AN: It's Caeda, so you know the drill. Beware of graphic violence ahead.

Bonus II: Caeda – Alternate Ending

"You bitch! DON'T TOUCH HIM!"

Caeda's demented shriek was more than enough to get Kiran reeling back from instinctive terror, to say nothing of the sight of her sending Marisa's sword flying out of her hands. Sharena's hands were the only thing that kept him steady, though the way she tightened her grip indicated that she was starting to panic every bit as much as he was. With her primary opponent disarmed and nobody else in any apt state to challenge her, it looked like Caeda was about to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

But then he took in the whole sight before him rather than just Caeda and realized it was always darkest just before the dawn. Rising up behind her was Hector, his good hand clenched into a fist that was being wound up into a haymaker aimed straight at Caeda's head. With his monstrous strength and plate mail gauntlets combined, that strike was guaranteed to knock his tormentor out cold, if it didn't kill her outright.

Unfortunately, he forgot the most important lesson of his captivity: no matter what else she might've been occupied with, Caeda was always keeping an eye on him. This moment proved to be no exception, and her narrowed eyes widened ever so slightly when she realized he was directing his attention to something behind her. Her stance, which had been prepared to deliver a lethal stab through Marisa's unarmored chest, was shifted to allow for a pivot and her sword was angled for a swing instead. With years of combat experience guiding her steps, she ducked low to avoid Hector's strike.

As he lunged forward, his hefty armor now proved to be a detriment, for it produced too much momentum for him to stop. He was completely exposed, and Caeda was more than happy to take advantage of that. With a feral growl rumbling from behind her clenched teeth, she spun around and brought her blade swinging across the Ostian's eyes. Hector screamed and pressed his hands against his face as a sickle of scarlet blood followed the arc of her swing before splattering against the ground. Her blade had struck deeper the longer it was in contact with his face, so while his left eye had been cleaved out entirely and could be seen sliding along the floor, his right still dangled from its socket by a thin strand of nerves.

While Hector flailed in blind agony, Marisa tried to take advantage of the brief distraction his attempt had afforded and lunged towards her lost weapon. But while Hector's momentum had worked against him, Caeda's now enabled her to come full circle and leap after the pinkette without delay. She reached out with a slash that cleaved into Marisa's upper thigh, interrupting her dash and sending her crashing to the ground well out of the reach of her sword.

In the span of a few seconds, Caeda had gone from being one blow away from defeat to having absolute control over the situation. Kiran began to succumb to despair, so much so that he barely heard Sharena apologize, "Sorry, Kiran!" He was promptly dumped on the floor so Sharena could retrieve her lance and shield.

Regrettably for her, the graceless way she ditched his dead weight caught Caeda's eye and brought yet more hatred up from the depths of her blackened heart. "How dare you treat him that way?!" After taking a moment to stab through Marisa's good leg and keep her from moving, Caeda charged forward and roared, "YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!"

She brought her fury to bear on Sharena just before the Askran princess had fully readied her guard. The result being that, rather than a sturdy defense for Caeda to waste energy slamming into, Sharena was immediately reduced to a frantic backfoot that just barely kept her head on her shoulder. In the midst of her frenzied assault, Marisa, who was still trying to drag herself over to her sword atop a river of her own blood, snapped at the last member of their company, "Gods damn you, Marth, do something!" But the Altean prince had gone completely catatonic. Stiff as a board, he stared unblinking at the carnage his fiancé had wrought. Given his unresponsive stupor, the breaths he still took were almost certainly autonomic instead of conscious.

A few seconds later, his passivity had disastrous consequences.

Sharena, sensing that her fragile defense wouldn't last much longer, tried to take the initiative and gave a desperate thrust of her lance. But her attack was too unsteady and telegraphed – Caeda not only side-stepped the stab, but also gripped the shaft at the height of its extension. Now that Sharena was completely vulnerable, Caeda did to her what she'd done to Sue and Kiran earlier: she hurled her sword directly into the princess' wrist. With an excruciated scream, Sharena lost hold over her spear, enabling Caeda to snatch it from her half-severed hand. The deranged madwoman promptly shoved her foe into the ground, loomed over her, and jammed the tip of the stolen lance through her left shoulder and into the stones beneath her, pinning her against the floor.

"I'll deal with you in a second." She growled and turned back around to finish off the other Heroes she'd left bloody and broken. Marisa, despite her efforts, was still nowhere near her wayward blade, though it wasn't like she'd be able to use it in any meaningful way in her state. When she saw Caeda begin stalking towards her, she realized the inevitable was upon her. She set her teeth in a defiant grimace and rolled onto her back so that she was facing her death head on.

"Do your worst, traitor."

"Oh, don't you worry." Caeda spat, clenching and unclenching her free hand as the gap between them shortened. "I intend to!"

Once she was towering over her victim, Caeda started with a wide swing at Marisa's chest. The mercenary instinctively raised a hand to block the attack, which served only to sever three of her fingers. In the moment it took for her to cry out in pain, Caeda reached down and turned her back onto her belly. Once she had a full view of Marisa's back, she gripped her ponytail and pulled it back to lift her upper half off the ground. The second after doing so, Caeda drove her sword into Marisa's abdomen and wrenched it across the full breadth of her stomach.

"NO!" Sharena cried as she tried in vain to pull her own weapon from her body. "Marisa!"

"Sharena, what's happening?!" Hector called out, having hunched down in a single spot and spent the last couple minutes frantically trying to get control over the agony brought by his injury.

Thanks to the arch her spine had been bent into, the wound split open like a yawning mouth. In turn, Marisa's intestines spilled out into a grisly pile on the ground. To expediate the process, Caeda pushed her boot into the swordswoman's back, which caused her lacerated stomach to fall out as well and begin coating the organ heap in digestive acid. Blood poured out from Marisa's lips just as it did from her insides, but she managed to maintain her defiance in spite of the excruciating agony she must've been in. With her last ounce of strength, she forced her head around to spit a glob of blood into Caeda's face.

The pegasus knight stood there, flabbergasted, for barely a second before screaming and pulling her sword up to slice Marisa's throat. Because of the tension on her ponytail, the laceration immediately widened to the point that her head was nearly severed altogether. Caeda's rage at Marisa's spite, however, ultimately served the latter more than it did the former, for it expedited her death and brought her suffering to a swifter end. Realizing that there was no more pain to be extracted from her first victim, Caeda frustratedly growled and threw her carcass into the bundle of ropey gore beneath her.

It was one down and three to go. She turned to Hector, who was swiveling his head back and forth in a fruitless attempt to get a grasp on the situation. "Hector, run!" Sharena implored him. "Get out of here and get help! GO!" With Marth still out of it, that was the best (and only) chance they had, but Kiran knew any hope the directive might've brought was hollow. Hector had no way of knowing where the exit was, and even if he did, Caeda wasn't about to let him get away.

Case in point, she wasted no time charging him with her sword extended. Hector's hearing still worked, so he instantly tensed up upon hearing her footsteps racing towards him, but his lack of vision meant he didn't have the precision to mount any meaningful defense. All he could manage was an intuitive raising of his arms to block whatever attack was coming his way, but it was an exercise in futility. The instant she was close enough, she thrust her blade at Hector's mangled face. By sheer luck, one hand managed to place itself in the path of her attack, but the underside of his gauntlets had thinner armor and was much easier to penetrate.

Caeda's sword pushed through Hector's hand and continued on its initial trajectory despite a loss of speed. Upon reaching his exposed skin, she plunged into his skull at the same gash she'd made earlier. Hector's attempt to protect himself had failed to save his vitals, but it had slowed her down enough keep the strike from being instantly lethal. Instead of impaling the entirety of his head, her blade was lodged on the outermost edge of his brain. The shock of the wound was too much even for Hector's pain tolerance, and he was reduced to impotent gurgling and gasping.

To finish him off, she twisted the handle of her sword at a right angle, splitting his skull open like an egg. Shards of bone, accompanied by a splash of grey matter, flew out of his head. Hector's sputtering was silenced and he slumped down to his knees, dead. Caeda wrenched her blade free and spun around to direct her fury back to Sharena. Various patterns of blood had splattered across her face, creating the illusion of crimson tears from her eyes and ruby lipstick on her mouth. Her teeth bared, she shambled across the room towards the Hero unlucky enough to have pushed all of her buttons.

Said Hero, having seen the grisly fates of her comrades and recognizing that there was no way out for her, began quietly weeping in frightened anticipation of what was to come. Her tears carried a guilty edge too, for she turned to Kiran and whimpered, "Kiran…I'm so sorry."

"SHUT UP!" Caeda screeched and immediately broke into a sprint. Within a couple of seconds, she was hunched over Sharena and had her sword angled over her chest while her free hand gripped her throat. "You looked at him, you talked to him, you even grabbed him…and then you threw him away like trash!" Surprisingly, she set her sword down and set about ripping off the princess' armor. "After all you've done, I'll make you beg for death before I'm finished!" Once her armor was in splintered pieces around them, Caeda tore off her blue undershirt, sending buttons flying and leaving her bare chest exposed.

"Cae…da…" Sharena choked out from her constricted throat. Now that her skin was bereft of any protection, Caeda picked her sword back up and rested the tip on Sharena's collarbone. Kiran expected her to bury it up to the hilt in her flesh, but she only penetrated about half an inch. Once she had, she dragged it down the length of the Askran's ribcage, creating an open laceration that, despite the dangerous amount of blood pouring from it, was nowhere near as brutal as what else she'd just dealt out.

That quickly changed, however. To their surprise, Caeda dropped her sword and tore off her blood-soaked gloves, revealing her pristine hands. Said pristine quality was promptly abandoned when she dove her hands into the wound, gripped the two folds of skin and pulled them apart. Since her neck was no longer being held in a vice, Sharena was free to scream her lungs out as she was flayed alive. Her chest was torn open like a pair of curtains, exposing her ribcage and all the vital organs it guarded.

Caeda wasted no time trying to break through the bone barrier before her. Like a feral animal, she clawed and scratched and tugged and pushed until something gave in – in this case, that was one of Sharena's right ribs splintering into her lung. Though it didn't kill her, the puncture reduced her shrill screams to a series of frantic, blood-choked gasps. From his position, Kiran could barely see blood bubbling up in her mouth before it poured out from between her lips. Meanwhile, Caeda seized on the window of vulnerability and tore apart the rest of the right half of the ribcage.

Now, at last, her rapidly beating heart was exposed. Caeda reached a hand through the cavity she'd formed to clamp down on the cardiac core of Sharena's being. While it desperately (and pointlessly) tried to keep pumping blood, Caeda leaned into her hated adversary's face and hissed, "Does that hurt, you bitch?! I know that it does – because that's how I feel every time I see one of you curs try to take what's mine!" She brought her other hand up to Sharena's face and dug her nails into her skull. "Now beg! Plead for mercy you won't get! Let me hear you cry so I can shut you up once and for all! Do it!" Her thumb slipped and punched through the right eye. "DO IT!"

But Caeda would never get what she wanted. Sharena had not reacted to the loss of one of her eyes. Nor was she gasping for breath to fill her blood-filled lungs any longer. She did nothing but lay there lifelessly because Caeda had unwittingly applied too much pressure and burst her heart in her clenched hand. It wasn't possible to know when exactly that happened, but in all likelihood, the better part of her rant had been directed at a carcass that couldn't hear her.

Yet, for how impassioned her demands had been, Caeda didn't seem to be very broken up about not seeing them fulfilled. She hunched over Sharena's flayed corpse, strands of torn muscle and organ wedged under her fingernails. With the grisly death of Askr's princess, there was only one last obstacle standing in her way. It didn't matter that said obstacle hadn't moved a muscle since he arrived and was gaping like a fish at the bloodbath before him – she still lifted her head to glare at him, her scarlet lips curled back into a vicious snarl. With almost mechanical stiffness, she climbed back to her feet, her sword abandoned on the ground beside her.

As Kiran watched in stunned horror, unable to get up from the ground himself or so much as throw something at Caeda, she began stalking towards her final victim, who himself was still unable to comprehend what he'd just witnessed. "C-Caeda…" He managed to stammer out while she made her approach, his words flat and distant. He didn't even have the strength of mind to draw Falchion when she was practically right on top of him. All Marth managed to do was back up slightly until he was pressed against the wall.

Though she was now within striking distance, Caeda had yet to actually make a move. Kiran couldn't tell what her face looked like, but whatever Marth saw there drew a few teardrops from his eyes. "Caeda, please…!" He whispered, apparently with some small understanding of just what he was speaking to at last. "Don't do this! It's me! It's Marth! I love you!"

Not a second later, her hands snapped forward to clamp around his throat. With his neck in her vice-like grip, she sent him crashing to the ground. "Shut up!" She growled as she straddled his torso and drove her nails through his skin. "You say you love me?" She lifted his head and slammed it into the stone floor. "Then die! All you've ever done is get in the way!" She smashed his head against the ground again, adding to the crimson pool that her first attack caused. "I love Kiran now! He's mine! MINE! Nobody else can have him, and you can't have me!" She tore out a chunk of her fiancé's trachea as she tried to shatter his skull a third time. "So just die already! I hate you! I hate everyone else in the Order! I'll kill everyone in the Order!"

One hand began wildly trying to rip his throat out while the other gripped his hair to keep pounding him into the masonry.

"STARTING!"

Her repeated pummeling caused a trickle of grey matter to start leaking from the cavity in the back of Marth's head.

"WITH!"

His shredded neck had lost so much blood that the cardinal tide began to lighten up, as there simply wasn't enough left for his heart to pump into that area.

"YOU!"

She threw his head into the floor one last time, sending a spray of blood and brain in all directions. She sat there huffing as gore dripped from her arms and chin while Kiran tried to come to terms with the nightmarish reality that was staring him in the face. Several moments passed before Caeda's panting gave way to a quiet giggle. Against his better judgement, Kiran craned his neck up to get a glimpse of her. He found her looking directly at him, her rage replaced with jubilation.

"Look, Kiran!" She exclaimed between her giggles. "I did it! They said I didn't love you, but I proved them wrong! I killed them all, just for you!" She staggered to her feet, her balance upset by her ceaseless gentle laughter. It could almost have been a cute sight, were she not soaked head to toe in blood and surrounded by mangled corpses. She began ambling towards him and Kiran, who couldn't crawl without hands nor flee with a twisted foot, had no choice but to wait for her to close the distance.

Once she did, she kneeled atop him in an identical pose to how she'd laid above Marth. Like then, her hands went for his head and neck, but to caress rather than destroy them. "I told you I'd never let anyone take you away from me…" She reminded him before lunging forward to claim his lips. She didn't hold back as she once had – the slaughter seemed to have emboldened Caeda to the point that she was willing to immediately shove her tongue into his mouth. She moaned against his lips and grinded her crotch against his leg, apparently oblivious to the coppery flavor caused by the blood soaking her lips.

Kiran, by contrast, could taste nothing but the blood of his would-be saviors. Against all the odds, Caeda had managed to triumph once again. If she could win even in the face of such a superior force, he couldn't deny the truth any longer: there was no hope for him. Nothing would ever see him freed from her grasp, and anyone who tried would be rewarded with nothing but an excruciating death for their trouble. With his body maimed and his spirit finally broken, there was nothing more he could do but cry. He cried for himself, for the friends who'd fallen trying to save him, and for the other Heroes who would surely die before Caeda escaped Zenith with him in tow. He even cried for Caeda's father, whom he had no doubt would be the victim of patricide for reasons he could never understand.

He was surprised to see Caeda join in his weeping when a tear landed on his cheek. She pulled back at last, the ecstatic smile on her face making it clear that her tears weren't sorrowful like his were. "You know, I always thought being so happy that you cried was just a figure of speech, but here we are!" His crying devolved into more of a bawling, which she took as a sign of encouragement. "I'm overjoyed too, sweetheart! Now we know for sure that our love is strong enough to overcome anything!" She closed her eyes and wore the happiest, most elated expression he'd ever seen in his life, completely oblivious to how much it horrified him to see that juxtaposed against all the evidence of her brutality staining her skin.

"I love you so much, Kiran! I'm so lucky we get to spend the rest of our lives together!"

Just a little quickie for you before I get totally swamped by school. I watched American Psycho recently, and it put me in the mood for some brutal ultraviolence and Naga did nothing to scratch that itch. Not a whole lot here besides gratuitous blood and gore, but I wanted to demonstrate that bonus chapters can also entail alternate endings in addition to epilogues. I do have a few scattered ideas for what would happen after this, so maybe someday I'll return to this timeline in greater detail. After all, most of you liked Caeda's Wild Ride, right?

Please leave comments, good or bad, since your feedback is how I learn. Thank you for reading.