Chapter 32. She
"Skriking again?" the disdain was clear in her mother's hoarse voice.
Her beautiful bronze face was distorted by the indignant sneer Akane knew so well. Her mother's hair was a flaming red, jaw long and wild like fire, unlike her black eyes that held no warmth at all.
"No, mother." Akane denied.
She down-cast her glance to hide the tears that quickly started to gather in her eyes. Tomorrow she was leaving for the tribes and wouldn't get to see her mother for five years.
A snort. "Do you know what they do with whelps that skrike like little babes in my tribe?"
Akane knew very well but she didn't answer because she feared she might end up really sobbing if she opened her mouth now.
"They make you sleep outside the village. You have to dig a hole in the hard ground with your bare hands until they bleed and hurt." her mother gave her a mean grin. "At night the sandwolves come howling and sniffing at your hideout and if you didn't dig deep enough, they eat you up alive. You will learn this for yourself soon enough, kitten."
Akane shivered. No matter how often her mother told her this story, it scared her every time and she already knew that she would be dreaming about howling and sniffing wolves that wanted to eat her again tonight. She didn't want to go live with the tribe. She wanted to remain here in the castle. There were no sandwolves in the lands her father ruled.
"So stop your skriking at once. You have it good here. Too good. How often I have told your father that you are spoiled. I knew all this luxury couldn't be good for a Saiyajin and you prove it. It makes them weak-hearted. Well not you, kitten. I am not raising you to be a weakling. You are taking your rites like I did when I was five. My people are going to ram you to rights. Now leave my sight. Go spar with your brother."
Akane moved to obey, but was stopped yet again.
Neat black brows arose in displeasure on her mother's sunbaked forehead. "What is this?" she demanded while roughly retrieving a blue silk ribbon from Akane's flaming red hair.
Akane looked at the ribbon that was shoved in her face. She had received it as a gift this morning from her maidservant who had enthusiastically braided it into her hair. Akane was fascinated by the sky-blue colour of the ribbon and the way it seemed to glisten in the sunlight. It had the softest feel as well. It came from the neighbouring Sunstrewn Galaxy. She loved that ribbon.
"Nori gave it to me." Akane answered softly. She still felt like sobbing. "She says that pretty girls should wear pretty ribbons in their hair."
Akane noticed the fist too late and was unable to ward it off. It hit her right in the belly. She doubled up and blood shot out of her mouth that was opened in a silent cry of shock.
"A true warrior never lets her guard down." her mother snarled. "Your head is filled with nonsense. Pretty! Pretty does not make you a warrior. Strength, agility and vigour do. Curse your noble blood. You are a fighter. A Shield Smasher. Never shame me like this again. We come from the South. We do not deal in pretty."
Akane watched horrified how her mother burned the blue ribbon to ashes with a simple flick of her small hand, her red energy swallowing it whole. She was unable to fight her tears any longer and they started to stream down her cheeks like a hot river.
"Stop skriking!" her mother threw her another blow, yet this time Akane warded off the fist before it struck her face and also the following attacks she blocked, be it with difficulty because the tears were blurring her view.
"No need for pretty now, have you?" her mother asked without stopping her assault. "Come on, kitten, hit me back."
Akane tried to but all her attention was needed to defend herself from the relentless hits and kicks her mother threw at her. It didn't take long for her to land on her bum on the marble floor defeated. She panted, blood dripping from her nose. At least she had been so caught up in warding off her mother's attack that she had stopped sobbing.
"Get up." her mother demanded harshly.
Suddenly an arm was extended in between them like a steel cable to block her mother's path. Akane's heart jumped joyously when she looked up to find her father's handsome face where he was standing over her. Little wrinkles appeared in the corners of his pale golden eyes when he smiled down on her adoringly.
"Come poppet. I think you had enough training for today." he spoke in his full voice as he hoisted her from the floor by the scruff of her neck and set her down on his lower arm.
"Where are you going? We weren't finished." her mother objected furiously.
"I'm taking our daughter to the city like I promised. This is our last day together." her father replied, ignoring the sharp tone in her mother's voice like he always did. "Care to join us, my heart?"
"I have better things to do than stroll around town like some bleeding fool." her mother snarled put off.
Her father shrugged casually. "Suit yourself." He gave Akane another smile. "We better make haste or all the good, fat melons will be gone before we get there."
Akane threw one last glance at her mother, but the short curvy woman was already striding out of the room, muttering about the disgusting weaknesses of nobility.
"Can I have two melons?" Akane asked enthusiastically.
Her father let out a belly laugh. "That hungry are you, poppet?"
Akane nodded gravely and slipped her tail around her father's big bicep to keep herself from falling as he swept her off to town.
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A circle of fierce, tanned faces staring over dancing flames. Hostility, curiousity, dismissal, condescendence. The delightful smell of meat roasting. Hunger chased away by fear. The savage grin on a face much likened to her mother's, the Chieftain welcoming her to the tribe.
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Akane sat back on her haunches blind, deaf and unable to feel her surroundings. She had been helpless the first weeks, had found herself drowning in cold water at one time and plummeting to an unknown depth another. She had survived both, luckily. She was more careful where she treaded now. She had found something she assessed was a cave where she was relatively safe and decided to make this her base for the coming turn around the suns.
As she grew accustomed to her new state of being, she discovered that there was another sense in her. A sense she had never been aware of. It was a knowing inside her, a knowing so complete, so independent of all her other senses that she came to understand she needed nothing else to help her be if she could learn how to listen to it. It was like intuition, yet deeper, encompassing much more. She could feel things, not with her body, but inside her. She could calculate distances, register the things that made up her surroundings, see without eyes when an animal drew close to her and also feel whether it was hunter or prey.
This new knowing sense, combined with her sense of smell she had so keenly developed over the past four years living with the tribe, were enough to keep her alive. After a while her hunger drove her to go out hunting. She managed to make snares like the ones used in the tribe with unfeeling fingers after botching it up over a hundred times and figured out the right spot in which to place them with her nose pointing her to the game trails used by wildhares and sunfoxes, snaring one or two every day to sustain her. There was a stream that provided her with fresh water down the knoll where her cave was and she learned to snatch snappers from the cool water with her hands. She ate them raw on the spot when she was hungry or took them back for roasting at the mouth of her cave if she had an appetite for that.
Life in the cave became a little easier every day and her skills grew in equal measure. Akane had feared being alone the most, yet it had no room in her now that all her mental power was aimed at survival. Staying alive was the sole thing occupying her and in time she came to appreciate being on her own. She wasn't the little girl that left Bethar and her family four years ago. She had grown, had become independent and selfsufficient, able to hold her own. She was hard and brave like her mother now.
Akane was nearing the end of the turn around the suns when it happened. Something was drawing near to her. It was no beast, her knowing sense told her that this was a two legged creature. It reminded her of man, only the being eminated beastly urges and emotions. She hadn't been scared in a long while, having grown accustomed to her new life with her two remaining senses so it caught her off guard now that fear welled up in her so forcefully.
The man-beast had come close to the mouth of her cave without Akane noticing it and she realised that she had let her guard down, had grown comfortable and cocky and let her vigilance slip. It was an error she was about to pay for. The man-beast was already upon her, on her, flipping and mounting her from behind. She couldn't feel it bodily, but he was invading her, tearing into her and making her bleed from between her legs. She smelled her own blood aside from the man-beast's scent that reminded her of the scents in the tribe. She smelled fire, roasted meat, hard dry soil, supple leather and she knew that this was a tribes man. She understood what he was doing to her as well. She had seen men and women coupling in the tribe often enough to understand that he was taking his pleasure from her. Without her wanting it.
The tribes man's frenzied attack was over before she had even fully recovered from her bewilderment, the whole ordeal taking no more than minutes. Notwitstanding it shook her to her very core. She smelled the humour he had spilled in her body as he witdrew from her. He wasn't getting far. Akane was already whirling around in bloodlust when he moved away. She grabbed him by the thing he had invaded her body with, hearing no scream with her deaf ears, yet feeling it echo all through her body when she ripped it right off. She snuffed out the screaming by shoving the now slippery and bloody thing down the tribes man's throat. He convulsed and struggled beneath her, but not very long. With his airway blocked by the thing he hadn't been able to keep to himself, it didn't take much time for him to suffocate.
Done, Akane rolled the lifeless body out through the mouth of the cave and kicked it down the knoll with a snarl. Her bloody hands were shaking when she hunkered down to wipe them on the little grass that grew aside her cave. She didn't hurt, not physically at least with that sense shut down, yet she was wounded between her legs where blood kept flowing. She was wounded in her soul as well. Marred, altered. The tribes man had taken something from her that she could never get back. All that was on her mind was that this was never going to happen to her again. She was never letting her guard down again, not even for a second.
The next tribes man that came to her cave didn't even make it up the knoll. Akane was ready this time and she sent him off running with fierce red ki blasts exploding at his heels.
They came to collect her two days later and took her back to the tribe. Her senses where restored to her and when she came out of the tent where they had perfomed the rituals, she blinked furiously in the blinding light of the two red suns she hadn't seen for a year. Her mother-brother was there to greet her. The short, sinewy man with the bones braided into his long, fiery red hair hung a cord around her neck with a single severed ear dangling from it.
"Well earned for making your assailant swallow his pride."
He roared a laugh then and recounted how he found the man who had mounted Akane near her cave. More and more men and women gathered around him to listen. When he finished he was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his leathery, sunbaked cheeks. And everybody standing around laughed with him.
Akane touched the severed ear hanging from her neck, smirking as wickedly as the clanspeople gathered around her. Her rites were at an end.
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The first night in the Imperial Fleet's barracks. Even breathing all around her. Snoring, sighs, grunts, the creaks of bunk beds, hushed conversations. The sound of a fart so loud it made several soldiers cheer and clap, and all that were awake laughed.
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"What happened, father?" Akane's hoarse voice broke the sad silence at the table.
Her father didn't answer. He just sat across from her motionless like a statue. His golden eyes, normally full of warmth and spirit, were frighteningly empty and fixed unseeing to the wooden tabletop. His pale face was so full of anguish it was hard to look at him. Her brother Biran, seated next to their father, was listlessly fingering the battle gloves he had taken off. His dark eyes were red from a lack of sleep and his handsome, lightly tanned face was ashen. Even so Akane found his appearance imposing. Biran had received command over their father's men at arms a few moons earlier and his uniform suited him well. It struck her how much he was starting to look like their father as he matured. He had his mother's dark eyes though, and they could be just as cold when he got angry.
Akane now served in the Royal Fleet as third Ardian. She was stationed at the capital and barely had time to visit her homeland and her family anymore. With her mother's death she had been permitted a short leave though.
Third Ardian wasn't exactly as high a position as her brother now held, but considering that she was hardly a woman grown and that she hadn't served in the Royal Fleet for more than a year, she found she was making pretty good progress climbing the ranks. She even dared to believe that her mother would have been proud of her for once in her life. It hurt that there was no more chance of finding that out for sure.
The rustle of movement shook her father from his thoughts and he looked up shortly at the maidservant that silently took away the untouched plate of food from under his nose. Akane watched the young woman scurry off and it occurred to her once more how eerily silent the whole castle was. All the staff were clad in black and her father's men at arms wore a black band around their left bicep out of respect and to mourn the lady's early death. Even the common folk of Bethar grieved, though most of them had never as much as laid eyes on her mother. The savage tribes woman had ever refused to take on her role as the lady of Bethar and chose to remain in the castle withdrawn from city life. The people of Bethar grieved with her father, whom was well loved by his people, rather than for the tribes woman he had taken for his mate.
"I begged her to stay." her father finally spoke. "She hadn't lived in the South for almost two decades. Why should she mingle in the affairs of the tribes? It wasn't her duty anymore." He shook his head woefully. "You know how your mother was. She wanted to fight for her clan nonetheless. At least we can take comfort in the fact that she died on the battlefield. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way."
Akane swallowed her tears. "Where is she now? Her… body, I mean."
"Her people brought her back to me. Along with the ear of every foe she slaughtered." her father let out a sorrowful laugh. "And it were quite a few ears too. The cord reached past her ankles."
Akane uttered a sound that held the middle between laughing and sobbing.
"I'm sorry that you couldn't attend the sending, poppet, but with the suns and all. Her body was already decaying when they brought her here. It was..."
"It's okay." Akane broke him off gently. "She wouldn't have wanted to see me there skriking my bleeding eyes out over her anyway."
Her father chuckled softly. "Probably not." He heaved a sorrowful sigh. "I know it hasn't always been easy on you. Your mother was a hard woman. Hard to love and hard to feel loved by. You have to remember that the both of you meant more than anything to her. She just… She didn't have the means to show you. She comes from a different world."
"We know." Akane whispered.
She had lived in that world herself for five years. It was no wonder her mother had turned out the way she had. Akane was well on her way to following after her too. Her rites had made her so.
Her father's eyes grew unseeing once more. "Without her…" he didn't finish his words.
He didn't have to. Akane nor Biran spoke but as their eyes met across the table they both knew that their father would not be able to live without his mate and before that year had come to an end, the Lord of Bethar had died of his grief.
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A protruding belly, heavy, round and hard to the touch. Kicking limbs, swirling forms beneath the stretched surface. A persistent ache in her lower back. Feverish skin. Elegant digits touching the strained swell. The proud smile of her King.
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Akane stormed into the King's solar without even considering waiting to be led in. King Vegeta watched perplexed how Akane tore into the bed chamber and dragged the main woman out of his bed by her long black hair.
"You murdered them!" Akane yelled in the taller woman's face as she shoved her into the wall with enough force to instantly break her back.
The main woman screamed in agony as her spine snapped like a twig.
"Stay this madness, wee'un!" the King ordered as he leapt from the bed.
Several guards came rushing into the chamber upon his gesture. The men and her powerful King both were unable to pry Akane away from the main woman.
"She murdered them." Akane repeated in a hiss. "She murdered my boys."
She grasped the main woman's hair more tightly and the gasps of horror behind her were drowned out by her wrathful scream as she rammed her free hand through the woman's throat and tore the head off in blind fury. Blood spattered in all directions and drenched Akane who didn't even register the warm substance that dripped down her face. The beheaded body hit the floor with a thud.
Akane turned around smirking madly with the head still dangling from her hand by its hair. The King and his guards stared at her with eyes that seemed about to roll out of their sockets.
"Good Mother." the King breathed. And then: "Wee'un, what…?"
There were indeed no words to describe the bloody scene.
The insane smile slipped from Akane's face and the severed head fell from limp fingers as she pushed through the guards. She ran back to the concubines wing where the other women were still gathered in the main room. Some were weeping, others talked in hushed voices and every single one of the King's concubines was shocked by the murder of the King's two newborn sons. They all shrieked upon finding Akane standing there covered in blood, gulping for air and scanning the room with unseeing eyes in her bloodlust.
Akane didn't give them a chance to ask questions. She returned to her chamber where she climbed into the small cot. Her sons had still been sleeping so peacefully when she left them there for a visit to the privy. The birthing had maimed her below and she started bleeding again so profusely when she relieved herself that she decided to just sit there and let the stream of blood dry up. It had been the biggest mistake of her life. When she returned, her boys were dead.
Lamenting Akane gathered their stiff little bodies in her arms, curling up with her days old boys safely clutched between the swollen, heavy breasts that would never nurse their hunger again.
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A clawed hand around her throat slowly snuffing the life out of her. A voice, elegant and refined in speech yet freezing the blood in her veins as it spoke to her. Bursting lungs. A vague view of a horned head looming over her. Red eyes. A hellish grin. The side of her face splitting like an overripe melon upon his stroke landing. Blood streaming into her eyes. Then viscid darkness enveloping her.
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"They're just saying it to get to us, Captain." Turles hissed.
Ringo agreed. "We have to get to the hyper sleep chamber before someone finds out we're not there."
"I need to be sure." Akane snarled back hurriedly. "Keep your bleeding eyes out."
With that she slipped into the conrol room of Cold's ship. It was deserted now that it had set down on planet Cold 13 where the overlord held court today. The dried blood from Akane's last purging mission that was caked to her armour, flaked off as she leaned over to engage the star map on the big screen in front of her. She rammed in their home galaxy's coordinates and called the map up on the screen. The feeling of foreboding had her cursing under her breath while she waited for the map to load. When it did, she zoomed in on the solar system where Vegetasei was located, her fingers growing numb when she saw the smatter of spacedust in place of the red orb that used to be her home planet. It was true. They hadn't lied. They hadn't just said it to get to them. Vegetasei was really gone.
Akane's wail of mourning brought her men into the room despite her orders. Ringo was staring at the starmap horror-struck and Turles fell to his knees shouting his bereavement and clawing at his face with his gloved hands. Akane made him stop before he could gouge his own eyes out. She pulled his face against her abdomen and cradled him, her fingers grasping his wild black hair forcefully to keep him there.
"It's all gone." Ringo at her shoulder maundered in complete shock at the full realisation of what the image on the screen showed him. "Everything... gone..."
Turles was sobbing against Akane's abdomen. That her Airman First Class was coming apart so completely made own despair leave her. It made place for fierce resolve.
"We have to get back before someone catches us." Akane said resolutely.
Ringo gave her a benumbed nod, although it seemed that he didn't really register what she was saying.
"What in the bleeding hell for?" Turles muffled voice snarled and he jerked his head out of her embrace to shout up at her: "What's the fucking use, Akane? Everyone's dead!"
Him abandoning her title put forth that he was speaking to her as her friend now, not as the soldier that served under her.
Akane grabbed Turles' cheeks roughly with both hands. "Our Prince is still out there." she hissed furiously. "We will find him and we will have revenge for this."
"You live in a fantasy." Turles came to his feet, his aggression leaving him all at once. "I give up. I'm done. I want out. I can't do this anymore."
Akane slapped him hard in the face, the smack resounding in the still, dark control room. "No, you don't get to give up. This is not done. You are not done. Do you hear me, you big bleeder? Either we fight and take back our freedom or we die trying. That was the deal. We are Saiyajins, we don't give up."
"We don't give up." Ringo echoed, his courage returning at the Captain's words.
Akane gave him a fierce nod.
Turles obeyed when Akane motioned him to follow her out of the control room, all the fight having left him. Even so, he said in a dead voice: "We don't give up."
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Bloodlust ebbing away. Sore limbs. Blood stained gloves. Grimy faces. A campsite on a barren planet. The laughter of her men mingling with her own. Freedom, if only for a short while. A booming voice singing old songs. Bawdy songs. Songs of victory. Songs from the South of what had once been their homeplanet. Tears and smiles.
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The glass top slid aside with a swish. Akane was instantly roused by the sound. Her eyes scanned her surroundings warily when she sat up and stretched her stiff limbs. After long years of service in the WTO, she knew the drill.
"Get your little monkey arse up." Jeice ordered with his foreign accent. "Cold requests an audience with you."
Requests an audience, Akane thought bitterly. As if she had a choice.
"Ah Jeice, still haven't made it to the fairy parade then?" Akane greeted offhandedly.
"No worries. I'll get there soon enough." Jeice replied with a haughty smirk.
"You know, if you stopped enjoying taking it up your red arse from Cold so much, maybe he would consider letting you go." Akane continued loosely.
There was an angry spasm in the red warrior's face. "You keep this up, bitch and I'll let you have it up your arse. Get moving."
Akane ignored the white-haired prick and the thickset Captain with the blonde hair and beard at his shoulder while she got out of the hyper sleep machine at her leisure. At least so it seemed to Cold's henchmen. In reality she was carefully taking in the situation. Her men hadn't been roused and that could only mean one thing. The last sleep was quickly shaken from her by her fear, though nothing of this was showing in her exterior.
Her power was unbridled and she hated it because it gave her an unjust sense of control. It made no difference whether her power was restrained or not, there was no way out of this hell hole. She had tried to break free enough times to have learned that by now. She wasn't giving up though. They would never give up on fighting for their freedom.
Akane went over to the lockers and pulled on her battle suit.
"Don't bother." Jeice said with a nasty laugh. "You won't be needing those."
"Why don't you go fuck yourself, fagbag." Akane spat while pulling on her boots.
She didn't even flinch when the red warrior threw her back into the row of lockers. It amused her to see him seethe, to feel him tremble in fury against her as he tried hard to keep control over his anger. Cold would be very displeased if something were to happen to her. Jeice knew that all too well.
"You think you're untouchable just because you're Cold's favourite whore?" Jeice hissed in her face.
Akane drew her face even closer to his. "I thought you were his favourite, dizzy queen."
"Cold said now, Jeice." the blonde Captain reminded him. "You don't want to waste your chance of becoming a Ginyu Force member on that Saiyajin cunt do you? Let her talk. Cold will take care of her."
"You're right, mate." Jeice threw Akane an ominous grin. "I'll have plenty of time to deal with this little bitch when Cold is done with her. I am going to fuck whatever is left of you, if he leaves anything left to fuck. He has been in a rather bad mood and we all know how carried away he can get when he's in that state. Don't we, monkey?"
Akane shoved him out of her way with a growl and started out of the room. Ridiculing laughter followed her through the hallway as she made the long climb to Cold's quarters.
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The scent of her own blood. Red eyes again. Tiles hard and cold against her torn skin. The elegant voice somewhere above her. A plea for mercy lingering on her lips never to be uttered. A broken neck. The wish for death to come and seize her existence. Viscid darkness once more.
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Akane begged the Sweet Mother to give her strength as the door slid shut behind her. She didn't understand. They had disabled the secret tracking-system on their space pods before they fled. Cold shouldn't have been able to track them down this time. Yet here she was again, trapped inside the ship where she would have to deal with his wrath.
The sadist's throne loomed up before her enormous and threatening and on it sat the massive mass that was King Cold. His chin rested on the palm of his hand while the other loosely held a glass of red wine.
"Akane, sweetling. It's so good to have you back." Cold smiled chivalrously and motioned her to come closer with a huge clawed hand.
Fear churned in the pit of her stomach, leaving her nauseous and unable to move. She should obey if she didn't want to make his anger any worse than it already was. Her feet refused service. There was no sign of the sadistic monster that lay hidden within this urbane man. Akane wasn't fooled, somewhere beneath that immense surface of muscle the beast lurked ever ready to strike.
"Akane." his voice sounded sharper now. "Don't make me get up."
Her panicking mind willed her legs into motion. Quaking Akane made her way over to the throne. She wished desperately for the feel of her own power, even if it wasn't enough to stop this from happening. She wouldn't feel so helpless if she could just grasp her own force and hold onto it until this was over. There was nothing, not even a fragment of her power inside her. Just one big gaping hole where the well of her might normally lay.
Her eyes were fixed on the cursed device that came to rest in Cold's clawed hand. He fingered it adoringly as if stroking a lover and the smile on his hideous face gave away the pleasure he took in having complete control over her.
By the time Akane kneeled before the monster's feet, her fear had grown out to mindless pangs of death.
"How?" Akane managed to utter.
"How is none of your concern. The only thing you need to know is that I am able to locate you everywhere. Whatever dark corners of the universe you flee to, I will have my men hunt you down and bring you back to me." Cold vowed.
Akane heard his annoyed sigh and she readied herself for his assault when his enormous claw closed around the back of her head to pull her to her feet. His red eyes gleamed maliciously.
"What am I to do with you?" Cold pondered wearily. "You keep running off. Maybe another stay in the soldier's quarters will help you remember who you serve."
Akane stiffened in terror, a single tear finding its way down her cheek. "No." she wanted to scream but the word rolled from her lips in a powerless whisper.
"It must be done. I cannot tolerate insubordination. Let this be a lesson." Cold smiled and patted her cheek. "Enjoy your stay."
Akane slipped to the floor when he let go of her head and for the first time in her long years of service in the WTO she pleaded Cold for mercy. Her begging fell to deaf ears.
"Take her away." Cold ordered. "And mind that you keep her alive. I still need her."
Akane tried to fight off the two soldiers that grabbed her by the arms. With her power bound it was useless, her kicks and screams were a mere pester to the laughing men as they dragged her away.
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A world of madness. Hands everywhere on her broken body. Quarrelling voices. Limbs being pulled in different directions leaving her open for too many pilfering fingers. The sounds of her bones snapping. Gnawing teeth and piercing beaks. Raw laughter and howls of excitement drowning out her screams of agony.