I've done it, I've stuck to my weekly updating for three weeks! :D *Does victory dance*

Chapter 14: Reveal

Much to his own surprise, Hunter did not feel a shred of shame as he let his sadness, which had been bottled up for far too long, pour out of him in the form of tears. He had tried his best, at first, to hold it back, to restrain his own weakness, but in the end, he was proven powerless.

And as if that wasn't enough, he was in the same room as the Armada Commodore.

Imagine that. I took you captive, I nearly broke you, and here I am, 'pouring my heart out to you'. Now, isn't that just ironic?

Apparently not ironic enough to stop him.

Prima watched in silence, shackled to the wall, standing straight and unmoving, like always, like the emotionless humanoid shell that she was built to be. But unlike what she was built to be, Prima did not find it odd at all that her captor, in his desperation, chose to confide in her.

She understood perfectly, for once, even as unpredictable as Hunter and his skeleton of a lover were, she could understand this.

Previously, exactly one hour, twenty-two minutes and eight seconds ago, Prima had heard the two of them shouting at each other. Actually, she confirmed with herself, it seemed more like Hunter shouting non-stop at Dangler, who only returned shrill, throat-grating laughs and soft, purring, distant fragments of sentences that the Armada Commodore couldn't quite make out from her position down in the chamber that she had been held in.

There was a loud slamming noise and a substantial amount of silence after that, and she had predicted that Hunter had stormed out in either frustration or defeat. Or, quite possibly, both. It was more than likely, given the mental state that the female witchdoctor was currently in.

There's a word for humans like that, Prima had told herself, insane.

People like her were, when they chose to be, impenetrable. Nothing could quite carry to them, it just slid off of their skin, it seemed.

When she had heard the familiar angry footsteps descending the stone staircase just outside her door, she had anticipated him to blow open the door, knife in hand or perhaps no weapon at all, just his bare fists, and attempt to damage her frame in any way possible.

However, he did not do any of that.

What he did do was quite the contrary to what Prima had predicted. Hunter had opened the door, entered, and closed the door quietly before standing in the center of the room, torch in hand, not speaking a single word.

She had been thoroughly confused, and she had then asked him the reason why he had decided to come down here, if it was not to cause her harm. She had also stated that she was under the assumption that he despised the Armada, and did not understand how he had come to the conclusion that she would make a good confidant.

But then he had started talking, and everything had started making sense. She understood then.

Prima didn't exactly know whether that was a good or a bad thing, but she understood.

He had stayed very, very quiet at the beginning, he was careful with his words, he was careful with what he revealed. He had told her that he was expected to do the impossible, which was to stand by and watch while the love of his life slowly deteriorated away, both physically and mentally.

That was not incorrect, in fact, that was an almost perfectly accurate description of the situation, and she had not expected an unstable human such as Hunter to make such a logical analysis. This also confirmed Prima's prediction that she had made early on when she had first seen Dangler.

That woman – she did not originally think or look the way she did currently. No. That had been induced, triggered, set by something foreign. She had been pushed off a steep, never-ending cliff, that one short push was all it took. Humans were always unstable. Unstable, unreliable, unsteady, vulnerable. So really, it wasn't unexpected.

He had also said that Dangler was caught in an endless spiral of obsession, which was also true. Obsession was a much more complex variable in the behavior and thought process of someone so spontaneous, it was not just an emotion. As if those weren't complicated enough. Obsession was not an objective, nor was it an action. By Prima's limited archive of understanding, obsession was a name given to a certain type of drive, motivation. Literally cognitive fuel for humans. The clockworks never relied on an external input like the humans did. They powered themselves with a constant internal cycle, everything powering everything.

In Dangler's case, such an obsession did not have any particular objective. She had lost hers a long time ago, it had seemed, and she was attempting to compensate, even though she knew it was impossible. In a mind as depraved as hers, it was better to let sweet, merciful falsehood grow and fester than to face the dreaded reality.

But even then, after he had explained this, Prima still did not fully understand. She did not understand what initiated an obsession. It did not seem like a contagion, a foreign retardant to humans that could be spread through means of physical interaction and contact, nor did it seem like something learned, for obsessions were individual, unique, and no two were exactly alike. It couldn't be learned, that just wasn't possible.

It was you, he had said, you heartless, soulless monsters. It was you and your perfectly white, impossibly smooth flesh-metal and the empty voids that you stare and calculate with. It was you drones, you relentless metal creatures, and your twig thin limbs and your flawless, programmed poise. He had spat this with resent, and she was, once again, confused as to why. He had stated what the clockworks were, which was correct, she found, if she looked past the obviously-human elaborations that he had added in.

She fell in love with it, he said, all of it. She found it grotesquely beautiful, how such fragile shells held such a powerful image, such destructive potential and power. It showed what true power really was, she had apparently believed. Power was not something limited by physical size or strength, nor was it by intellect alone. Power all depended on drive, Dangler had soon found, and drive was something she had plenty of.

Dangler had the drive, but she needed an outlet. It was, after all, impossible to pursue efficiently when one had no idea what they were pursuing, it just didn't make any sense. So when the opportunity, in the form of a scouting Armada marksman, had presented itself to the female witchdoctor, she had pounced on it, successfully attaining the force with the potential to push her off the metaphorical cliff.

Up until this point, Prima had followed blankly, making sense of exactly what Dangler had done in her past, before she had began to waste away to her current state, but she still failed to see the hidden meaning that Hunter had – consciously or subconsciously – buried under his words. But it all clicked, however, when in the midst of his now tear-blurred rant, she had picked up the name of this 'test subject'.

Decimus.

Presidos Decimus.

If she had a heart, a beating human heart, it would have stopped right then and there, Prima told herself, and if she was to let her logical barriers down again, an emotion known as pride would wash over her in celebration for making such an inference.

Yes, yes, he had mentioned Decimus before, but even then she had doubted her suspicions. There was more than one clockwork given the name Decimus, so therefore, wouldn't it have been highly illogical to automatically assume, without any solid evidence, that this was the Decimus that she had remembered so well?

The categorical name had confirmed it all. Presidos, the title given to clockworks with a built-in evasive and agile ability, just as the Militus clockworks had an offensive advantage and the Custos clockworks were primarily programmed to defend.

Presidos Decimus had become the subject of a situation that Prima had rarely seen before, three or four years ago. Compared to her total 60 years of function, it was quite recent.

Just like numerous other clockworks that she had 'rehabilitated', Decimus had been yet another victim (for lack of a better word) of impression. He had been part of a squadron of clockwork scouts, all musketeers, sent out to retrieve information on the size of the pirate resistance so that the Armada could determine whether Skull Island posed a threat to the Grand Design or not. Prima remembered this well, she had commanded the operation.

Everything about this mission had gone wrong from the start. There was an unexpected shortage of places to hide, leaving most of them at a huge risk for discovery, and sure enough, on the second night, a great majority of them were discovered by the pirate resistance and – as the report had read – destroyed beyond all recognition. It was a grave mistake on the part of the Armada, leaving their troops so exposed, but luckily for them, their enemy was reckless and did not even think twice before destroying the musketeers' metal 'carcasses', along with any evidence they could have used to their advantage.

Or so she had thought.

Decimus had been the rear sniper in this particular squadron, and following his programmed statistical instincts, he had managed to escape fully intact through the maze of alleyways in between the buildings of Skull Island.

But now that Prima thought about it, it would have been better off if he had been destroyed.

Around two hours later, Decimus had encountered the very same witchdoctor currently keeping Prima in captivity.

At that time, he explained, Hunter did not harbor any personal grudge against the Armada quite yet, just the same general hatred that any member of the resistance had towards the 'heartless, soulless clockworks'. So, being of higher-than-average intelligence, Hunter had taken it upon himself to temporarily incapacitate Decimus and, just like he had done to Prima and Servus, lock him up in the basement dungeons. To be precise, the chamber directly across from the one Prima was in.

His intent had been rather logical, he would simply observe Decimus in an attempt to extract further information about the exact function of the Armada clockworks, but then he had made the mistake of bringing his lover, Dangler, a gorgeous, powerful witchdoctor whose ability knew no bounds, into the picture.

She, entranced by the "horrible beauty" of the clockwork musketeers, grew attached to him almost immediately, and expressed her affection my means of physical and mental torture, satisfying her sick lust and pleasures with the sight of him paralyzed, uncertain, unable, unable to calculate, unable to act, and all by her hands too.

Hunter then stopped to elaborate on how Dangler, at that time, was nothing like she was in the present day. She, according to him, had been strong, beautiful, dominating, like a lioness, the prize in every man's eye. She never had much regard for physical matter or other's affections (except for those of Hunter's), she only held an unquenchable thirst for, as she had then put it, "lovely pain".

Dangler, Hunter explained, had this one ability that was nothing like the witchdoctors of the island had ever seen. If she chose to, by coating an enchanted metal brand with her own blood and then pressing it deep into the skin of the victim, she could see that who she had branded at any time she desired.

So she had branded Decimus, declaring that "with this, he will always be mine".

That had been a sort of 'emergency precaution' when she had first performed the branding, but then, Hunter said, the Armada attacked, they had devastated the island, and Prima had remembered. It was a hurriedly – planned retrieval mission, a last attempt to snatch back their precious asset from the imperfect hands of the resistance.

Tears were flowing freely down Hunter's face now, and he had to lean against the wall to keep his body, shaken with sobs, upright. Dangler became possessed by her affection, he said, it took over her, it festered, it evolved into obsession. She staggered around the mansion robotically, as if she was a clockwork herself, clawing the furniture, the walls, her own flesh – silently mourning. He couldn't take it, he said, he would have rather heard her crying late into the night.

So he then made the one mistake that would turn both of their lives upside down for good – he reminded her of the ability that the brand granted her, and she became absolutely ecstatic, spending all of her time buried in the visions she created for herself of her beautiful clockwork musketeer. She rarely spoke, she rarely moved, she seemed to stop functioning all together, but she was happy and that was all that mattered.

However, as Hunter had forgotten at that time – her ability to immerse herself in a self-created mirage came at a staggeringly high price. Dangler's brand could only ever be on one, human or not, at a time, and when she wished to – as she put it – "look", she had to pay.

The incantation required for her to view her dreadfully beloved clockwork used an impossible amount of her energy with each use, draining Dangler physically, mentally, and emotionally with each plunge into illusion, leaving her thinner, weaker, and desperate for more every time.

Hunter soon realized that this was far worse than any of the other options, but by then, it was much too late to go back. His lovely ebony lioness had been snatched away from him by her own mind, flayed, skinned of everything she was known for, and returned to him as a crumbling, twitching skeleton.

But, he said, choking on his own grief, she was still his crumbling, twitching skeleton, and if he looked hard enough, she was still his Dangler, Dangler with her unquenchable bloodlust.

In time, she had realized what her treasured illusions had done to her body, her vessel, as she often called it, and she knew she only had a few more left in this one, but that knowledge didn't prevent her from being driven absolutely mad from the withdrawal, which meant that it was only a matter of time.

And now, Hunter was on his knees, sitting back on his heels, arms limp, head down, drowning in his own desperation.

"I…I don't know if i-it's going to be tomorrow…or-or next week…or next month…she's only got three more left in her…I d-don't know what'll be left of her after that...!"

Prima wasn't quite listening to him anymore, not at that point. She had allowed her walls to come down for a bit, as it was required for her own comprehension of such a human situation. Everything, every flawed human emotion that she had ever learned in her sixty years of function hit her hard then, and she began to do a little worrying of her own, but not for Dangler.

For Decimus.

Decimus, whose memory had been wiped so he could continue serving, because Prima's logical barriers had failed her that time too.

Decimus, who could be easily pushed back over the edge by the slightest force. Dangler is much too strong of a force.

She would come for him.

Run, soldier, RUN, and pray she be delayed.

Yay, longest chapter yet!

So Dangler's history with her own insanity is pretty much explained here, and the floating question 'Who is Decimus' is answered.

More about Sydney and the crew next time!

Remember, the link to my combined Wizard101 and Pirate101 RP is in my profile (I couldn't post it in the actual chapters because it kept getting cut off)!

And, like always, review please :D

- Severina