A collaboration between Derajdragonlord and I; because we get bored.

Normal Font: Derajdragonlord
Italics: Myself.

Reviews are welcome, for they make us happy pandas. :3


The years had passed in the form of an unspoken truce. Unspoken in the sense of, speak of this matter again and I'll remove each fingernail one by one, which, in Tira's opinion, was pretty fair. After all, out of the kindness of her own heart, she had raised the girl from screaming child to the teenager she now was. All of the five feet and five inches. Tira felt smaller and smaller by each passing day. Damn.

Thinking of her charge made the white-haired girl smile, even if only slightly. In normal circumstances, perhaps the murderer of the child's Mother would feel remorse, not pride nor a maternal instinct for turning the girl into an orphan. These thoughts were buried in the marshy recesses of her memory; the voices were always louder anyhow - it was much easier to let them take the lead in directing her moral compass.

This moment of content, when the clashing personas inside her mind were at their most quiet, was destroyed by the questioning of the blonde teenager's whereabouts. It was not that Tira was possessive or controlling; such assumptions were absurd in her reflection of her own personality. The former assassin just liked to know that her charge was safe, and away from others and their corrupting influence. Yes. That was how Mothers looked after their children. The Greek warrior, whose soul still left a bittersweet taste on her painted lips, had continually stated such aspects of Motherhood. Tira was just taking her advice on how to be a good Mother - something the blonde woman in soft, white silk had never understood, having left the small child vulnerable to those with evil intent.

Tira clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth at this thought. In her mind, she had done Pyrrha a favour, committed a sacrifice if you will - Tira no longer had Sophitia to antagonise and exist as a source of entertainment - all for the protection of her adopted daughter. By removing the cause of the problem, Tira had saved her child from further heartbreak. That was all there was to it.

With heeled boots clicking against the stone floor, Tira sauntered off in search of Pyrrha, her hips swaying.

When a mouse sits before a predator, there is often a moment where it dwells in such complete terror that it wants to run far away while remaining exactly where it is. Years of survival instincts scream to flee, and yet the same terror that should inspire flight instead holds the prey still.

Pyrrha envied the hapless mouse; terminal as it was, their moment of frozen, mad terror was only a moment. Hers had lasted a lifetime.

They'd found her wandering by herself, this little family with their warm little cottage. Her mother bird seemed to think it was good to let her wander away from the castle from time to time; seeing the land around her let Pyrrha have some time away from home so she would appreciate the castle's safety more, and tracking her down and killing everyone who saw her gave her mother something to do with the long, uneventful days she spent waiting for Pyrrha to be ready.

Please, come inside, they'd said. It's too cold a day to be out on the road. Are you alone, they'd asked? Are you lost?

"No. I live nearby, with my mother. She'll come to find me soon." That was always the answer, the only one she had it in her to give.

She could scream out loud as she did in her head. Run away, please, you're all going to die when she comes for me! Don't come near me, or she'll kill you!

But nobody believed such things. The last ones she'd warned had thought her mad, believed she was threatening them. Her mother had laughed to find Pyrrha covered in blood and crying when she found her that day. Pyrrha desperately wished there was a way to please her mother without suffering nightmares for months afterwards.

She ought to drive people away from her, or deny her mother and go so far away she wouldn't be found by anybody. Then no one would be hurt.

But...then she'd be alone.

And so Pyrrha found herself being a good girl again, eating quietly with a family of corpses that didn't yet know they were dead. She knew her mother would be along soon to bring her home.

Tira stood at the beginnings of small cottages and workshops that signalled a village. She confidently walked past these sights of normality with a swagger and a smile plastered, yes, like one material forced upon another, upon her face; for it seemed too false and practiced to even be remotely considered genuine joy or content. The older girl, woman…for she was in her thirties without looking a day over twenty, could not even fathom how to express true emotions without switching to and fro from the extremes of happiness and depression. One cannot express what they have never truly felt nor understood. These thoughts eluded her as she walked, head bopping to a beat unknown to anyone but herself, searching for her wandering child; it was time to return home.

The white haired demon paused, breathing deeply whilst closing her eyes; like one taking in the beauty of a glorious new day at the dawn. The irony was not lost on her for the stance she took whilst searching for Soul Edge's taint and the future that awaited the poor souls her daughter had found. It was a whisper, a whisp of purple smoke in her mind's eye that formed a trail. A darker smile than the one before formed; Pyrrah could not hide her malfestation from the loyal servant of the cursed sword.

It took several minutes, the village being little more than a few homes and small, family-run stores, but the woman dressed haphazardly in strips of leather and cloth came within sight of a vision of family bliss. Her baby bird was so good at picking the best souls. Those who denied their own mortality by bonding with others so intimately that they forgot about their timely end. Pyrrah was so clever to pick these kinds of people; they were doing society a service.

Gladly.

A reminder of human mortality came with an echo of a clawed gauntlet tapping on the wooden door of the cosy cottage.

Tap, tap, tap.

That simple noise barely registered to the occupants of the house, but to Pyrrha it was worse than the sound of an axe being sharpened. Her mother was a being of sharp points and cutting edges, and Pyrrha had memorized the sounds of her mother sharpening herself on the unsuspecting world.

"The door!" The family's child said, and panic gripped Pyrrha's heart as the little girl went over to answer the door, her braids bobbing with each step. She knocked her bowl to the floor in her haste to stop her.

"No, don't!" She said sharply, surprising her hosts. Under their uncomprehending gaze, she withered.

"It's...my mother. She's here to take me home." She murmured, feeling like a murderer. They didn't understand; how could they? Pyrrha knew she was poison to human beings, but she was too weak to keep away from them where she belonged.

They'd been kind to her for no reason. Their little girl had called her "big sister" and wanted her to stay in her room. They were good people. And they were going to die for it.

Her mother had joined a good family once. One of their real children had called her "sister", too. And whenever a child died, Pyrrha's mother often told her the story of how that little family had ended.

She had a knife in her belt; her mother wouldn't let her leave her room without something she could kill with. She could threaten the family to make them run, try to escape and draw her mother away from them...

But Pyrrha went to the door to let her mother in. She'd come into this house knowing she was death to humans, and she could no more save this family than she could pull the moon from the sky. She opened the door, one arm around the little girl as she did so; after poisoning the child to death, the least she could do was stay with her in her last moments...

The door opened, and Pyrrha stared into the cheerful purple eyes of the only person in the world immune to her fatal presence. This was their favourite game, hide and seek.

She'd just lost. She always lost.

"H-Hello, Mother..."

Tira's grin never faltered as she embraced the blonde girl who was beginning to tower above her slight frame. She learned her head, pigtails swaying to the side, on the young girl's shoulder, lips hovering above the ear she was planning to pierce at one point - a rite of passage into the teenage realm and the correlation between pain and beauty that her daughter would soon be aware of - whispering, "I'm so proud of you." Clawed gauntlets twirling a piece of golden blonde hair around the point of its index finger.

"Did you miss me?" The older girl asked, part mock concern, the other a genuine enquiry.

Pyrrha knew her mother loved her; had known it for years, even when it became clear she was too dangerous for anyone else to love. But knowing she was pleased wasn't the same thing as knowing she still loved Pyrrha; Pyrrha had disappointed her mother too many times to be ignorant of that.

In some ways, it was the strange swoop of joy in her stomach to see how proud her mother was each time she lost at hide-and-seek that made Pyrrha feel most like a murderer. She'd killed so many people just by being near them, and it made her mother so happy. Would she still be inviting people to kill themselves by taking her in if she knew any other way to make Tira proud?

But she couldn't help it; even with the fear and resigned sorrow in her eyes, Pyrrha smiled with relief to see her mother had come for her again, and that she wasn't angry. She nodded mutely, releasing the little girl to embrace her mother; reunion was the best time for such displays, certainly the safest.

"These three let me stay with them while I waited for you." She whispered, her wrist twitching as though she'd slit the family's throats herself with each word. Now her mother knew that the whole family was right here in their reach, and nobody would enter unexpectedly. Now Pyrrha would remember how much to add to the exact count of people she'd murdered for being kind to her.

One hundred. She was fifteen as of a week ago, and these three souls would finally bring the tally to three numbers. Pyrrha watched the little family, clearly surprised by Tira's appearance but not knowing to be scared.

Ninety-eight, ninety-nine...she looked sadly at the little girl.

One hundred.

"Can we go home, mother?" She whispered, knowing full well what was about to happen.

A stroke of hair, a soft kiss on the cheek.

"Of course," the white haired witch replied. One hand removed itself from around the taller girl's shoulders to move down to her belt, grabbing the dagger she knew she had hidden there, before slipping it into the blonde's hand.

"Make Mama happy. It'd just make me so happy…you know it would." Calm, complimenting whispers. Tira knew how to wind Pyrrha around her clawed finger.

Purple eyes glanced at the observing family, seemingly still unaware at the passing of a weapon that had transpired; oblivious to the malicious intent of the older female.

Tira recalled her own initiation. Naturally, in her line of work, it had been at a much younger age than Pyrrah was now. Alas, she blamed the sheltered upbringing of the girl's previous life. Tira was now making up for lost time, appearing unaware of the own torment the act of killing her own Mother figure, her mentor, had caused her; it, like everything else, was swamped in crimson and the screams for further bloodshed that echoed within her mind.

Pyrrha joining her in such acts would, and she meant it, make her so happy. She would lead her daughter by the hand and teach her how waltz without slipping on the pools of dark red that stained in the wooden floor. Tira was so good at thinking of ways to bond with her daughter that she surprised herself; Sophitia would never have thought of such an amazing initiation into young adulthood. Ultimately, that was why Tira considered herself such a better Mother than the now deceased blonde.

She let herself come away from the loving embrace of her daugher, hands still on her shoulders as a sign of reassurance. A smirk found its way onto her visage, highlighting the beauty mark upon the apple of her right cheek.

"Mama bird just loves her baby so much; you want to make her happy, right? If you do this, we can go shopping for new clothes. Pyrrha would like a new dress, right? Right?" Tira's eyes were slightly pleading behind their forced sparkle of joy; oh, she hoped her daughter would not reject this chance to be closer to her Mother.

Oh, how she hoped…

Pyrrha's heart sank as she was given the knife. It would be her hands that snuffed out these lives, then. Her mother wouldn't keep cleaning up after her; she was getting too big for that.

The idea that she could save these people by stabbing Tira right now didn't even exist in Pyrrha's world; her mother was the only real person there had ever been. The only one that was immune to dying in her presence.

The only one that knew she was evil, but loved her anyway. Life without Tira did not bear considering. Pyrrha nodded, kissing her mother on the cheek. This was what had to be. For an evil thing like her to be happy, people had to die. She was her mother's daughter, and that meant her joy could only come amidst bloodshed.

"Yes, mama." She murmured. "I'll make you happy."

The father had come closer to them to take his daughter further away from the strange, pale woman. Pyrrha's knife took him in the chest, making him jerk back in surprise as she cut his throat open. He fell to the floor, helpless to do anything but bleed out. Pyrrha's clothes and face were spattered with innocent blood as she turned towards the mother and child.

"I'm sorry." She murmured.

The woman screamed, and her expression of horror and betrayal burned itself into Pyrrha's mind as the sharp little knife danced in and out of her belly; Pyrrha vaguely realized the woman was trying to get to her frozen daughter to protect her, but all her movement earned her was a fatal gash along her stomach. Rather than leaving her to die slowly, Pyrrha knelt down and finished the woman with one more little cut.

That left her alone with the little girl, staring at the child that had trusted her immediately while covered in her parents' blood. She didn't seem to understand what had happened; it seemed strange to Pyrrha that a girl of five hadn't seen death yet. Pyrrha's first memories were of pain and corpses; without her mother's clawed embrace, there was nothing else in her earliest days.

"W-Why?" The little girl asked, shaking. Pyrrha saw her tears, but found she could not conjure a single one of her own; she'd known she was murdering this girl the moment she'd looked at her, and now she was simply following through. Instead, Pyrrha smiled sadly, remembering the lesson Mother had let her wander in order to learn.

"Because Mother and I aren't like you. We're real people." She said quietly, raising her knife. "We can only exist with humans when they die."

She killed the girl almost instantly; Pyrrha was fairly sure the child did not have time to notice she was dead before her small form slumped to the ground. Pyrrha looked at her knife hand, soaked with the girl's blood, and to her it seemed a grotesque, twisted claw. And yet...she still couldn't cry. So she tried to smile, like her mother did, and turned slowly to the quietly watching assassin. In the dim light, she seemed almost demonic, covered with spatters of human blood that seeped into her clothes and darkened the white cloth to almost black.

"I've killed a hundred people now, mama." She said quietly, a weak desperation for Tira's comfort in her voice. "Have I...been good?"

To say Tira was ecstatic would be an understatement.

With a grace that allowed her to creep into the homes of others and steal their children from under their sleeping watch, Tira launched herself upon the blonde girl. If this is what humans called happiness, then Tira could grow addicted to the feeling. Tira could not care if her embrace crushed a few ribs of Pyrrha's, or if the blood stains were transferring from white to green; all the assassin could do was smile as she dragged her daughter down to the floor by an inhuman strength that she no longer noticed.

The small rivulets of water staining her face successfully smudged her make-up. Tira could not have cared less at that moment. "Look, Look," she laughed, pointing at her own face, "Look at how happy you've made me, us."

The demonic looking girl's shoulders shook as she sobbed from overwhelming joy. The blood pouring out from the child stalked its way to their bonding moment. It was fitting.

The blonde girl was silent, it was understandable, she would grow out of it soon. Once the tears subsided, Tira stood and hoisted the girl up before leading her in a waltz amongst the corpses, showing her the proper steps - the assassin kept count. Had it not been for the scenery, one would think it was simply a Mother teaching her daughter how to dance in the way of the courts. However, things were never that simple in the world Tira had dragged Pyrrha, kicking and screaming, into.

Eventually, the silence of the girl made Tira falter in her steps. She placed a clawed index finger and thumb under the chin of the taller girl and pulled her face down to greet purple eyes marred in smudged, dark make-up.

"What troubles you so? Isn't the love of your Mother enough? Speak to me, now." Tira's voice was laced with a growl, as if she should have fangs instead of regular incisors.

Her mother had laughed and laughed taking her home the day Pyrrha had killed men by herself, but this was something else entirely. Pyrrha, who had learned not to ever try hugging her mother when she wasn't very happy with her, was caught in a crushing, joyful hug and borne to the floor.

Her mother laughed; her mother cried. They danced around the silent, bloodstained house in a display of wild, energetic joy Pyrrha had rarely seen from her mother before.

Pyrrha gave in to the whirlwind of her mother's turbulent emotions; she was loved. She'd made her mother very, very happy. That was all she needed to be happy.

She told herself this so many times it started to become true, and she tried to lose herself in Tira's laughter; to let her mother's affection drown out the cries of all the people she'd sent to their deaths.

But her silence was a mistake. It brought out the other face her mother kept inside, the one that loved Pyrrha but was only rarely pleased with her.

Strangely, though she'd killed a whole family with dry eyes, her mother's rebuke made Pyrrha burst into tears; no, mother couldn't be angry at her now...not after she'd been so good...despite fearing another rebuke, Pyrrha suddenly held her mother tightly, burying her face in the older woman's shoulder.

"Don't ever leave me alone again, mother. Please...I don't want to be by myself anymore!" She sobbed.

The love of her mother not being enough? No, that was the only thing Pyrrha was sure existed in her wretched life. Other people were shadows and dust in her mind, things that withered and died when she came near. Without Tira, she had nothing.

Pyrrha remembered there had been a long time in her youth when she'd been disobedient and difficult. She hadn't wanted to be near her mother; she'd wanted to go away from her, to someone else, something she couldn't even remember well enough to describe now. How many times had she hurt her mother trying to distance herself, or find somewhere else to live?

How many times had Tira forgiven her for trying to leave? Forgiven her for being death to others? Loved her even when it became clear she was evil?

Pyrrha had grown into an adult who could kill without her mother's aid, and yet she found herself needing her mother more than she'd ever needed her as a child. No amount of fury would have convinced the young blonde to release her guardian as she continued to cry.

"I don't need anyone but you..." She whispered. "I don't want to wander off any more, mother. I need to be with you."

The blonde's fear of being alone triggered an emotion within the assassin that she could not decipher. Normal human beings would perhaps call it empathy. One voice had her grab a mass of the blonde hair in her clawed grip as the other willingly clung to her, tear it out. Show her the price of her error.

The white-haired demon could only glare at the golden strands that angered her in her darker moods. It only served to remind her of the woman who had foiled so many of her Master's schemes. Tira knew deep down that she would most likely end up harming the girl in a fit of rage as her likeness developed into that of her true Mother. A sliver of sanity that still existed within her mind knew that she was anything but good for the welfare of the teenager. It, along with most thoughts regarding selflessness, was drowned and sunk to the bottom of the stormy sea that were her thoughts.

Fortunately for the sobbing teenager, the other voice broke through. Tira's head snapping to the side as if someone had slapped her. The reaction was immediate. The hand's grip became softer as the shorter female returned the embrace.

"I'd never abandon you. No, no. She told me to hurt you, but no. Not this time…" came the whisper, attempting to calm the girl down as a demonic voice that only she could hear screamed for the teenager's blood as retribution for her disrespect. The assassin knew it would be best not to sleep that night once this whole affair was done with; let alone the growling voice screaming traitor to the other took its lead and harmed the blonde to the point of no return. No, she could not be left alone again. Not after her Master left her with only a feeling of warmth and his whisp of a flame-tinged aura to remember him by.

Never again.

Pyrrha had feared her response might anger her mother, had been tensing in spite of herself for the shift in her guardian's mercurial temperament. But the clawed grip on her hair slowly softened, and Pyrrha's sobs quieted slowly as her mother embraced her and whispered all she had needed to hear.

Tira wouldn't abandon her. She'd never be alone as long as they stayed together. In her wretchedness, Pyrrha felt the knowledge that she would not need to leave Tira's side again like the sun shining out of the darkness.

No matter what the angry voice within her mother did later, no matter how many insubstantial people died around them, Pyrrha resolved then and there to never stray from her mother again.

Though her tears were drying, Pyrrha's voice was so faint only Tira could hear it as the girl clung to her like a drowning man to a rock.

"I love you, Mama...I'll make you proud."

"I'm glad, so glad." I think I need you too. Words left unsaid.

Tira took the girl's small hands in hers, "Come, let us go home."

The blonde would never know the plans the snowy-haired woman had in store for her remaining family, if she even recalled them in the recesses of her memory that only struck in the haze between awake and dreaming. As far as Tira was concerned, they were a threat; a looming evil ready to destroy the only thing she had left to cling to.

Subsequently, they would die by her hands