie, Freddy and Heath could go to prison because of me.
What the hell were you thinking, Damian? You don't break the law without consulting me first, you stubborn idiot.
And now you're dead… and it's all my fault.
What am I going to tell your mother? Did you think about her? What am I going to do without you, man?
I get up and life is a drag once again. Just as it was before I went to Juvie. Just as it was before you were my friend, Damian.
I walk into the house, moving to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water, and I do. Water has never tasted worse. Water I sip.
I walk upstairs and pass by my mother's room and Freddy with her. I greet and greeting has never felt more tedious.
I make my way to my bathroom and prepare a bath for myself. I lay down in the water and cleaning my body has never felt more difficult to do, but I do.
Your death replays in my head over and over and I cannot get it to cease and the voice in my head grows louder and louder:
"Are you going to keep feeling sorry for yourself or are you going to avenge your best friend?"
I know I'm not strong enough to face him yet. So, this voice seems to taunt me for no reason.
Eventually, I get out of the bath and brush my teeth, and I don't comb or brush my hair.
I drag myself downstairs, heading back to the garage to sleep again, because that is all that I can do without complaining right now and I enter the garage to find Heath and Freddy talking about what happened last night.
"Yeah, he brought Felix home, carrying him like how you would carry a corpse. I was about to blast him, but Felix wasn't hurt. He was though. Damian did a real number on him." Freddy explained to Heath and Heath cracked his neck, yawning like he was stealing all the oxygen from us.
So, Miller brought me home? What? Why? Was he trying to show me pity? I'm not a damn child. That son of a…
"I felt Red-Head's power in the hospital. It was really something else. At some point, he was about to surpass my power. His Artesian Stage was already more powerful than you and Felix combined." Heath affirmed, turning his head to see my rageful expression.
AWAKENING
"Look at you, Eli. You are pathetic! He carried your ass all the way back to your own house after crushing your best friend's heart into cosmic dust RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! And you seriously plan not to do anything about it??"
"I can't do anything. I can't. I can't allow my members to go to jail because of me. That's just pure selfishness."
"Selfishness? No. It is only fair. Maybe you don't hurt The Easter Bunny himself. Maybe… you hurt those close to him… like he did to you."
"That… could work. I mean… I could kill his Top Officers… I could eliminate his strongest soldiers. I could hurt him… like he hurt me."
"There we go, Eli! Now… you're learning, Fletcher. Let me loose. Grasp Artesian! Go WIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL..."
FELIX FLETCHER HAS AWAKENED
Within that agonizing instant, Felix was a vessel overflowing with raw, unmitigated emotion. Damian, his anchor, his tether to sanity, was gone. Panic clawed at his throat, rage a fiery inferno within him. There was no solace, no balm for his shattered spirit. This emotional maelstrom triggered an unprecedented transformation, a metamorphosis beyond anything he, or anyone, could have foreseen.
The voice that now echoed within Felix's mind was not his own. It was the chilling voice of M.A.R.I.O., the insidious curse of Scythe Strand II. A whirlwind of confusion, blinding hatred, and volcanic fury erupted within him.
He had ascended beyond Beta-Stage, yet not to the revered Artesian Stage. Instead, he had breached a forbidden threshold, a stage uniquely tailored for the Fletcher bloodline: the Incomplete Cursed Stage, a terrifying secret known only to those privy to the clan's darkest history.
His body underwent a dramatic, unsettling metamorphosis. His frame, once robust, tightened, becoming lean and sinewy, muscles rippling beneath his skin with unnatural definition. Veins, thick and prominent, snaked across his arms. From the corners of his mouth to the tragus of each ear, a grotesque network of fresh, crimson stitches erupted, a macabre testament to his newfound state. His hair, once orderly, transformed into a wild, unruly mass of curls, the tips strangely illuminated with an unnatural, almost phosphorescent blue. His posture slumped, his spine curving into an unsettling hunch. And his eyes… his eyes were now voids, bottomless pits of absolute blackness, the irises vanished without a trace.
But the most terrifying changes were invisible, emanating from within. His aura, once a subtle presence, now pulsed with a malevolent energy so potent, so utterly evil, that it dwarfed the menacing auras of Strand and Slatem, two individuals renowned for their own insidious power.
The second, and perhaps most striking, alteration manifested as a spectral wing, translucent yet undeniably real, sprouting from his right shoulder. Though ethereal, the wing was intricately detailed, each feather a ghost of itself, shimmering with an eerie luminescence. This ethereal appendage, a manifestation of the potent KAN energy coursing through his veins, pulsed with an otherworldly light, casting an unsettling glow upon the surrounding area.
Heath, a fearless and confident fighter in his own right, stood frozen in place, his face a mask of sheer terror. Freddy, usually quick with a retort, was rendered speechless, his mouth agape in a silent scream.
They remained locked in this chilling tableau, an eternity compressed into a mere forty-seven seconds. Sweat beaded on their brows, a cold dread gripping their very souls. Then, as they opened their eyes from blinking, as abruptly as it had appeared, the M.A.R.I.O. state vanished into thin air.
No trace of his energy nor his presence anywhere in their vicinity.
INTERRUPTION…
HELLO, PESTY HUMANS. I RETURN WITH ANOTHER INTERRUPTION FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN DEEPER DETAILS OF CLAN MEMBERS.
SO, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, HERE ARE THE NUMBER OF MEMBERS WITHIN EACH OF THE EIGHT MAJOR WAR CLANS:
THE EMO-JIN EMPIRE:
THE EMO-JIN IS AN EVER-GROWING CLAN, HOWEVER, CURRENTLY THERE RESIDES ABOUT FORTY-THOUSAND-EIGHT-HUNDRED SOLDIERS WITHIN THE EMPIRE. FOUR OF WHICH ARE TOP OFFICERS.
TOP OFFICERS ARE NAMELY:
1. GABRIELLA SANCHEZ:
SHE COMMANDS TWO THOUSAND SOLDIERS AND IS RANKED THE SECOND STRONGEST TOP OFFICER. GABRIELLA NEVER WISHED TO COMMAND ANY SOLDIERS AS HER MAIN PURPOSE WITHIN THE CLAN IS TO HEAL.
2. MAVIS MILLER (PRONOUNCED MAVIE):
SHE COMMANDS SIX THOUSAND SOLDIERS AND IS RANKED THE FOURTH STRONGEST TOP OFFICER. SHE IS ALSO THE OLDER SISTER OF MICHAELIS MILLER.
3. WILLIAM "WINK" WILSON:
WINK COMMANDS TEN THOUSAND SOLDIERS ALONGSIDE HIS YOUNGER ADOPTIVE SISTER, JESSICA JONA. HE IS RANKED THE THIRD STRONGEST TOP OFFICER.
4. "CELESTIA":
CELESTIA IS THE STRONGEST TOP OFFICER. SHE COMMANDS THE REMAINING TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND SOLDIERS AND SHE HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN. RUMOURS SAY THAT SHE IS ONLY A LITTLE GIRL.
THE BLOOM CLAN:
THE EXACT NUMBER OF MEMBERS WITHIN THE BLOOM CLAN IS COMPLETELY UNKNOWN, AS WITH EVERY OTHER BLOODLINE CLAN, HOWEVER MY ESTIMATE SAYS THAT THERE ARE AT LEAST FIVE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND-EIGHT-HUNDRED-AND-SIX CITIZENS/MEMBERS WITHIN THE BLOOM CLAN.
ALL OF THEM HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO FIGHT, BUT ONLY THE LEADER, HAROLD HELLBOURNE, FIGHTS.
THIS IS BECAUSE HE HAS DEFEATED AN ARMY OF NEARLY A MILLION SOLDIERS ALL BY HIS LONESOME, WITHOUT A GLIMMER OF ASSISTANCE.
IN FACT, HE WAITED FOR THE REST OF HIS TEAM TO PERISH SO HE COULD PROVE THAT HE DID NOT NEED THEM.
THE FLETCHER CLAN: REMASTERED:
THERE ARE ONLY FOUR MEMBERS. ALL OF WHOM YOU ALREADY KNOW AND I REFUSE TO REFRESH YOUR GOLDFISH MEMORY. SEEK HELP. FORGETFUL FOOLS.
THE STRAND CLAN:
THE STRAND CLAN, BY TECHNICALITY, ONLY HAS ONE MEMBER: SCYTHE STRAND II. THE NUMBER OF SOLDIERS CAPABLE OF OPERATING UNDER STRAND ARE INFINITE, THANKS TO HIS INFAMOUS STRAND ABILITY, WHICH HE USES TO PERMANENTLY CONTROL THE MINDS OF WHOMEVER HE DEEMS FIT.
THE WOLVES:
THE STATE OF THE WOLVES HOUSES AS MANY AS ONE-MILLION-FIVE-HUNDRED-AND-SEVEN MEMBERS, AND JUST AS THE EMO-JIN EMPIRE, ITS MEMBERS FLUCTUATE IN NUMBER AS WELL.
MEMBERS COME AND GO AND SEVEN-TWO PERCENT OF MEMBERS ARE ONLY IN BETA-STAGE. THEIR LEADER, LARSON LONDON, IS THE ONLY MEMBER TO HAVE ASCENDED TO ARTESIAN STAGE: LEVEL THREE.
WE ALREADY KNOW HOW MANY CITIZENS OCCUPY THE SPACES OF THE PENGUIN PROMONTORY AS WELL AS THE SAPIOSAPIEN SECTION.
ONLY TWO PEOPLE RESIDE ON THE SAKAMOTO SOIL SECTOR.
THE DARK AUTHORITY UNIT:
THERE ARE EXACTLY EIGHT-HUNDRED-THOUSAND-TWO-HUNDRED-AND-TWO EMPLOYS/MEMBERS/CITIZENS OF THE UNDERGROUND REALM THAT IS THE DARK AUTHORITY UNIT DOMAIN.
EVERY SINGLE SOUL THAT WALKS THE STREETS OF THE DARK AUTHORITY UNIT DOMAIN, BENEATH THE STREETS OF THE CAPITAL PROVINCE, IS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE DARK AUTHORITY UNIT.
THIS MAKES THE ENTIRETY OF THE DOMAIN AN ENORMOUS CORPORATION RATHER THAN A MASSIVE MEGALOPOLIS.
THE CAPITAL PROVINCE:
THE CAPITAL PROVINCE IS THE ONLY ISLAND OF THE SEVEN ISLANDS WHICH FORMS KOWARETA SEKAI ISLAND THAT IS DIVIDED INTO SIX DIFFERENT SECTORS:
1. THE STATE OF THE WOLVES.
2. A SECTION THAT WAS CONQUERED BY THE EMO-JIN CLAN.
3. THE KOWARETA SEKAI FOREST.
4. KOWARETA SEKAI CITY, WHICH INTERSECTS INTO THE OTHER THREE SECTORS.
THE POPULACE OF EACH OF THESE SECTORS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
THE STATE OF THE WOLVES:
THE POPULATION OF THIS SECTION IS CURRENTLY AT FOUR-MILLION-NINE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND-NINE-HUNDRED-AND-NINETY-NINE, INCLUDING THE MEMBERS OF THE WOLVES, OF COURSE. THREE-MILLION-FOUR-HUNDRED-THOUSAND-NINE-HUNDRED-AND-NINETY-TWO OF THESE CITIZENS LIVE IN KOWARETA SEKAI CITY.
THE EMO-JIN EMPIRE AREAS:
THERE ARE (COLLECTIVELY) NINE-MILLION CITIZENS WITHIN THESE AREAS, NONE OF WHICH ARE MEMBERS OF THE EMO-JIN CLAN, AND THREE-MILLION-FOUR-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-SIX OF THESE CITIZENS LIVE WITHIN KOWARETA SEKAI CITY.
THE KOWARETA SEKAI FOREST:
THIS IS THE LARGEST SECTION OUT OF THE THREE MAIN SECTIONS WITHIN THE CAPITAL PROVINCE. NAMELY: THE STATE OF THE WOLVES, THE EMO-JIN EMPIRE AREA AND THE KOWARETA SEKAI FOREST.
THIS FOREST IS HOME TO THIRTY-THREE-MILLION-THREE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND-AND THREE INHABITANTS, THIRTY MILLION OF THOSE RESIDING WITHIN KOWARETA SEKAI CITY.
KOWARETA SEKAI CITY IS AT THE HEART OF THE CAPITAL PROVINCE, MAKING IT INTERSECT THE THREE MAIN SECTORS, AND AT THE EPICENTER OF THE CITY IS THE METEOR.
KOWARETA SEKAI CITY:
ALTOGETHER, KOWARETA SEKAI CITY HOUSES THIRTY-SIX-MILLION-EIGHT-HUNDRED-AND-ONE-THOUSAND-AND-FORTY-EIGHT CITIZENS. IT IS THE MOST DENSELY POPULATED SECTION AND AREA OF ALL OF KOWARETA SEKAI ISLAND AND THE PETTY CRIME HOTSPOT.
IN TOTAL, THERE ARE FORTY-NINE-MILLION ONE-HUNDRED-AND-EIGHTY-TWO-THOUSAND SIX-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-SEVEN INHABITANTS OF THE ENTIRE ISLAND THAT IS KOWARETA SEKAI ISLAND. (FORTY-EIGHT-MILLION NINE-HUNDRED-AND-EIGHTY-TWO-THOUSAND SIX-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-FOUR, IF YOU REMOVE THE NUMBER OF PENGUINS).
NOW YOU KNOW.
UNTIL THE NEXT.
SHATTER REMNANTS…
INTERRUPTION ENDS…
Within three minutes of vanishing, M.A.R.I.O made his way to The Emo-Jin Empire Headquarters. He was met by two guards at the front entrance.
"State your business here." One guard enquired of him, but was simply met by a chilling silence from M.A.R.I.O.
The other guard intervened, and with a grunt, shoved M.A.R.I.O. However, he did not even budge a centimeter.
The guards became more hostile and before they could draw their weapons, M.A.R.I.O. walked past them, his wing becoming more visible in the dark halls of The Emo-Jin Empire Headquarters.
The guards bodies fell to the ground, blood gushing from their stumped necks, M.A.R.I.O. kicking their heads straight up to the top floor, hoping that Michaelis would see it.
Unfortunately, Michaelis Miller was not present. However, there were twenty-thousand and four-hundred members of the clan present, nearly half of the entire clan members.
The Headquarters was a nine-story building. The members present that day were scattered around the building but were immediately alarmed once M.A.R.I.O. entered without proper authorization.
Two of the four Top Officers were present as well. Wink Wilson and "Celestia".
Upon entering, M.A.R.I.O. was met by two-thousand-four-hundred-and-six members on the ground floor, all of whom were prepared for battle after seeing the decapitated heads fall from above.
A low, guttural chuckle escaped M.A.R.I.O.'s lips as he extended his arm. From the shadows beneath his wing, a dark energy, KAN, surged forth, coalescing into a shimmering katana in his hand.
"Who the hell does this guy think he is?" A female warrior snarled, drawing her blade. Before she could even find a proper fighting stance, a hand, impossibly fast, reached out and severed her arm at the shoulder.
The crowd gasped. Nobody had seen him move. No wind, no sound, just the sudden, grotesque sight of the woman clutching her bleeding stump and shrieking in an absolute pain.
"Shh!" M.A.R.I.O. laughed, a chilling, manic sound that echoed through the hall. With a swift, brutal motion, he plunged the severed arm down the woman's throat.
Her eyes bulged, blood gushing from her nose and mouth. She choked, her body convulsing violently, before finally collapsing to the ground, life draining from her eyes.
M.A.R.I.O., without a hint of remorse, severed her head and tossed it beside the others. He ran his tongue along the edge of his katana, a satisfied smirk playing on his lips, the stitches from the ends of his lips to his ears glowing a dark crimson.
"Who's next?" He drawled, his voice dripping with sadistic amusement. The crowd surged forward, a wave of fury and fear.
M.A.R.I.O. simply grinned, a predator anticipating the hunt.
In the vibrant, chaotic city of Kowareta Sekai, Strand strolled down the sidewalk, whistling a jaunty melody. He entered a familiar café, the very same one where Skully had once delivered a brutal kick to Heath. The replacement for the shattered window was still under construction.
"That child's energy felt way too similar to mine. I have to see the remnants of that battle myself. Investigating, just a little. Miller needs explain that phenomenon." Strand pondered ordering an Americano.
"One sugar. Thank you, Sabrina." He smiled at the cashier. She blushed, taking his name and he playfully blew her a kiss before settling into a booth.
Moments after he sat down, placing his Americano on the table, a boisterous group of teenagers burst into the café. Their loud chatter disrupted the other patrons.
The group consisted of six individuals: four males and two females. One of them carelessly bumped Strand's table, sending his Americano cascading over his meticulously tailored suit. Strand's annoyance flared instantly.
The teenager who had caused the spill didn't even offer an apology. Strand, however, initially chose leniency.
"Hey, idiot!" He announced, rising to remove his blazer. "You disturbed my thought-process, spilled my Americano and spoiled a suit far more valuable than your life." This was the boy's first and only chance to apologize.
The boy looked at Strand and simply laughed.
"Oh, yeah?? What are you going to do about it, old man?" He sneered, turning away dismissively.
A mischievous grin spread across Strand's face as he dropped his blazer onto the table.
Inside the Emo-Jin Empire Headquarters, M.A.R.I.O. ascended to the second floor, leaving a gruesome mound of severed heads on the ground floor below. His body was saturated in the blood of his victims.
Their remains were displayed on the ground floor walls, a macabre exhibition. Some bodies were missing limbs, intestines spilling out, and most were soiled with their own excrement.
M.A.R.I.O. whistled cheerfully as another wave of victims emerged from the elevator, awaiting their fate. A wide grin stretched across his face as he lunged toward the closest individual.
He seized her by the clavicle, ripping the collarbone free. As she crumpled to the ground, he hurled the bone forward, piercing another person's throat.
Using his KAN sword, he swiftly decapitated the victim missing their collarbone, then swung the severed head at the remaining crowd.
He vanished, reappearing before the individual choking on the two bones lodged in his throat. A sinister yet gleeful smile adorned M.A.R.I.O.'s face as he kicked the bones deeper, rupturing the man's throat, before gouging out his eyes.
Several victims attempted to restrain M.A.R.I.O., but he seized the newly blinded man by the legs, using the body as a bludgeoning weapon against the others.
The blinded man screamed in agony until silence fell.
A brief pause ensued as everyone present watched M.A.R.I.O. delicately detach the eyeless head and roll it downstairs to join the others.
"Two-thousand-four-hundred-and-eight." M.A.R.I.O. muttered, cracking his neck, licking his blade clean, and whistling once more.
Before anyone could react, M.A.R.I.O. initiated a frenzied slaughter, counting aloud as he moved with unimaginable speed.
He plucked eyes from their sockets, setting them aside as if for later use. He weaponized bones and body parts, using them to kill more victims. Many lost control of their bowels in terror.
Blood painted the floors, walls, windows, and elevators, coating M.A.R.I.O. from head to toe.
Within approximately six minutes, M.A.R.I.O. had murdered around eight-thousand-nine-hundred-and-thirty people on the second floor, their heads forming a growing pile on the first floor.
He spared one individual, leaving him physically unharmed. However, this survivor was deeply traumatized, his mind shattered by witnessing M.A.R.I.O.'s brutal methods.
M.A.R.I.O. meticulously hung all the bodies on the walls again, forcing the young man to watch as he 'created art' with the corpses of his friends.
The young man shivered, whistling incoherently to maintain his sanity.
M.A.R.I.O. erupted in uncontrollable laughter as he played marbles with the eyeballs of his second-floor victims.
He approached the young man, slowly, humming softly, the young man shivering more and more with each step M.A.R.I.O. took.
"What are we going to do with you, I wonder?" M.A.R.I.O. asked a rhetorical question, his hands making their way to the young man.
A shrieking wail echoed loud across the building.
You were sitting in the café, weren't you? Pretending the world is simple. Teenagers laughing, gossiping, snorting at their own jokes like they were immortal. They were not. And then there was Strand. He tapped the spiller, light touch, nothing dangerous, like a cat pawing at glass before the claws come out.
The spiller spun, ready with disrespect, ready to be a punk, and boom. All six of them were gone. Not gone as in dead, not yet. Gone as in here-but-not-here, sucked into Strand's twisted head. His playground.
The sky wasn't sky anymore. T'was a wound. Red, bleeding. No sun, only that crescent moon with jaundiced eyes. Birds? Forget birds. You get bats. Skeletons. Wings without flesh. The sound of nature remixed into shrieks that make your ears want to file for divorce.
The air tasted like burnt lungs, thick and sweet with rot, and three of the six drop, knees kissing black ground that's not ground, not grass, just ash and scorch and blood rivers that didn't stop flowing. Rain that wasn't rain, just blood, again, because subtlety is for amateurs.
Do you want humanity? You hear it. Screams of kids, mothers, fathers, but where are they? Nowhere. Strand's the only one left smiling. Of course.
And the sound. Oh my, the sound. Millions of heartbeats stuttering, dying, all at once. Millions of children crying, souls begging, voices chewing at the teens' ears until they're nothing but raw meat. They bled from the nose. They couldn't control their arms, legs, selves. Strand had not touched them. That was the point. He didn't have to.
"Apologize." He commanded. His voice did not need volume; it lived in their skulls.
They tried. They opened their mouths. Nothing. Their throats were deserts, bones rattling in sand. One by one, they vomited. They screamed. They died. Easy.
Strand? He was all stitches, a shirtless Frankenstein with a smirk. He walked up slow, deliberate, because why rush dessert? One kid dropped before he even arrived, and we're down to the spiller. The little punk who started this. Strand looked him in the eyes, voice velvet with razors.
"Welcome to my Mind State. My Strand Mind State. This is my mixtape of murder, torture, fun. A peek at every life I've stolen. It's a living hell for vermin like you. One last chance. Say you're sorry, and maybe, maybe we both go back to our cappuccinos."
The spiller stuttered. Broken apology bleeding out in pieces. "Sorry, please, sorry…" dead. Convulsions, twitching, spirit gone, body left jerking like a broken toy.
Strand laughed. "Almost had it. Too bad."
Snap back. Café again. Only now six bodies were proof, sprawled on the floor. Customers screamed, panicked, fled, phones in the air calling cops, ambulances, anyone. Staff frozen, statues painted with horror. Strand? He straightened his blazer, took his Americano, sipped the last. not-spilled drop, and tossed the cup.
"Thanks for the coffee, Sabrina. Always a pleasure." He winked, casual as if he didn't just turn six kids inside out. He left before Lieutenant Brad-Lee Major could storm in.
"Not today, Major. We'll fight next time." Kowareta Sekai City swallowed him whole.
Meanwhile, M.A.R.I.O. played house with his pet project. Charlie. Once a man, now a puppet. Mutilated, blinded, toothless, nails gone, body a crime scene. Charlie laughed. He always laughed. Tears dripped out of eye sockets that didn't exist anymore. You call it horror. He called it… obedience.
"Hey, Charles. Be a lamb, clear the third floor for me. Heads on the top floor when you're done, okay?" M.A.R.I.O. hummed like this is casual, like ordering pizza, moving onto the next floor.
Charlie nodded, crying, laughing, naked. The elevator lights hit his body, revealing every slice, every bruise, every missing part. Charlie's friends work on the third floor. Used to. Now they're meat waiting to be displaced from their heads.
And me? My name is Charles Redden. Charlie. Once I did accounting. Once I had friends. Now I kill them because he tells me to.
Within the clan, I served in the Research and Accounting Departments. Because with terror and power comes riches and enemies. The pay was good, undoubtably so. So, I never complained. You cannot have a moral compass in this business.
I have seen how my own teammates killed other teammates at the command of Michaelis. I have seen things way worse than murder before my eyes. Things like torture of seniors and children, massacres, wars, and more.
I have seen how heartless a human being can become given the correct circumstances. And I was fine with it. It is the job, and I do not complain.
However…
I have never seen a creature like M.A.R.I.O. before. He is much worse than heartless, much worse than evil. He is the devil himself.
I have been working on the third floor for about a year now and I have made friends with most of my co-workers. I walked towards the doors to my office, the walls, and floors behind me painted red with the blood of my friends.
Their heads piled up in the corner of the room… my handy work. I entered the office and everybody who were once my friends drew their weapons against me.
What do they not understand? Don't they see that fighting against that monster is useless? Do they not see that they cannot win against it? What I'm doing is mercy-killing.
What he would do to them would be so much worse. He shoved an entire arm down a woman's throat, for crying out loud.
I cannot speak anymore, and he put a permanent smile on my face, although tears roll down my cheeks. All of my 'friends' attacked me at once and I retaliated.
At first, I decapitated them as quickly as I could, as he commanded. With that being said, I was not as strong as him.
Their blows landed faster than I could move, and I bled, but I did not feel pain.
ONLY ANGER.
And before I knew it, all I could see was his face everywhere. Their faces became his face, and I lost control. I wanted to kill him.
So, I unleashed my anger upon them and as I sliced and chopped, kicked, punched, and killed, I look at the window and saw… him.
I became him. 15 minutes passed, and I eliminated every single soul on the third floor. I was covered from head-to-toe with blood. I dropped to my knees and began crying, but after what he did to me, it sounded like I was laughing, like a real maniac.
I wiped my tears and collected all the heads, rolling them into the elevator and taking them up to the top floor… as he commanded.
I did the same with the rest of the heads he left behind on the first and second floors, and the fresh ones he had stumped on the fourth and fifth floors too, which he cleared while I was clearing mine.
All I wanted to do was vomit my guts out, but I couldn't even do that. It is hopeless. Michaelis will die if he faced this monster of a being. All because he had to teach Fletcher a lesson.
You want the truth? I hate him. I hate him. I HATE HIM. But I obey. Always.
Blood. Piles of heads. Beethoven on a speaker.
"Don't you just love a good Beethoven, hmm?" M.A.R.I.O. questioned a man in a large jacket standing before him after exiting the elevator, a chuckle in his voice and a JBL Speaker in his arm. He placed the speaker down and stretched his body. He looked distorted, in a way, which freaked out the man in the large jacket.
He was only met by this young man and small toddler, standing in the dark corner of the sixth floor room. The child was hugging a ripped-up, worn-out, grey teddy bear in her tiny arms.
Everyone else fled to the ninth and Top Floor, where "Celestia" was.
"Who are you? Why are you here?" The man in the jacket enquired, but to no avail. M.A.R.I.O. simply stopped his stretching and slowly moved toward the man, his grin growing with each step.
"If you are looking for Michaelis, he is currently on the Sakamoto Soil. He won't be back for a while. If you want, I can relay a message for ya." He yawned and informed the beast marching toward him whilst he took out a submachine gun from his jacket pocket.
Wink introduced himself as he pointed his gun at M.A.R.I.O., who was now sprinting at Wink, moving faster and faster.
Wink began unloading his clip on M.A.R.I.O. However, he was shooting at nothing as M.A.R.I.O. was now next to him, leaning on his shoulder. Wink stopped shooting as he span around, attempting to shoot at M.A.R.I.O. once again, but was quickly met with a powerful punch to his teeth, which made him stumble.
This impressed M.A.R.I.O. He did not expect Wink to be strong enough to take a punch from him, much less one to the face.
He smirked and laughed as he took a battle stance. Wink spat some blood from his mouth, his teeth painted red. He saw M.A.R.I.O.'s battle stance and instantly accepted his challenge.
HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT.
They analyzed each other for a few seconds before pouncing, like savage beasts. M.A.R.I.O. landed the first blow, a punch to the kidney. Wink groaned as responded with an uppercut to the chin.
M.A.R.I.O. immediately retaliated by doing a backflip and kicking Wink into the ceiling and before he could even open his eyes, M.A.R.IO. was already in his face, multiple blows raining down on his stomach, causing that part of the ceiling to cave in and crumble, the hole in the ceiling becoming the sixth floor's primary source of illumination.
M.A.R.IO. emerged from the settling dust and simply stared at Wink's younger sister for about twelve seconds. All the while...
Wink jumped up from the rumble and cracked his back, neck and jaw, two of his ribs cracked, one broken.
"Yep. I die today. I can tell that he's not fighting me seriously, but for fun. Like I'm his plaything. Here to hoping for the best, I guess." He thought to himself before pulling out a grenade launcher from his jacket and aiming it at M.A.R.I.O.
"Hey, Asshole!" He shouted as M.A.R.I.O. turned his attention back to him.
"Eat this!" He shouted and as he was about to pull that trigger, M.A.R.I.O. moved and took the launcher from him before tossing it out the window, shattering the window.
All within the span of 1.2 seconds before looking into Wink's light-brown eyes with his pitch black eyes.
"Next time, don't announce your attacks." M.A.R.I.O. laughed. "Not that there's a next time for you." M.A.R.I.O. laughed once again, ringing louder, as he lifted his arm, forming a KAN Blade in his hand and right when he was about to attack, he was interrupted…
"It is done." The elevator dinged. Charlie's back. Heads collected. Mission complete.
And Wink, poor Wink, trying to play soldier against the devil. Gunfire, grenades, fists, all pointless. M.A.R.I.O. moved too fast, smiled too wide. Wink was strong, but strength was comedy here. Strength was foreplay.
Wink bled and mindlessly stared, but M.A.R.I.O. was already speaking to Charlie, already moving on.
Because that's the thing about devils. Why would they finish you when they can savour you?
"I told you, did I not? Only you could truly see how pointless it is to fight back, Charles. They called themselves your friends, yet actively tried murder you, am I right? Survival, it was, and you did." M.A.R.I.O. spoke to Charlie, animatedly so. His hands waving, his feet stomping, his pauses dramatic, as though it were theatre.
Charlie only stood in place, M.A.R.I.O.'s hands on his shoulders as he cried, his cheeks red and soaked in tears.
He looked up at M.A.R.I.O., his permanent grin dripping with blood, "Please, kill me. Make it stop, please." He begged M.A.R.I.O. to finish what he began.
"There is only one floor left, so I guess you have fulfilled your purpose. I shall grant your wish. Thank you, and goodbye, Charles." M.A.R.I.O. responded, cold-hearted, but Charlie smiled and laughed, genuinely this time.
During this exchange, Wink silently grabbed his sister and escaped using his jacket. Many believed that his jacket contained an unlimited arsenal of weapons, however, truthfully, he could create portals to various pocket and alternate dimensions, as well as places he had already been to. With that being said, this ability could only be activated in dark spaces, such as the current floor they were on.
After they were gone, M.A.R.I.O. quickly and effortlessly snapped Charlie's neck. They only death that he made fast and painless. His sign of gratitude.
He gazed at Charlie's corpse for a few seconds before picking up his JBL Speaker, which was now playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Turkish March, and leaving for the top floor.
(Altogether, since M.A.R.I.O. entered the building, he vanquished exactly seventeen-thousand-five-hundred and forty Emo-Jin soldiers from existence, meaning there were exactly two-thousand-eight-hundred and sixty members left on the ninth floor, not counting "Celestia".)
So, M.A.R.I.O., undeniably drenched from head-to-toe in wet blood, yet somehow covered in dry blood as well, whistling along to his tune inside of the elevator, stopped on the top and final floor.
The elevator doors opened and he was left stunned. Why? Because instead of being greeted by the calvary, he was met by a small girl. She too was soaked in blood, as though she had bathed in it.
She had large emerald eyes and a wide smile on her face. Her skin was pale and she wore a white and pink princess dress, the symbol "F" sewed on the back of the dress. Her most noticeable attribute? Two shimmering, white, feathered wings protruding from her back. She held a fashionable blade, expertly crafted and glowing scarlet from each dent designed in the blade and parts of the hilt, in her right hand.
And behind her laid a gruesome pile of bodies, neatly packed on top of each other, adjacent to another pile of but only severed heads, also neatly packed.
M.A.R.I.O. looked down at the child in confusion and she stared up at him, giggling innocently.
"Hello, big brother. I'm Aurelia, but you can call me Celestia. You're just like Papa described, hehe." She introduced herself, causing M.A.R.I.O. to finally change his expression for once… He raised his brow at her.
He realized that she had slaughtered the remaining 2860 members on this floor all by her lonesome. This made his job complete and his presence obsolete, but he could not figure out why.
Neither had he any clue of who this child was.
"Big Brother? Sorry, child, but the Malevolent Anomaly of Relentless Inescapable Oblivion has no siblings. And last I checked, Felix Fletcher has no sisters, only a brother. So, either you got the wrong guy, or you're not mentally here." M.A.R.I.O. scoffed and informed the little girl, pushing her as he walked past her to examine the room.
He was clearly annoyed that she had done the job he came to do. He sighed and clutched his head before violently tossing all the bodies out of the window, the first body hitting the glass so hard, every other of the window, of and within the building, shattered along with it from the shockwave.
After tossing the bodies, he began building pyramids with the heads in the opposite direction of the bodies. The moonlight shone on M.A.R.I.O.'s crimson painted body and iridescent, spectral wing and he placed one head down a few feet away from his severed head pyramids.
"Oh, but he does. I am a half-breed Fletcher. My Papa is Fred Fletcher. Felix and Freddy's Papa. My name is Aurelia Fletcher and I am six-years old." Aurelia happily explained, holding six fingers for M.A.R.I.O.
"Is that so?" M.A.R.I.O. questioned, raising a brow once more whilst picking up one of the aligned heads, digging his middle and index fingers into the eye sockets, popping the eyeballs, and burying his thumb in the head's right nostril. It was a female clan member's head.
He took a stance, raising his leg, his knee to his hunched-over chest as he stepped forward and rolled the head towards the pyramid. All the heads came tumbling down, most rolling out of the fifth-floor window and crashing onto the evergreen grass and mushy meadows below.
"STRRRRIKE!!! And the crowd goes wild. M.A.R.I.O., four-time world Bowling champion does it again!" M.A.R.I.O. applauded himself, commentating what he considered a Bowling tournament as he walked up to the next "Bowling Ball".
"Yep! And Papa told me to tell you that he's very mad. Super mad! But he will see you soon. He will see everyone very soon, Eli." Aurelia declared as she walked up to M.A.R.I.O. and tapped his leg twice with an adorable smile on her face before waving at him.
"Bye-Bye, Big Bro. See you at the big fight." Her final farewell as she leapt out of the window and flew away using her tiny wings.
"So… He's alive. That raises a lot of questions. Lucky for Felix, he won't remember any of this. One can only imagine his reaction to finding out the man who tortured him all his life, then after that, ruined his young life is not only alive, but he also actively had another child whilst still being with his mother. Nobody was here. So nobody knows. What a shame." M.A.R.I.O. thought out loud as he bowled again. "STRRRRIKE!!"
He continued to bowl for about ten minutes before writing his name in blood over Michaelis' throne. After which, he stretched his arms out and dropped himself out of the window. "Time to go. My job is done." He uttered while falling, closing his pitch-black eyes before landing and rolling off the heads onto the grass.
The markings and eerie aura, as well as his hunched posture and hair, everything had faded and returned to normal. M.A.R.I.O. was gone and Felix was back, lying unconscious, next to a pile of 20 400 severed heads, blood seeping into the ground, painting the grass a bright crimson that illuminated the surrounding area through the moonshine.
Unbeknownst to him, Felix was the main cause of a massacre, catastrophic to the most powerful clan on the island, that would be marked in history as The Emo-Jin Empire Headquarters Massacre.
Nobody knows who it was or how it happened, but in one singular night, but a few hours, half of The Emo-Jin Empire's members were annihilated by one assailant.
No clans ever claimed responsibility for the event and only three people, out of 20 403, left that building alive, two of whom were unharmed, none of whom wish to speak about that day.
Five minutes after the massacre, five minutes after M.A.R.I.O.'s energy seemingly left the island completely, one man arrived at the scene with a cigar in his mouth and a smirk on his face.
He sat down next to Felix's unconscious body and looked up at the stars, his white hair flowing in the night's wind like a hero's cape. Except, this man was no hero.
"My, oh my. What a mess you have caused here, young man. We're going to need to speak when you arise." Strand spoke to the sleeping Felix, a chuckle in his voice, cigar smoke clouding his face and the majesty of the heavens above them.
-CHAPTER III: BEST FRIENDS: JOURNEY END-
-ARC V: ATTACK ON THE EMO-JIN: M.A.R.I.O. THE MALICIOUS END-