Chapter 18(orphan)

Wendy sobbed when she heard the news, sobbed and then immediately ran to the nearest toilet to violently throw up.

Octavia's reaction was little better, lacking vomit but making up for it in tears.

Liling's reaction was to say that she should have mutilated Franklin after all, and the promise that she would not show mercy again.

Everyone had a slightly different reaction to the news, but every reaction was some variation of "negative".

For they now knew that Franklin was a MONSTER!

The family were scattered in different places, all over the ship, when they first heard the news over the vox channels of Franklin's confession to the crime, but the sounds of their collective upset mixed together in echoes throughout the cavernous decks of the ship. Horror and anger and grief and fear and disgust all mixing together into one sound.

The family found itself converging on the Apothecarion, congregating in mass to be let in to see Hyacinth. Liling did not oppose them, instead opening up the doors to her Apothecarion medical chambers, and bidding her twisted medical servants to clear space for them all.

They entered by the hundreds, angry power armour clad Night Lords, weeping black leather clad Sevenson dominatrices, all standing together, drawn to come together as equals around poor afflicted Hyacinth in her medical bed, united in rage and sadness.

Hyacinth was almost completely unrecognisable in her bed, what little of her that wasn't mummified in bandages was horrifically disfigured, burned flesh covered in sprayed on temporary skin grafts. Tubes and wires stuck out of her bandages in various places. She was in a bad way.

Hyacinth was unconscious, which was probably a mercy given Liling's abhorrence of anything so blasphemous as pain relief on the chronically suffering. The family was glad that she was asleep, for any words she squawked would only provoke them to murder Franklin on the spot right now.

The sea of black leather and power armour stood impassively in silence, no one quite knowing what to say. What COULD they say to do justice to this situation?

The family was still not entirely sure HOW Franklin was manifesting these strange terrible powers, how didn't matter so much as WHAT he was doing with them!

The Sevenson family might quite justifiably be called violent and deeply dysfunctional, they had a long history of shooting each other, stabbing each other, fighting each other, and a thousand other acts of psychotic violence. They tortured each other as their deepest way of showing affection...

But they still had SOME standards!

Shooting someone in anger during an argument, or accidentally causing horrific injuries during sex, or some other grievous bodily harm caused on each other, all was forgivable so long as it could be JUSTIFIED, either as accident or the heat of the moment in an altercation.

But not unprovoked HATE CRIMES against severely disabled women who had just been quietly minding their own business at the time, not burning a severely disabled mutant family member alive simply for BEING a severely disabled mutant! That sort of thing was too fucked up even for the Sevenson family!

Hyacinth had not even spoken to that Clementine woman during the encounter before the attack, she hadn't interacted in any way with Franklin or any others from the orphanage. She had been quietly and peacefully doing her job performing an inoffensive psychic scan of the home, not harming or bothering anyone, yet SHE was the one who was singled out to be BURNED ALIVE!

It was inexcusable!

Out of all the Sevensons, Hyacinth was just so innocent and inoffensive that she should have been targeted LAST if this was motivated by righteous "justice"!

Hyacinth could barely talk, could only walk with an awkward gait, heck she had such highly uncomfortable chronic urinary tract infections from her unfortunate internal "plumbing" that she couldn't even stand to have sex! (And for a Slaanesh worshipper this was a BIG deal!)

And just because Hyacinth wore the same black leather dominatrix outfits as all the other women didn't mean she could actually USE a whip, she merely dressed in the fashion her culture found fashionable. Her coordination was actually so bad that she inevitably ALWAYS ended up just accidentally whipping herself in the face, on the very rare occasions that she actually FOUND a willing man to ask her out on a torture date!

Hyacinth did genuinely desire a romantic emotional connection with a man, but her personal attempts at establishing a love life had been a series of discouragements and disappointments, she just couldn't perform sexually, and couldn't stand penetration in her single lower hole. For a Slaanesh worshipping boyfriend, (or realistically speaking pretty much ANY boyfriend for that matter), this combination of lack of sexual performance and severe disability was a deal breaker.

The poor little thing was just quiet, shy, lonely, mostly unhappy, hideously handicapped, and sick so often that many days she just stayed cuddling her collection of soft plush toys in bed all day, as she endured her endless urinary tract infections curtesy of having to piss and shit with the same hole!

Hyacinth had never hurt anyone who didn't want to be hurt by her, (and mostly failed in these few attempts at consensual sadism anyway), had never really "done" anything particularly wicked or outrageous, she was just a sickly little mostly bedridden thing that hadn't deserved to be burned alive like this!

Franklin's act, quite simply, was about as completely senseless and psychotic as if someone had gone into that ancient, half forgotten legend about the miser named Scrooge, and grabbed hold of that Tiny Tim, crutches and all, and burned him alive for being a cripple!

It really was a level of fucked up that could only be called the most pure of evil, to do something so horrific to someone ONLY for the simple fact of being born with birth defects! It was just a level of sick that made even these chaos space marines take issue!

All of the previous bickering in the family was now forgotten in the face of this hate crime. Wendy and Octavia had dropped their crossness with Luke for the possessed child incident, and stood to either side of their shared de facto lover Luke, bodies pressed to his sides in reconciliation. Even Liling and Augusta had seemingly made up now, with the tiny Liling sitting over Augusta's pink dress clad massive shoulders to see over the crowd, hugging his head for balance.

What ever other fighting and spats had been going on before, all was simply forgotten now, palling to triviality in comparison to this monstrous hate crime...

The family even felt dirty almost, contaminated by this evil ungrateful THING that they had lost many lives to rescue! Treasured loved ones had DIED to rescue Franklin, brothers and sons and fathers had DIED to rescue this despicable CREATURE!

The mere regret of all they had wasted on this THING was galling, twelve years of working so HARD to rescue him from a horrifying fate! The energies and resources they had mobilised, the sacrifices they had made, AND ALL FOR WHAT!

They had even wasted a priceless gene seed on him! Those organs were already implanted and established, they wouldn't take to another host NOW! They couldn't even get the gene seed organs back now!

Oh no, they would GET their debt repaid from this little scumbag, OH YES, mark the words well, Franklin would PAY back every last bit he had cost them!

The family had tried being nice before, letting him keep his nuns unharmed, letting him have some autonomy, treating him like beloved FAMILY...

Well Franklin would get that NO LONGER!

Franklin was in the DEBT of the NIGHT LORDS, the most terrifying beings you could EVER owe an outstanding enormous debt to, and NOW Franklin had lost the ONLY thing that might have let his debt be forgiven, he had lost their familial GOODWILL!

Franklin had disowned them first, cut off their legs, spat hate at them, destroyed their stuff and terrorised their homes. The family had BARELY tolerated this, but tolerate it they HAD.

But if he thought that they would TOLERATE him committing psychopathic HATE CRIMES on their severely disabled relatives, then he was out of his mind!

The tolerance was SO fucking GONE!

They would bring this kid screaming to his knees, they would make him fucking BEG them to give him back what he had just slapped away! They were going to HURT him, oh Slaanesh HOW they were going to HURT him!

He was about to learn the true meaning of horror, he was not going to be shown a SHRED of mercy until THEY decided that he was sorry enough.

Franklin liked to demand that they all repent, he seemed to be very in favour of repentance. This was good, because HE was about to repent to the Night Lords like he had never repented before in his life!

The family began speaking among themselves in low angry voices, words of vengeance, words of terrible wrath. They needed to HURT him, but his masochism made conventional pain difficult...

So how to hurt him?, how to hurt him?...

Ah of course!

His one great weakness!

His nuns...

Franklin might be immune to pain, but the family was willing to bet that the nuns were NOT!

Those nuns would SCREAM!

And they would make Franklin watch...

***...