The scientist's face started to break out into a grin as it looked at its counterpart.
"I guess I've been caught, huh?"
Suddenly, its face shifted, pale skin forming into a grotesque black, matching the color of its arm. the monotonous black, only broken by the hollow shells of where its eyes used to be, which were filled with a liquid that threatened to spill out from its skull.
Kai lunged forward before he could think further of the situation.
This…
Thing. Was a threat, and now two lives were in the balance.
His hand clutched around its neck, the other pinning the charred arm to the ground, gripping on as tightly as he possibly could.
The thing scraped at his arms, tearing deep gouges into his skin, causing pain to erupt through his body.
Suddenly, its face shifted once more, this time forming into a raggy man with red hair and a toothy grin.
Kai looked down at its chest, which was littered with deep gouges, matching the size of a knife.
"What? Too familiar?" the thing said, chuckling at Kai's visceral horror
The.
Thing.
Had taken the form of a body Kai was all too familiar with.
Suddenly, he was back on the beach of his memories, with a knife digging into his palm, looking down at the body of a man without a face.
Only this time, he saw its face.
A raggy man with red hair and a toothy grin.
And next to him, a name was written in the sand.
Kai.
This was Kai.
Not him.
And just as suddenly, Kai was ripped from the beach, lying on the floor below the man's feet, who was now pointing his arm at him, readying to blast blue flames in his face.
The thing's face shifted once more, this time forming its entire body into that of a child with black hair, a previous hit that had been on a mob boss's son.
"Would you prefer this form?"
Now it was an elderly man dressed in a tuxedo, with shocked white hair, from when they decided his son wasn't enough and told Cain to "take care of " the father as well.
"Or this?"
The creature's face continued to contort into different faces and bodies, shifting between forms at speeds where it was hard to make out the faces.
"Man." The creature laughed.
"Your crimes really do never end. I've gone through at least a thousand of your victims, and the longer I peer into your soul, the more I find. I've barely scratched the surface."
The creature doubled over, wheezing at him.
"You put me to shame, and you didn't even have any powers. I wonder which one of us would have won, had we met before we were banished to this world to atone for our crimes all those years ago."
The monster raised its hand once more, pointing it towards Cain's face as flame started to burst to life around it.
Perhaps this was for the best.
Cain would atone.
Only the blast he expected to come never did.
instead the figure above him was toppled over by the scientist who quickly grabbed a scalpel out of a fold of his lab coat, jamming it into the creature's forehead, which promptly crumbled under the pressure.
In the blink of an eye, they were bathed in an ethereal golden light, which grew brighter and brighter until it blotted out his vision.
Then the light began to condense onto the scientist's arm and face. Cain then saw the face and arm of the skin walker disintegrate into dust, most of it sweeping away in an invisible wind, some of it, however, gravitating to the light condensing on the scientist's face and arms, eventually forming the shape of black runes across them.
And then, there was nothing.
The scientist still had the runes across his face and arm, but the light had dissipated. Suddenly, the scientist's face started to shift slightly, slowly beginning to match Cain's own. His arm burst into red flames, lighting up the area around them with its dim light.
"You okay, man?"