#it's like lord of the flies meets jurassic park meets dante's inferno meets nausicaa in here. listen

[twothpaste]

deliriously surreal little 1k fic snippet under the cut. three psychics try to tame the rampaging natural killer cyborg with some gentle telepathic persuasion. but it turns out the creature's mind palace is a very strange place...

(cw: blood, body horror, animal death, general visceral unpleasantness)

Leder's got a library copy of the Inferno. A scrappy, shitty, well-loved old paperback, with dog-ears on half its pages. Kumatora ate it up, during her punkass Satanic phase around age nineteen. Even got a Cerberus tattooed on her back. It ain't any snappin' teeth or serpentine horrors, though, that stuck with her most dearly. Not even the torturous plights of all them sinful human souls. Nah. What's haunted n' captivated her ever since, is the fate of the underworld's overlord. The great reveal, that even Lucifer himself was utterly damned to his Ninth Circle. If y'ain't read it, she'll tell ya: it goes like this. Dante n' Virgil find him down there, at Hell's deepest depths, imprisoned in a lake of solid ice. Frozen just as miserably solid as the wretchedest traitors he held prisoner. Cryin' frosted tears from his three hangin' heads. "Y'can't help but feel sorry for the guy," she'd told Ash. N' Lucas. N' just about everybody else. "He ain't some kinda evil king. Ain't even callin' the shots, really. All he did was stick it to the man - shit, I wouldda, too! N' then he's stuck with the rest of 'em. Freezin' his nuts off, 'til the end o' time…"

… Anyways.

She thinks of that. While she lets loose PK Freeze Ω from her stalwart palms.

An icy barricade seals pig to pit. Clings upon its walls of flesh, like binding chains. Holds it, softly, forcefully, in place. Maybe the cold-numb'll coax it to settle down, wishful thinking suggests. Maybe it'll ease its agony. If just for a short while. Steam billows where ice meets pink-red skin. A hot-blooded protest. Its bellows would put Cerberus to shame. Wet brain meat writhes, sickly swollen, against a half-shattered glass dome.

Claus joins his brother, at the labyrinth's gate.

("He's from a dream I had, you know," Master Porky said. With deathly shrieks still ringing in his nightmare ears.)

(The Capsule keeps screaming.)

(Lucas grips Claus' wrist, as they tread forward. Sticky sap tugs at their boots. Crunching tiny exoskeletons, and brittle wings. He wonders - and therefore, they both wonder - whether fruit flies and mosquitos screech as they suffocate, too. How many death throes we can't even hear. Or if, through some dark, impossible miracle, they're still alive. Schrodinger's smother. Amber crystalizes, turning your whole world gold in retrospect. You can't budge. Can't even breathe. But your mind thrashes evermore against its binds.)

("There's a way out," Claus insists. Shakin' their head. "I know the way. We do. We can show ya.")

("Shhh…" comes Lucas' soft spring breeze. It brushes over both chimeras.)

(The screams grow louder.)

(The heart-splitting sound of a child's untimely demise. Ribs shattered on solid stone. Some could mistake a pig's distraughtest wails for a human's, given the right-wrong acoustics. A tweenaged Butch'd said ol' Gertrude was due for slaughter in a couple weeks. And cracked a joke about makin' bacon. Biff elbowed him real hard. N' said he ain't s'posed to say crap like that in front'a the rugrats. Kid Claus chased a piglet about. Jested that it'd make a fine Christmas ham, someday. Little Lucas scooped the thing up, in the grass-stained arms of his sweater. Covered its floppy ears. N' sobbed himself halfway to hysterics. Claus was laughin' so hard, he could barely wheeze out an apology. He'd be screamin' like hell when it came for him, though. Crucified on the chopping block. Teething his goddamn limbs off. While a ten-year-old Lucas sulked past the old slaughter shed. Exhaled a silent, wintry cloud. And pulled his scarf over his chilled-pink ears.)

("These… These aren't your memories.")

(The Commander had stared into the Natural Killer Cyborg's vessel. Only to find its own reflection, cast back on the glass.)

(The boy named Lucas had tried to quell it. Ended up with his hands at his own throat. Gaspin' the same strangled breaths as every other chimera he'd ever bashed into submission.)

("It ain't like that. I swear, we don't wanna hurtcha. Y'can let us in.")

(They're up to their knees, now. At the Capsule wall, where ice stings flesh. It's searing hot to the touch. As if all the red and guts smeared to its surface are still broiling, and seething, with live mammalian body temperature - and a rage that spans far beyond. Lucas tends the fresh burns on his brother's hand, when they wipe it clean. Claus does the same for him.)

("M'sorry. M'so, so sorry. Y'didn't deserve any of this.")

("We're gonna make it up to ya. We promise.")

(Their pity earns them boils, and lesions. Skin charred black, like an overcooked waste of meat. A persistence that speaks volumes of burned pages. The two of them find the window, prying with peeling fingers. Wipe away the human carnage that sullies its pane.)

(They show it the Sanctuary. Straight from their minds' eyes. A sleepy sunset, over the palms and coral trees. It's mellow-warm. Summertime's brink. When they last left, the Hippo Launchers'd already taken to the tides and puddles. N' the Rhinocerocket herds were nappin' peacefully in the shade. Where all creatures've got a right to life - just as they always have - and all 'cause they've made it so. The real world's a beautiful place, they tell it. It's out there. Waiting for you.)

(A porcine nose twitches between the crimson smears. Between vicious screams. Close breath fogs up the pane. Somewhere, on the very fringe of consciousness, Kumatora's valiant struggle seems fainter than before.)

("Easy, now…")

("That's it…")

(A set of tusks glints perfect white.)

(The beast bashes its full weight against the Capsule's interior.)

(It rolls forward. And crushes them both.)

The Natural Killer Cyborg activates a PSI Counter Device.

They snap back sputtering. The older twin reaches, outta sheer muscle memory, for his cane. The younger lifts an arm, to summon a Shield. Tries to, rather. It's with shivering shock that they realize they've been sealed stiff - in a gnarling ridge of PK Freeze spires.

"Agh! God, damn it!" Kumatora yowls. Clamped up right beside 'em.

Ninth Circle indeed.