Seven Deadly Sins: Envy
Mirror, mirror on the wall, how could you be so cruel to me, after all the attention I've languished on you?
I was always the prettiest. Daddy said so. He said I was the loveliest girl in the world. From my childhood when he would always sing to me that mocking bird rhyme, to adulthood when he would digitize those pictures and put them on his official internet site. I was always the pretty girl. I was always to be the pretty girl.
Oh mirror, how could you be so cruel?
I thought nothing could rival my beauty. Not when I cut my hair so I could fight better. Not when my face was damaged when I fought, although I minimized that risk whenever I could. And Gohan always wondered why I kept wearing a helmet when he had long forsaken it for his sunglasses and bandanna. I was always the most beautiful girl, even when I was pregnant with her.
Her. That thief who calls herself my daughter. It all changed when she came along. It was slow, but I saw it. My radiance began to fade, and as she grew it began to show up on her. She might be a tomboy, but males are beginning to see it. Take her out of her shirt and pants, stick a dress on her, throw on some makeup, and she could put supermodels to shame.
Why, mirror, why? What crime did I commit against you?
You, sitting there so silent and smug! You're mocking me! You're doing it by showing me that my raidiance is slowly being robbed from me! DAMN YOU! I WON'T TAKE IT! I'LL DESTROY YOU!
…………….Pain. It brings many things, but it has brought something to me: clarity. I see now, just as I see the mirror shards on the floor and the blood running from my knuckles. She's not my daughter. She's a parasite that has infected me and is stealing my beauty! She stole some of my flesh and used my body to grow into her own form, doing it in a guise of the product of Gohan's and my love! And even apart from me she is slowly taking my magnificence!
I can't allow this. Thank you mirror. Even in your destruction you provided me with an answer.
I must destroy her.
She is slowly ripping my beauty from me. I have to rip it back!
I will be the loveliest again.
"Hello?" Pan said to the air as she walked into her house. "Mom? Dad? Is anyone home? Hello? Guess not…"
Pan slowly walked down the hallway into the kitchen, shrugging off her jacket and reaching into the fridge for an apple. She's been in the house alone before, but something was off this time. It was if the emptiness this time was trying to hide something, something wrong.
Pan slowly took a bite of the apple, contemplating the stillness. Chewing the apple, she left the kitchen and started heading up the stairs, contemplating the silence and the wrong feeling she was getting from it.
Then she shook her head. She was being silly, and paranoid at that. There was nothing wrong. Maybe her grandfather had hit her too hard when they had been sparring.
Those thoughts lasted a few seconds until she opened the door to her room and saw her mother sitting on the chair in the middle of the room. Pan stopped dead, her arm, which had been raising to take another bite out of the apple, slowly lowering back to her side.
"Mom, is that you?"
Videl didn't answer. Instead, she sat there, unmoving, looking at her daughter.
"Mom…what's wrong? Why are you here? What's wrong?" Pan said, unease stirring in her again.
Then Videl spoke, and as she did she leaned forward and Pan could finally see her eyes clearly. Eyes that were blazing with hate.
"YOU!"
And then Videl was leaping out the chair towards Pan. Pan stood, rooted on the spot in surprise. The apple, the lone bite taken from it, fell from her fingers, landing on the soft white carpet under her feet, as Videl drew her arm from behind her. Light glinted on the giant knife in her hand.
"GIVE ME MY BEAUTY BACK!"
Pan's scream was abruptly cut off, and then red gushed downward, staining the carpet and drenching the apple's red skin with a far deeper crimson red.
"I'm home! Anyone here?" Gohan said as he came in the door. Setting down his briefcase, he looked around to see if anyone was coming to greet him, and was slightly disappointed when no one did. He missed the days when he had been the center of Pan's life and every day he walked in the door had brought cries of "Daddy Daddy Daddy!". But every little girl had to grow up sometime.
"Is anyone here? Hello?" Gohan said, as he climbed up the stairs so he could take some papers out of his briefcase and leave them next to his bed to look at later.
But as he passed by Pan's door, he heard a slight noise. That wasn't enough to disturb him, but the noise struck him as odd, and coming from his daughter's room, that gave him pause.
"Pan?" Gohan said, knocking on the door, and watched as the door, which had been open, ever so slightly, reacted to the pressure Gohan had put on it and slowly swung open.
Gohan looked into the room in confusion. The room was dimly lit, so all Gohan could make out in the room was the strange moving shape on the floor.
"Pan?" Gohan said, reaching over and flicking the light switch next to the door.
The first thing Gohan saw was all the blood. It seemed to be everywhere, all over the floor, turning Pan's beautiful room into an abbatoir.
The next thing Gohan saw was his daughter's legs and another female's back, obscuring his few from the top of his daughter. As Gohan's eyes widened in shock, the female figure, which had been rocking back and forth while the arms moved as if they were finishing something when he had first seen it, slowly turned around.
"Husband." Videl crooned, and Gohan's briefcase fell from fingers frozen with shock as Videl held up Pan's face, sliced from her skull by the bloody butcher knife Videl held in her other hand. Pan's head, horribly mutilated, fell from Videl's lap and continued to leak blood onto the floor.
"She tried to steal my beauty, but I took it back." Videl said, holding up the mask of bloody skin that had once been Pan's face, as Gohan's own face filled with horror. "Now it's mine again. Mine mine mine mine mine mine mineminemineminemineminemine…"
"IIIIIIIIIIIYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Videl screamed as she sat up in her bed. Gohan's eyes jerked open at the shrill pieceing cry of terror and regret, and he sat up, nearly leaping out of bed in the process.
"Videl…Videl? What's wrong?" Gohan said, immediately turning to his hysterical wife. Before he could say anything else though, his wife collapsed into his arms, weeping with terror.
"Oh Gohan…dream…terrible dream…no, I'm not that vain…I could never be so jealous…not of my own…" Videl managed to sob out, before she began to babble to herself, which collasped in more cries of terror. Dread flashed back to Gohan as he remembered the nightmare he had had earlier, how deeply it had scared him.
"Shhhhhhhhh…it's ok…it was a dream…dreams can't hurt you…"Gohan said, even though he was sure that if a polygraph had been hooked up to him it would have started ringing off the hook. "It was just a nightmare…I'm here now…"
Then the door swung open, and Pan practically tumbled into the room, so great was her hurry to get in.
"What happened? Mom! Mom, what's wrong? Dad, what's going on? MOM!" Pan said, as Videl took one look at her daughter and began crying again. Neither Gohan nor Pan could know of what was going on in Videl's mind, of the memories that were flooding back of beauty contests and pageants, and of memories of a mindset that she would win, by any means necessary.
"Pan…oh…I'm sorry…I would never…never…!" Videl sobbed, and then her words were again swallowed by sobs.
"Mom? Oh Mom…" Pan said, heading over to the bed and trying to comfort her mother. "What happened, Dad?"
"She had a nightmare, sweetie. I'm sure she'll elaborate when she's calmed down…" Gohan said, rocking his wife. But inside his mind, his thoughts were furiously racing.
No normal nightmare could cause such a reaction…was it like the one I had earlier, one that seemed to strike me with one of my weaknesses, and do so with a picture so vivid it seemed real? But if that is so…how?
The figure chuckled. He had gotten his desired reaction. The woman known as Videl would definitely need some therapy later in life…if she had a later in life.
"Well, all fun must come to an end. Onward ho." The figure chuckled, reaching down. In that second, a gleam of moonlight pierced the dark clouds that shrouded the night sky where the figure was, flowed through a window, and reflected off the metal fingers the figure used to push the combinations of buttons that would take him to his next target.
Or so he thought.
"What? Blast, must have pushed the wrong button…" the figure cursed, his good mood dimming slightly. He did not like it when he made mistakes, even the slightest ones. After how far he had ascended from the human race he was born into, he should not still be able to make mistakes like them. It was a shining example of how wretched the human race was to him.
Then there was a slight beeping from the figure's panel. The figure turned eyes glittering with cruelty on it.
"What's this? My accidental scan has found something on the Videl woman…what could it be to warrant my attention…?"
The figure tapped a few more keys, and across the hologram a few readings scrolled before some words came up above Videl. The figure read them and grinned suddenly, a grin full of delighted malice.
"Well well well, I believe I have found one of my Omega Triggers! Why didn't I think of scanning these women before…I could kill two birds with one stone…I will have to look into this development." The figure said, looking at Videl with interest. "Well, young lady, it appears your pathetic and meaningless existence will find a great cause! You should be honoured…but of course you won't be. But that means little to me."
The figure smirked evily again and tapped a few more keys.
"One Omega Trigger found…I did so want for this to involve the Failure in this somehow, but this is simply too convient to pass up. But seeing how close the Failure got to these people…it might just have the desired effect…I will seach for the other needed Omega Trigger later. For now, I shall continue my fun…who shall be next?"
The figure tapped a few more keys, and his cameras snapped onto another sleeping person. The figure grinned evily again.
"Perfect."
The heavens will cry…the stars will weep…and the earth will bleed anew…
ATROCITIES