"CHEWY!"
The name escapes my mouth before I can control myself, and as if in slow motion, I instinctively start to dash forward to catch her body before it falls.
Naturally, Hae Eun reacts to the scene faster than I ever could.
I mean, fuck, her friend jus' got shot. She would've done the same for me.
So instead, I focus my anger on the guy. He tries to run away, but he runs right into one of the bystanders behind him, a tall senior guy, and trips on his foot as I shove the security guard who shot Chewy out of my way, buying me enough time to collapse on him, pop him in the mouth with a single hard punch, and pin him down.
"Chewy!" I hear Hae Eun hiss loudly. "Chewy, stay with me!"
The guy I'm pinnin' down starts strugglin', and since I'm jus' 'bout ready to murder someone, I take his head and smash his forehead against the ground a couple times until he stops strugglin' so damn hard. I figure he ain't gonna remember any 'a this anyway, so fuck 'im. Once I'm done with him, I look over at Chewy.
Hae Eun is doing her best to stabilize her wounded friend as the terrified bystanders around us, who at first panicked at the security guard's gunshot and started to disperse, now start to slowly converge on us again, horribly curious at how this shit's gonna turn out. It's real strange, how human mob mentality is. Somebody jus' got shot, 'n no one knows what's goin' on, but damn it, they wanna know if someone dies. That's jus' straight up fucked up.
Mami, too, is kneeling next to Chewy. She has that same horrified look that she was wearin' when I came to pick her and Hae Eun up from that other night...and while I understand that she might be feelin' responsible for what just happened, this time this ain't any of her fault. I jus' hope she can keep herself together long 'nough 'til we get a chance to calm her down.
Hae Eun turns to the three dumbstruck guards still trying to piece together what the hell jus' happened and yells at them, "Call the ambulance and get the L.A.P.D. here, right now! One of you detain that student over there!" She points at the dude I'm basically sittin' on.
"H-Hey, young lady, we have situation authority here," one of the guards says, approaching her. "I'm going to have to ask you to back away from the girl so that we can take a look at h - "
But Hae Eun has the same mindset that I got: we ain't gonna take shit from these bastards.
"Your co-worker just shot my friend,"Hae Eun's voice turns incredibly frightening. To a normal human, it'll sound like she's seriously 'bout to tape a pack 'a C4 onto someone and set it off just so that she can see blood rain down on her. "Do as I say. Now."
But it doesn't look like the security officer wants to back down. "Ma'am, please back away from the victim so we can assess the situation, otherwise we will have no choice but to arrest you." The two other guards also move forward as well, right behind the first officer.
At this, Hae Eun really snaps for good. She tells Mami to hold Chewy's neck and head, stands, and confronts the officers. She holds her business jacket by the collar fold and presses something and starts talking in Korean briefly.
"What?" the first guard glares at her, obviously not understanding Korean. "What did you just say? Was that even English?"
"Forget it, just arrest her and these other girls. We're already letting this get more out of hand than it should be," another officer sighs, like, yeah, it's no big deal that there's a girl bleedin' to death from a bullet he shot. Yeah, no biggie, right?
HOW ABOUT A BIG, GIANT CUP OF SHUT THE FUCK UP?
Enraged, I get up from the witch-infected student, grab him by his left ankle, and toss 'im like a rag doll straight at the closest guard before they even know what I just did. The two of 'em seem like they've morphed together for a split second before they both go crashin' across the second story floor of the giant convention center lobby like bowling pins.
"What the - ?!" the other two guards raise their pistols, presumably to shoot me, but Hae Eun is too quick for 'em. Using the distraction that I caused, she grabs both of their arms holdin' their guns by the wrists, digs her fingernails deep, threatenin' to cut into their blood vessels, 'n when they drop their guns, she snatches both of 'em right outta their hands, dashes away, 'n cocks both guns at the two guards she just disarmed.
"Hands up," Hae Eun hisses quietly, "or both of you will end up with a worse fate than my friend here." She nods at Chewy, who's now startin' to have trouble breathing as she starts hyperventilating. The guards, decidin' that tryin' to enforce their "law" onto Hae Eun ain't worth it anymore now that they ain't got shit to defend 'emselves with other than their nightsticks, slowly raise their hands.
"Kneel." They obey her, dropping to their knees. She turns to me. "Antonia, pick up that pistol," she nods at the gun that the third guard dropped when I pelted him with the guy. By the way, that guard's knocked out cold, lyin' on the floor a bit 'a ways away, and one of the students who was watchin' is holding down the infected student in case he decides to do somethin' else.
I grab the gun, a simple Beretta M-9. Hae Eun beckons me to come closer.
"Antonia, close Chewy's wound," Hae Eun orders me. "Normally I would do it, but I cannot afford to use any magic right now. Do it discretely."
I nod and go over to Chewy to examine her wound. There's no exit wound, so the bullet's stuck in her lung...a bad sign already. She's already startin' to hemorrhage blood up through her windpipe. It's lookin' bad, so I put my hand over her wound and one over her forehead.
"I-I'm so sorry," Mami whispers, half frantically, half tearfully as I start applying some magical healing, the warm blood gettin' all over my right hand. "I d-didn't expect that this would turn out this way..."
"Mami," I fiercely whisper back, "concentrate on gettin' Chewy outta here alive. We'll worry 'bout whose fault is whose after this shit's done 'n over with."
A few minutes yields some progress as I manage to close Chewy's entrance wound and stop her bleeding to stabilize her condition for now. But it feels like her lung's gonna collapse at any moment, and she's still got trouble breathing. Luckily, Chewy managed to retain consciousness through the entire ordeal, so I manage to counsel her into steadying her breath, make sure she ain't gonna knock herself out suckin' too much oxygen from the air in too short a time. All the while, everyone's just crowdin' around us but givin' us plenty 'a space.
As I'm keepin' Chewy alive, my mind recalls other scenes like this that I've seen in movies and anime and shit like that. Y'know how in scenarios like these, someone's always there sayin' "it's gonna be alright, you're gonna be okay" 'n bullshit like that? Fuck that crap. I call it bullshit for a reason, 'cause it is bullshit. Like, seriously, fuck you Hollywood, it ain't gonna be okay! How the fuck do you know? Any second now, Chewy's shot lung can just stop workin', and she's only gonna have one lung to get oxygen flowin' through her body, and how long does she got to live then? Nothin's ever okay until it is okay! What, you gonna keep sayin' "it's gonna be okay, you're gonna make it, you'll be alright" once the guy dies in the movie or anime or whatever? Fuck that shit! Those are like the most insincere words anyone can ever say! How the fuck do you know shit's gonna be "okay"? What, you gonna hope that shit becomes okay? Fuck that! Me 'n Hae Eun have been Magical Girls long 'nough to know that you can't just hope for things it straighten 'emselves out on their own, you gotta get down 'n dirty 'n make that shit okay yourself!
Fuckin' Hollywood.
Fuckin' humans.
Fuckin' everythin'.
Then, I hear the blades of a helicopter beatin' and gettin' louder 'n louder. I look up, and out the giant glass windows at the convention center's main entrance, I can see a helicopter with a big red cross on the side literally land smack outside the convention center. Soon after, a team of paramedics rushes in, storms up the stairs, and approach me, Mami, and Chewy. Amazingly enough, they seem to somehow know that Hae Eun is not the perpetrator and ignore her as they pass her to get to us.
"Single casualty. Female, thirteen to fifteen years old, single gunshot wound to the lower left lung. Appears to be a 9mm Parabellum round," one of the paramedics reports as he and two other medics start applying first aid. "We got it from here, girls, thanks for your effort."
I nod to Mami, and we back away from Hae Eun's friend to let the paramedics do their work. Soon, we can sirens of police cars wailin' their asses off 'n screech outside the the convention center, along with a truck full'a S.W.A.T. guys decked out in military gear like M4 assault rifles 'n heavy body armor 'n shit. They quickly set up a perimeter around the convention center, and a couple teams of policemen and a few S.W.A.T. guys enter the center 'n approach us. When they see Hae Eun, she points one of her guns at the guard that I knocked out who shot Chewy, and they grab him 'n drag his ass away, and one of 'em also detains the infected guy.
Fuck yeah, 'Murica. Where justice gets served to your bitch-ass by a little fourteen-year-ol' Magical Girl.
A couple other policemen also come to take away the guards that Hae Eun has at gunpoint and start readin' off their rights.
"Hey, we haven't done anything wrong, we were doing our fucking jobs!" one of them protests.
"Yeah, and you call lettin' your co-worker shoot a bystander your job? Bastards like you shouldn't even have these damn rights at all," one of the L.A.P.D. policemen sneers as they take them away. "How the hell did you even become a security officer anyway?"
The medics, hooking up a respirator to Chewy's mouth and loading her up onto one of those stretchers, hurries her away to the medical chopper. More policemen pour in, telling the students to go back to their hotel rooms for the day due to the incident. The teachers, too, direct the students back to their respective hotels, telling them to stick with their classmates in groups for added security.
"J-Jeannie..." Mami mumbles with guilt after we watch the arrested officers get taken away. "I'm really sorry..."
Hae Eun says nothing. I don't say anythin' either.
"Jeannie?" Mami repeats, but our focus is placed elsewhere. She looks towards where we're lookin', at the crowd behind us.
There, in the middle of the moving crowd of students, barely visible, is the mysterious floatin' boy in the sweater 'n slacks.
He's lookin' at us, with that same mark on that infected student etched over his own forehead.
He ain't got no eyes...just a dark red sclera.
And he's smilin'.
He disappears as a student passes him.
"Antonia, Jeannie," she whispers to us telepathically. "Follow me."
We immediately know what we're 'bout to do. We get outta the con center, and Hae Eun points towards one of the nearby underpasses.
"See them?" Hae Eun points to a small but somewhat steady stream 'a people saunterin' all funny over towards the underpass and past it. When I look at 'em more closely, I realize they've all got that same mark. Some've got it on the backs of their necks, maybe on their ears, nose, whatever, they all got that witch's mark. It ain't a lot of people either, just enough so that the witch can lure enough people in to eat. This witch is pretty fuckin' smart for what it is...
...doesn't make it any less of a bitch, though.
Slipping away from the other streams 'a students uninfected by the witch 'n headin' off to their respective hotels, we calmly walk with the infected towards their destination, followin' 'em to see where they end up. They all seem to be convergin' at the south end of the convention center, near one of the really big halls. There, there's these two open doors leadin' into a big storage facility under the big hall. Normally those doors've been locked, but I'm guessin' one of the infected was a janitor of the convention center that opened it up for everyone. We follow them inside, where it's super fuckin' dark. Hae Eun makes a flare 'n pops it for us to see inside.
In the middle of the storage room, the infected are gatherin' around this big ol' rune that we recognize as the witch's portal. We know what to do...
All three of us change into our Magical Girl costumes as more and more infected start shamblin' in. Hae Eun looks at me 'n Mami one last time before we jump in.
"I do not plan on taking any more than ten minutes on this piece of shit," she growls. "I have a friend to take care of."
We both nod, and we jump.
The witch's portal spits us out into the courtyard of this real nasty, run-down apartment complex. Like one 'a those big ol' gated apartment communities, if you know what I'm talkin' about. There's a pool nearby, along with a jacuzzi and plenty 'a those pool recliners 'n chairs, the ones people use to sunbathe, but both the pool and the jacuzzi ain't got no water. In fact, it looks like it's been empty and unused for at least a handful 'a years, all cracked 'n shit.
This's like somethin' straight outta Fallout or somethin'. The apartment complex looks desolate, dead vegetation coverin' everything. The sky's an awful, sickenin' shade 'a brown. Talk 'bout havin' the sky look like shit, literally. My sixth sense tells me it's supposed to be nighttime inside the witch's dimension, but there ain't no moon for us to see.
All of a sudden, we hear a loud thump pretty close to us, and all three of us whip around to see what it is. Hae Eun, who still got those two pistols those asshole guards had, points 'em at the thing that just went thump, and Mami, too, raises one 'a her fancy ol' muskets. For me, I jump in front of the two, right in the middle, and pop my halberd, ready to tank a hit if needed.
It's a dead body. By the looks 'a things, it must've been hangin' just over the edge from an apartment balcony 'n fell. Hae Eun approaches it cautiously to examine it.
"There is a knife embedded in the back of that corpse's neck," she says with a kinda deadly cool that sometimes makes me wonder if she's got any emotion at all. "THe body itself shows signs of decay that indicate it has been dead for at least five weeks." She turns to us. "Likely this apartment complex will be filled with corpses like these. So in case we must enter any of the apartments, be prepared to smell a very bad stench."
"Wait, how do ya know?" I ask.
"Do you remember the call I had before we left for the convention?" Mami and I nod.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"My handler informed me that the city of Los Angeles was being plagued by a series of unexplained cases of domestic violence. At first the L.A.P.D. took no heed to it, thinking they were nothing extraordinary, then the number of such cases spiked a few months ago. They do not understand why, and it is not their fault for not knowing so. The witch that is here is the one responsible."
Hae Eun points with one of her M-9 pistols up at the balcony from which the body presumably fell, and there, we can see the darkened, dried splatters of decaying blood over the windows and side walls.
"So...so what does this mean...?" Mami asks with a small voice, a bit apprehensively.
"Basically, this witch's been forcin' people to kill their own families," I tell Mami, whose eyes widen as she gasps again with that same small voice. "Though, I don't really know how..."
"I believe what happens is that the floating boy is a familiar of the witch here," Hae Eun concludes, "and he goes around putting the marks on people with low self-esteem or motivation so that they cannot resist being compelled to gather near the witch's portal, where the witch corrupts their minds further so that they end up going back to their homes and murdering their families. It is just a conjecture, but the most likely I can think of..."
As Hae Eun stops talkin', I feel someone givin' me a piercin' stare, like someone's drillin' a six-inch nail into the back of my neck. I turn around suddenly, and that fuckin' floatin' kid's sittin' on the jacuzzi railing, smilin' like a freak.
PAAAAA!
Hae Eun pops off a shot without warning at that witch's familiar, and the bullet just goes straight through his head. He cackles at us, but it's even more eerie 'cause there's nothin' that comes outta his throat, so to us it's like he's laughin' completely silently.
"Fuckin' piece 'a..." I glare at the boy, who resorts to stickin' his tongue out at us.
"How is that possible? I have never seen a witch's familiar that is immune to an attack," Mami says.
"Every witch is different...it is up to us to find each witch's weakness and exploit it," Hae Eun says definitively. "If that familiar does nothing but pose an annoyance, we can ignore it. Antonia, where is the witch? It does not seem like it will come out to meet us."
"Oh, right." I'm gettin' sidetracked by that obnoxious bastard and focus my concentration. Now, where the fuck are ya, ya bitch, so we can all go Salem Witch Trials on yer ass...
It barely takes me less 'n four seconds before I'm hit with the hunch that I know where the witch is.
"Up there," I say, pointing up to one of the apartment buildings at the top floor. "Witch's up there."
"Then let's get going," Hae Eun says, but as she's startin' off, I stop her.
"You know, we ain't the Germans goosesteppin' into France right now," I smirk. "These fucks're gonna put up a fight."
From nearly every single apartment balcony, dead, smelly, decayin' weeks-old corpses start crawlin' outta the woodwork all creepy 'n sneaky-beaky-like. Every single corpse's showin' some kinda violence done to 'em already - one's got slash marks all over his face, another's got an elbow bendin' the wrong way, and another's walkin' around with a kitchen knife plunged in its leg and a slashed eye.
"Well shieeet," I smirk. "Is this what they call a corpse party?"
"What's a corpse party?" Hae Eun asks me as we all clump up together, watchin' as the reanimated corpses drag their asses slowly towards us.
"Nothin' really, jus' a big ol' clusterfuck 'a dead pieces a shit."
"I see. Then go loud."
Hae Eun's dual pistols go blastin', and Mami opens fire with her first musket and throws the spent thing right at another corpse's head, knockin' it straight off 'cause of how decayed the thing is by now. I go around rippin' my chainsaw through these fuckin' things, 'n it doesn't even feel like I'm hittin' anything at all. Like passin' your hand through a cloud 'a white smoke. Hae Eun drops her pistols once they run outta ammo and starts burstin' bullets with an MP5-SD6, the subsonic bullets suited for knockin' down decayed, soft tissue that these corpses got. Problem is, they don't stop comin' - every time we kill one wave, another wave jus' comes rollin' down the apartments 'n creepin' their way towards us.
"We can't stay here," Mami yells over the cracks of her muskets as she dual-wields 'em, firing one bullet at a time. "We will be overrun at some point!"
"Antonia, take point and lead us to where the witch us," Hae Eun orders me. "Mami and I will follow up the rear!"
"Awright!" I summon Annie to come on out 'n escort us, and she lands on the ground, roarin' 'n shit, ready to go. We battle our way easily over to the apartment complex, and before we go in, I tell Annie, "Stay here 'n make sure none 'a these bastards come in through here, okay?" Annie roars in reply, and we get inside.
"Fourth floor, room 404," I say. "Elevators are gonna be sketch in a place like this, so let's take the stairs." I shorten my chainsaw halberd so it's more optimized for close-quarters combat, and we rush up the stairs, knockin' any reanimated corpse we met along the way off the stairs and tumblin' back down the stairs. The stench, though, is really fuckin' obnoxious, but then again it's to be expected 'cause of all these damn dead bodies. Doesn't make our job any easier, though, I can tell ya that.
We barge through into the fourth floor, and the entire hallway is fuckin' filled with dead bodies shufflin' around all zombie-like. They shift their attention to us, like they've been waitin' for us, all lurkin' 'n shit, and Hae Eun steps forward right smack in the middle of the hallway, pops another silenced Mini-Uzi, and goes ham. All the corpses on either side of us fuckin' melt away, droppin' just like the empty bullet casings that tumble outta Hae Eun's submachine gun and machine pistol.
"More of 'em are gonna climb up through the balconies," I say, spottin' some already doin' so on the far ends of the hallways. "Follow me!"
We run down the hallway and reach room 404. Hae Eun tosses aside her guns and cocks the charging handle of a Benelli M-1014 combat shotgun.
"Get the door, and I'll take point," Hae Eun orders, and I kick open the door so that Hae Eun can move in and sweep the room. Two loud blasts erupt from the room, and Mami and I jump in just in time to see two more reanimated corpses fly out the balcony. Hae Eun lowers the smoking barrel of her combat shotgun, and we look around apartment suite #404.
The walls, floor, and ceiling of the living room are painted with dried blood...they look like they've been there for like a good month. It smells even fuckin' worse inside the damn apartment. The furniture, the TV, jus' about everything's decaying, even if it never was alive. We pass an unmoving corpse of a little kid who's got his throat sliced out and missin' both of his eyeballs, and neither of 'em are anywhere in sight.
Bad pun, my bad...it was unintentional, I swear.
Checking every part of the living room and concluding that nothin's here, Hae Eun gazes over at the door leading into what feels like the kitchen. She approaches it with her shotgun at the ready and turns to me quickly.
"Antonia, punch a hole through."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
I take exactly two steps forward to the wall dividing the living room from the kitchen, spin once, and side-kick a part of the wall near the front door. The wall gives way too easily, and I literally kick off a whole section of the wall with minimal effort due to the combination of my insane strength and the wall's decayed state. The section of the wall I just kicked off also takes the door with it, so all Hae Eun needs to do is stand there with her finger on the trigger 'til the debris clears. Mami, holding a what looks like a big one-shot revolver in her hand just in case, stands beside Hae Eun.
Once the smoke clears, the scene reveals only a grisly scene: in the middle of the large kitchen that also doubles as a dining area, a middle-aged man sits in a creaky chair slumped over the table, not movin'. There's blood all over the back 'a his head, more towards the top half of the skull, and blood on his side of the table, dribbled down the sides as well. A box of pills, empty, sits in front of the man's head. There's what looks like an M1991-A1 pistol - it's like a variant of the classic M1911 - on the ground below his right hand, and the slide's cocked back, indicating that it's empty. The mom is slumped against the wall with particularly large bloodstains on the wall behind her - looks like someone - or rather, something - took chunks outta her freakin' head. One more kid is impaled to the kitchen counter with multiple kitchen knives. Apparently someone had the sick sense 'a humor to turn her into a human knife rack.
"Ugh..." I hear Mami groan and hold her mouth. "This...this is so...so horrible..."
I walk close to her and embrace her, like I'm tryin' to shield her from this hell, and she buries her face into my collarbone. If only we had some sorta Eldritch abomination or whatever the hell those're called, we'd have somethin' that damn Lovecraft nutjob would make.
"...lysergic acid diethylamide..." Hae Eun murmurs, setting down the box of pills and looking around before turning to me again. "You're sure the witch is here?"
"That's what my sixth sense told me. It ain't been wrong before."
"Then where is it? Why is it not attack us? We have made sufficient noise to draw it out if it were here."
I simply shrug, and Hae Eun scratches her head.
"How odd..."
I hear the shuffling of feet outside the apartment. "Well, whatever the case, we gotta find this bitch fast, 'cause they're gonna box us in here."
"Or, better yet..." Hae Eun goes over to the living room and shoves a tall and moldy bookcase over the doorway to block the entrance. "Those corpses have no strength, so this should do."
"So what the fuck's goin' on here?" I demand of Hae Eun as I'm strokin' Mami's hair gently to help her calm down. I talk as if Hae Eun knows what to do, which isn't the case at all, and I know it.
Hae Eun crosses her arms, her M-1014 strapped to her back now. "This room...it sounds familiar."
"How so?"
"Do you remember that phone call that I mentioned earlier?"
"Yeah, what 'bout it?"
"My handler informed me of one such case. It was exactly like what we see here: a dead family of the mother, father, and three kids. The father was shot in the head but at an awkward angle to imply that he did not commit suicide - " she points at the dead guy - "the mother whose head was missing several pieces - " she points to the woman slumped against the wall - "and three children, two of which are accounted for."
"...then what about the third?" I ask. "Where's that last kiddo at?"
"I know as much as you do...in other words, I do not know at all. But the circumstances are too similar to suggest that they are different from one another. Perhaps this is a recreation of that same scenario? It would make sense, seeing that our assumption was that the witch here is responsible for the recent domestic violence cases."
"So basically, we gotta find that last kid."
"If that is possible. I am not sure what would exactly accomplish, though."
A missing kid, huh?
Wait.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
A missing kid?
Could it be?
No fucking way -
I let go of Mami suddenly and spin around before either Hae Eun or Mami can react.
And as I predicted, that same boy from earlier is now standin' in athe middle of the livin' room, not floatin', but just standin'.
And he fuckin' lunges at me.
With my reactions top-notch, I move faster than he can and punch him as hard as I can right in the face, but it feels like I'm tryin' to punch the side of a goddamn mountain and my knuckles burn instantly, screamin' at me in pain. But it's enough to force him back, reeling from the hit.
"Antonia!" Hae Eun cries out, arming herself with her shotgun again. "What are you doing? What's going on?!"
"You can't see his ass?!" I practically scream at her, and Mami now looks positively scared shitless. "There! It's that kid from earlier!"
Hae Eun looks completely baffled, and so does Mami. "A-Antonia, what are you talking about, there is no one there!" Mami also shrieks in fright.
Are you fuckin' kiddin' me? I'm the only one that can see this kid?
Oh shit, you know what? I think I know why -
- it's 'cause they haven't made the connection yet. This boy is the last kid of this dead family.
"Just lemme take care 'a this!" I tell Hae Eun and Mami, ignoring them and readying my chainsaw halberd. The boy soars back at me with alarming speed, and now that I'm ready for him, I get a good look at his face.
There's bloodstains drippin' down from his eye sockets, and those eyes really don't look like they belong there.
Did he take them from someone?
Like that kid in the living room?
I thrust my roaring chainsaw blade forward, and the kid doesn't even bother tryin' to dodge it, so he ends up catchin' the chainsaw right in his chest. But no blood comes outta him - it just tears up his flesh 'n body, and I throw him across the living room again with a lot of effort 'cause for some reason he weighs a shit-ton. He crumples against the wall but immediately gets up like nothin' happened. I get the sick feelin' that no matter what I do, I ain't gonna do jack shit to him for whatever reason.
Which must mean there's gotta be something that does hurt this kid.
And the only thing like that near us is -
"Hae Eun!" I call without looking back. "Toss me that pistol on the ground near that guy!"
I bat away the boy again for a third time as I hear Hae Eun retrieve the gun. "But it does not have any ammo!" she calls back.
"Then make a clip for it and give it to me!"
I promptly hear a quick click of the insertion of a gun magazine as I get ready to knock the kid back for a fourth time, but Hae Eun says, "Catch!" and tosses it to me. I get sidetracked by the flying gun and turn to reach out 'n grab it, but because of this slight distraction, the floatin' kid manages to dodge my weapon 'n bite deep into my left arm.
"Fucking - !" I hiss as he frantically starts clawin' away at my neck and upper arm. I let go of my chainsaw in the scuffle, and I don't even manage to catch the M1991-A1 pistol, and it just drops to the ground. This kid's gonna fuckin' rip my arm off if I don't do somethin' 'bout him soon, and it's all I can do to prevent him from successfully makin' me a goddamn amputee. And worst of all, that gun ain't in my reach.
"Antonia! ! !" both Hae Eun and Mami cry out. They now realize that I ain't batshit crazy, since they can clearly see my left arm gettin' torn to shreds at an alarmingly fast rate. Hae Eun reacts quickly, gets the gun again, and tries to shoot the boy off me, even though she can't see him. To everyone's horror including mine, the bullet doesn't do anythin' to this kid. In fact, in my perspective, the bullet goes straight through him as if he ain't there.
"G-Give it to me - ! ! !" I gasp, the kid now digging so far into my arm that I'm afraid he's about to reach bone. Hae Eun hands me the gun, and I quickly grab it and put it against his skull. Just before he's 'bout ta take a huge chunk outta my biceps with his fuckin' teeth, I pop him.
And this time, it fucking works.
His head jerks sideways, and he tumbles off me. Mami gasps again, and I can tell that Hae Eun's also freaked out on the inside, though I'm sure she ain't showin' it. They probably can now see the boy as well, now that I've shot him. Maybe only I could hurt him 'cause I was the only one who realized the kid was the last child of the family...
Whatever the case, as we watch, the boy's appearance starts meltin' off him like a viscous liquid. Slowly but surely, the liquid melts and evaporates away to reveal a girl like the other one in the kitchen with the knives stuck in her, along with a Grief Seed. But this girl's eyes - both of 'em are stabbed out, split almost neatly in half.
I then realize that the eyeballs from the floating boy are still there; they haven't disappeared or anything. Instead, as we keep watchin', they roll by themselves over to the corpse of the boy whose eye sockets are bloodied and empty...and they come to rest next to his head.
Those eyes were his.
I press the magazine release on my gun and fire the bullet in the chamber at the corpse of the witch again, just for the sake of double-tapping. Obviously this doesn't do anything to a witch that's already dead, but...fuck that thing. Fuck that thing to hell. I toss the gun behind me and start nursing my arm, which is in really, really bad shape.
Mami rushes to me and starts using some of her own magical energy to heal my wounds. Besides the teeth and scratches marks all over my left arm from the elbow down, my collarbone, neck, and some of my lower left cheek, I've got a huge gash that cuts super fucking deep into my upper arm - like I said, he almost reached the bone. "Antonia, this is going to hurt, but it will help stop the bleeding, okay?" I nod, and Mami wraps some of her yellow ribbon around the deepest gashes and tightens it like medical gauze, and a sharp stab of pain shoots up my arm and causes me to gasp with pain. I'm not gonna lie, this ain't by any means the worst pain I've felt, but it's still pretty fucking bad.
"How is she?" Hae Eun asks Mami as she, too, kneels next to me.
"She is definitely going to need medical attention or a Grief Seed for this kind of a wound," Mami says urgently. "I have healed the ones I could, but she has two very serious cuts that are reaching her bones."
I point at the Grief Seed left behind by the witch, who was disguised as the floating boy. "I'll just use that."
Mami, who's closer to it, grabs it for me, and I take it from her. I bump it against my Soul Gem, and I feel my lost magical energy slowly get replaced, and the added magical energy sharply accelerates my arm's healing.
Halfway through, though, my vision starts flickering for some reason. I'm retainin' all my other senses, but my sight alone flickers, then goes pitch black. Not wantin' to alarm my friends if I say something, I stay put and keep quiet to see if the blindness will go away on its own, but instead, I start seein' a vision. A family of five - a dad, mom, and three kids. I watch what seems to be the last week of their lives before the madness happens. Because I can still hear what's goin' on in the witch's dimension and not in my vision, I watch the dad barge into the same apartment I'm sittin' in and start whackin' the mom in the head with a wooden baseball bat. After he's done with her, he takes the kids that were also in the kitchen cryin' in the corner one by one 'n murders 'em: the first girl by stabbin' her eyes out, the boy by slicing his throat and hurling him against the wall of the living room, and the second girl by stickin' the rest of the kitchen knives up 'n down her chest and stomach. Then, the dad snaps back to his senses and stares at his dead wife 'n kids, horrified at what he's done, goes to his room, sits down in the kitchen with a box of pills, pops the rest of the pills...like fucking eleven of 'em, and shoots himself in an awkward angle to make it look like it wasn't a murder-suicide, that someone else did his grisly deeds. then the vision flickers again like some creepy 70's television screen and shows Kyuubey standing in front of the girl with her eyes stabbed, and a flash of light, and my vision goes back to normal.
"...Antonia?" Mami whispers to me. "Are you...are you alright...?"
"You appeared as though you were in a trance," Hae Eun explains, also very concerned. "What was going on?"
I blink a few times and shake my head. "...I saw the memories of that witch," I mumble, rubbing my forehead.
While Hae Eun nods in understanding, Mami looks even more confused. "You gained the memories of that witch by using its Grief Seed?"
"Sometimes, the Grief Seeds that witches leave behind upon death can transmit the last memories of the Magical Girl before she became a witch," Hae Eun explains. "In our experience, this happens only rarely...and when it does, usually the parameters that make it possible are that the witch was a very young one or an especially young Magical Girl who became a witch. Or maybe simply a Magical Girl who managed to hold on strongly to her human memories before she fell into witchdom."
Mami shakes her head. "I...I never knew..."
"What did you see, Antonia?" Hae Eun asks.
"Long story short," I begin, "the dad had an LSD prescription...dunno how, but that box on the kitchen table near the dead guy contained LSD pills. I think he mighta OD'd one day and decided for whatever reason that it was a good idea to just kill his family once for fun or somethin', I dunno. Maybe they were annoying to him one day when he was on the LSD and he snapped. He killed his wife 'n kids, but that girl - " I point to the girl with stabbed eyes - "was still alive when the dad shot himself. Kyuubey found her and turned her into a Magical Girl, but she didn't live long after that, obviously, and turned into a witch, carryin' the curse of causin' more domestic violence cases in the city. That's all I got."
"But then...why did the witch appear to be a boy?" Mami asks with a small voice.
I shrug. "I dunno..."
"These are young children," Hae Eun says, "so I think that the witch, when she was still human, looked up a lot to her brother over there - " she nods at the corpse of the boy across the living room from us - "and wanted to be just like him. You know how little kids are...so in order to do that, she took his eyes because she had lost her own. Other than that, I am not sure...that is the best theory I can come up with."
We sit for a moment in utter silence. The corpses outside have gotten quiet, since their overmind in the form of the witch is now dead, and I can hear Annie growl every so often, looking out for more corpses to chew up. It's an eerie feeling, sitting in an apartment full of death. But while it should be frightening, I don't find this situation horrifying or terrifying anymore. Partly because I have my friends with me, but even if I were alone, I still wouldn't really feel all too scared to sit in a room with five other dead people. It's more 'cause I'm used to this now.
It's like somethin' that was s'posed ta be a part 'a me died a long time ago, just like these dead bodies...