Now where was I ... ah yes! Hello again, you people are very lucky you know. My muse has decided to be nice and has kindly allowed me to write you yet another chapter, which is most fortunate for you indeed. now would you kindly please continue reading.

"Hurry now. My muse is a fickle bitch with a very short attention span" – Sander Cohen (who seems to have the same problem as me)

The newly named "Elle", although that thought made her feel good, now she felt sad, because she was loooooooooooooooooooost, hopelessly, terrifically lost. She had wandered down corridors with a spring in her step until she realised that she had no idea where she was, then it had turned into a sort of depressed stomping. Mister B always new where he was going, and now she had lost him … she felt useless. Totally and utterly useless. Her right hand twitched again, she needed to find her special needle, otherwise Mister B would hate her, forever, then she would never get to play with him anymore.

Turning another corner, she was greeted by another long corridor, yet she trudged onwards wearily, tirelessly. She was going to find her needle, she really wanted to be friends with Mister B again. She paused for a moment, resting herself by seating herself on top of a fallen vending machine, drumming her fingers against it gently in an odd little rhythm which she made up as she drummed, passing a little time until her legs stopped hurting a little. Standing back up again, she stretched, feeling the tiny little muscles expand a little to their limit, feeling better, she began skipping along the corridor again, passing more of those heavy doors, just like hers, she looked at the numbers, 3748, 3747, 378 …. something, the last number was obscured by a red handprint.

Elle passed a few glass windows, and stood right up on her tippy-toes to peer over the sill and see what was going on inside. The door lay of its hinges, broken in two, and the doorway itself seemed to have been enlarged so that something could be dragged in, there were big, black drag marks on the floor. Within, through the dark, smoke-blackened glass, she could see angels, alive ones mind you, so they weren't proper angels, just bad ones. There was about 6 or 7 of them, but wasn't what made her heart jump a little in her chest, it was the angles, several dozen of them, maybe more, twisted and bound together with glue and ropes and supported by crates in places. Fashion into some towering, crude altar to someone or something, whichever it was she couldn't tell, just that it made the hairs on the back of her neck crawl, just like the bad angels. The bad angels had some sort of pot, a huge, massive one, forged somewhere in the heart of Rapture, made of steel, almost like a soup pan, enough to drown several people in at least, and … and they were pouring things into it. Different coloured bottles, red ones and green ones and blue ones and yellow ones and so many other pretty colours with seemed to sparkle as their glittering contents was poured into the massive pot. The lights from the pot seemed to reflect all over, shining around the room like hundred of shining stars, and the false angels looked upon its contents with hunger, the flames of hundreds of candles flickering around them, revealing the drool on their lips.

One of them seemed to be in charge … well is was sort of obvious really, she was about a head taller then all of the others in the room. She might have been pretty, once, a long, long time ago. One hand seemed to have been sliced away at some point, replaced with a wicked looking hook with a sharp, barbed edge, not so much replacing the hand as much as it had upgraded it, turning it into a weapon of pain and scarce little else. One side of her face, the right side to be precise, appeared to have some sort of growth on it, a cancerous bulge almost completely covering the whole of the eye and cheek, and the other half of her face was veined and red as if it was sore. Her remaining hand was thin and bony, covered in long, thin scars, some still with stitches in them, and in places the flesh seemed to have torn open where the stitches had broken open, the wounds now sealed with dried blood and badly applied bandages.

Raising another bottle into the air and unscrewing the cap, she poured it into the bubbling pot, kicking up a cloud of hundreds of tendrils green coloured smoke, which seemed to wrap themselves around her like tentacles in the most strangest of fashions.

Then she saw it, balanced far above them atop a pile of empty boxes, crates and the twisted macabre shapes of dozens of angels, held aloft like some strange device of ritual sacrifice, was her special needle. Now it was one thing to lock her in a room without Mister B, but it was another thing completely to steal her special needle. That had been a super-special present from Mister B, and she ground her little teeth, how could she get it back?

Stealing a look around to see if anyone else was looking, she ducked through the door way, and the first thing that struck her was the temperature, it was really warm, really humid, she felt the breath in her lungs suddenly catch as if it had been stolen. She slowly edged her way around the room, not wanting any of the bad angels to see her, Mister B normally would have protected her, but Mister B wasn't here any more, which meant she would have to protect herself … somehow.

She looked up at the towering alter of twisted bodies and boxes, her expression thoughtful once again, how could she get up? She could climb … but then she might fall, and Mister B wouldn't be there to catch her. She could kick it down … but then it would all fall down and she might get hurt, since Mister B wouldn't be able to shield her … no … she would have to climb it, a prospect she was not looking forward to, as she suddenly found herself going down with a bad case of Vertigo just thinking about it.

Trembling a little, she pulled herself up the first crate, glancing over at the strange ceremony going on, as the woman reached for another bottle, uncapping it and pouring it, with great reverence, into the huge pot, which was almost full now, and something told her that it was bad news if it was full. She hauled herself up a few more boxes, finding her hand twitch a little every time she came across an angel, the instinct was almost overwhelming, enough to almost cause her to gnaw at it with her teeth, she had to save them, she had to save them all, every last one, otherwise … no one would.

She instinctively took a glance down, and realised she was much higher then she intended to have gone and she found herself higher then she thought, she felt her feet wobble a little … and then she almost lost her balance, but instead of herself, a tiny broken piece of plank went flying out into space. It seemed to hang there momentarily in the air, then gravity took hold and dragged it down to Earth, where it hit the ground with the tiniest of plinks, landing off somewhere to one side. Although it may have seemed like the most insignificant of sounds, it was enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room.

"What wassssss that!" the leader's voice was a sibilant hiss, dangerous and lethal, her hooked hand seemed to twist in a threatening gesture, and the half-emptied bottle in her other hand spilt a little of its blue liquid on the floor, where it foamed amongst the dirt and gore. The rest of the bad angels looked around, their expressions flickering in the flames, confusion registering along with fear, lots of fear.

"Rats" one of the bad angels said, his voice coarse and defiant "justa a coupl'a rats Roz, tha's all"

He quailed suddenly as the one identified as 'Roz' rounded on him, her single visible eye was filled with, ironically, burning anger.

"Ratssssss issss is, I'll sssshow you ratssss"

Her remaining hand brought itself up in an imperial gesture, and Elle thought she saw some flicker from her palm up into her fingers. She snapped her fingers, and there was a loud crack!-ing sound, and then the bad angel caught fire.

At first it was nothing more then a single tongue of fire which caught his arm, then it spread like a wild fire, consuming his whole body in raging hot flames. The bad angel tried to put them out, smacking at himself with his hands yet failing miserably. She could smell burning flesh and cooking fat and black, choking smoke and she had to force herself not to gag loudly. The angel collapsed onto the floor, dead, his entire body a mixture of black and red putrid flesh, a well-barbeque splicer indeed.

'Roz' glared at the other angels, her expression one of the utmost fury, her hook-hand shaking violently, and the other still had a faintly orange glow to it, as if she would like nothing better then to torch the rest of her compatriots.

"No one issss to dissshturb me, unershhhtoood!"

Heads bobbed fearfully, then they went back to their drooling.

Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, she wiped her forehead dramatically and recommenced climbing. It was starting to get wobbly now, the jitters were spread right the way through the whole structure, but no one seemed to be noticing, they were all too busy drooling.

She had almost reached the top, when 'Roz' gave a sort of half-scream, half-whoop, as she tossed what must have been the last bottle off to one side, where it shattered into hundred of pieces against the wall. Turning back to the other angels, she pointed at one of them, of whom immediately cringed, expecting to be burnt again, but after a few moment sighed with relief after finding that he had not been.

"You, retrieve the-"

She was interrupted however, by something completely stupid to say the least. In those last few, desperate moments, Elle had finally managed to scramble up to the top, retrieving her precious needle from where it had been precariously balanced on the edge. She held it aloft as if it were some kind of trophy.

"I FOUND IT MISTER B, I FFOUND IT, I found it … I … found i-"

Then she realised what she had done had been incredibly stupid. The angels were now all staring at her hungrily, their expression covetous, but 'Roz's' expression was one of abhorrent fury.

"Shtop her, she has the sacred needle"

One of the angels rushed forwards, gathering a ball of fire in his hands, he hurled it up at her as Elle ducked. The fireball smashed into the wall where he head had just been, leaving a long burn mark. There was a hollow thock!-ing as 'Roz' smashed her hook-hand into the splicer's skull, killing him instantly.

"You fool, we musht not deshtroy the altar, lesht-"

But it was too late, the tiny embers from the scattered fireball had done their work, only just a few had managed to survive for much more then a few moments, but they had already weakened the top of it considerably, and the top was supporting the rest of the structure.

Elle felt it wobble, then shake, then rattle, then the entirety of the 'altar' came crashing down in a tidal wave of boxes, crates and angels. As for Elle herself, she clung onto her precious needle as tight as she could, as she tumbled through the air she saw people and colours and fire and everything all whirl into one solid, continuous blur of vision, then with a tremendous splash!

She fell, head first, into the massive pot.

The world exploded into colour, red, blue, green, yellow, she opened her eyes, or tried to, and all she could see was colour. Arcs and sparks of electricity zapped backwards and forwards in front of her eyes. There was a sharp tugging sensation on the back of her dress as she felt herself get yanked from the solution with a furious pull. Spluttering a little, she found herself staring into the single, bloodshot, murderous eye or Roz. There was no mercy in that eye, just rage and violence and blasphemy as it turned from the solution in the pot, to Elle.

"The potion ishh spoiled … you will pay for thishhh"

Roz's other hand seemed to shimmer again with flames, just like it had down before, and Elle felt herself suddenly resign herself to death. Mister Bubbles wasn't here to save her now, and now he never would be able to. Roz thrust her cancerous face right in front of Elle's as she brought her hand closer, and closer, Elle closed her eyes, wishing it was all over.

And then something long and sharp and pointed exploded out of Roz's forehead, Elle scream, the point stopping less then a centimetre from her face. Roz's single eye whirled up to look at it, then with an almost dejected sigh, she sagged forwards … and dropped Elle right back in again.

This time was different however, Elle felt like her little lungs were going to burst, she needed to breath but knew she couldn't, no, no, no, no, she musn't, she musn't , she musn't , she musn't she- …. she tried to breath, expecting sweet relief, and instead she was met wit ha massive, double lung full of fire, she tired to cough, to spit it out, but there was no air with which to do so. She felt herself gently touched the metal bottom of the pot as darkness began to close in around her sight.