Saturday, May 21, 2022, The Demon Realm

As Masha floored the Dodge Dart and sped through the streets of Bonesborough, that new inhumane expression that had, within the past few hours become Mar'ya, stared coldly out the windshield as the Italian engine begged for mercy.

"Do you always drive a car like this?" Darius asked, grabbing onto the interior handles of the car.

"I rarely drive," Mar'ya said, her thick Russian accent now long-gone.

"Great," Darius said as the human girl drove into heavy oncoming traffic, "Hey, that's the wrong way!"

"We're late," Mar'ya deadpanned.

"I'd rather be late than dead!"

Mar'ya said nothing as she continued flooring the sedan, causing huge amounts of mayhem in the process before cutting onto the sidewalks.

And to think her morning had started out like any other.

That morning

Mar'ya was at the Bonesborough Coffee Shop on a date with a witch that Eda, Lilith, Luz, and Sofia had found about a week prior.

"So, you are aspire to be in Belos's Coven?" she said, English clearly not being her first language, as she pushed a dark strand of hair back.

"Yeah, but I don't think I'll go through with it," Lucian said, chuckling, "I still can't get over your accent, Masha."

"I live formal years in Sovetskaya Soyuza," Mar'ya said, adjusting her glasses, "What is so important that we have to meet at this café?"

"I'm gonna be honest with you, Masha, and please don't leave me, but I have a spell to deliver to that building," Lucian said, pointing to the building and smiling briefly, "We had a falling out a few weeks ago, and he doesn't wanna see me anymore. I send a ten in there with no people skills, everything's fine."

"I will call," Mar'ya said, standing up and starting to head off.

"Wait, the payment is a thousand snails, I'll give it all to you if you do it," Lucian said, tucking a wad of bills into Mar'ya's bra, "Five hundred up front, the other five hundred when you finish."

"Thousand for spell? What in hell does it even do?"

"I… really don't know."

"I sorry, but no deal-" Mar'ya said as Lucian bound the spell to her, «You sick, fucking bastard!» she shouted in Russian.

"Look, just go in there and ask for Mr Fang," Lucian said, "You deliver the spell, he sends you on your way, you're in and out in ten minutes, tops. We can even see the reception from right here, you'll be fine."

"You are in my debt for this," Mar'ya said sternly, getting up and walking into the building, adjusting her bra.

The inside of the building was extravagant, almost like the Soviet Embassy in Delmarva, but with more witch artifacts and less communism, of course.

The floors were marble, the front was glass. Ultimately, it looked like she was stepping onto a different country's soil and they were trying to entice her to defect for the sake of wealth and prosperity.

"Hello, miss?" the demon behind the counter said with an accent when Mar'ya approached.

"I am here for Mr Fang."

"One moment," he said, calling someone on the phone behind the desk.

"Yes, there's a girl here for you… Of course," the demon said, looking back at Mar'ya, "Who should I say is calling?"

"Masha Buryakova," she said, looking over to see that red-haired, green-eyed witch peeping in the window, waving when she made eye contact with him.

"She says her name is 'Masha Buryakova'… Yes, sir… Yes, sir… I will, thank you," he said, hanging up the phone and looking back to Mar'ya, "Mr Fang is on his way. Stay right here."

"I am going to go sit down," Mar'ya said, pointing to the chair and adjusting her glasses.

"Mr Fang said you need to stay right here," he said, "It's better if you don't go over there."

«Lovely,» she muttered in Russian as the receptionist went back to his work.

A few moments later, a fair-skinned witch in a suit walked into the lobby, two bodyguards with him, and headed for Mar'ya.

"What do you want?" she said, meeting him halfway to the hallway, "I am very busy today."

"Miss, if you'd come with me. Guards, the interloper outside, if you will."

As if Lucian heard Mr Fang, he turned and bolted as fast as he could away from the building when the first bodyguard flinched.

The walk up to the office wasn't anything out of the ordinary for Mar'ya, sans the two well-built men acting as her escort.

"Building aesthetics is certainly better than my house."

"You can't run a business with quality products from a hole in the wall."

"Please loosen grip on upper arm. Blood circulation is being severed."

"I can't have the risk of you running off with a powerful spell chained to you."

"Why would I want spell?" Mar'ya asked, "I am human, not witch."

"I think it's better if it stays with me."

Eventually, they made it to his office where Mr Fang sat Mar'ya down in his chair before handing her a sheet of paper with some numbers written on it.

285

"Shields!" Mr Fang said, grabbing a weapon and standing outside of the door as the bodyguards put shields in front of themselves, "That's the code to unlock it."

«How in the fuck did my day go from scones for breakfast to this?» Mar'ya said in Russian, shaking her head.

"Open the scroll!"

Mar'ya quickly did as she was instructed.

"It is spell in faint handwriting," Mar'ya said, glancing between the paper and Mr Fang, "Why do you not trust Lucian?"

"How would you like a job?" Mr Fang said, shaking his head and walking back into the room.

Mar'ya turned her focus solely to Mr Fang, "Why would I take job offer from you?"

Mr Fang smiled and snapped his fingers, prompting one of his guards to knock Mar'ya out with a lead pipe.

Meanwhile, Lucian was speeding back to the owl house.

"Oh thank Titan!" he said, slamming on the brakes when he made it.

Upon first glance, it was painfully obvious that Mar'ya had taken over the garage for her own uses, if the crap in the yard was anything to go by.

"Eda- Edalyn! Sofia! Luz!" Lucian said, getting out of the car and running to the house, "It's Masha!"

Inside, Lillith, Luz, Amity, Willow, Gus, Eda, King, and Sofia were finishing breakfast in the living room.

"Wai-wha-?" Sofia said, slamming down her drink as the witch ran inside, "What happened?"

"They- they just took her!" Lucian said in a panic.

"Who took Masha?" Edalyn said.

"These guys, they said they could get me in good, but me and Mr Fang had a falling out, so I got Mar'ya to deliver a spell for me for a thousand snails!"

"Did they have a name?" Luz asked.

"It was the Shui Jing-"

"You got my friend involved with the Shui Jing!?" Sofia said, standing up.

"Do you even know how many hideouts they have in the Boiling Isles?" Eda said.

"I didn't think it would go this badly!"

"Let me at him!" Sofia said, getting up and charging at Lucian before being held back immediately by Luz and Eda.

"Do you know what the spell was for?" Lilith said.

"I- no," Lucian said, "I was just supposed to take the spell to Mr Fang, he pays me a thousand snails, I get Masha a ring."

"You seriously tried to buy off your happily ever after in one go!?" Sofia said, breaking free from Eda and Luz and grabbing Lucian, "You have got to be the dumbest witch in the Demon Realm!"

"Please, Miss!"

Sofia took several deep breaths before throwing the witch to the floor, "You know what? This isn't about me, it's about Mar'ya. She should decide what happens to you."

"Human, wait!" Lilith said, "The Shui Jing is known for luring people in like that."

Sofia glared at Lilith as if the witch were an idiot, "Are you freaking serious right now?"

"The Shui Jing is pretty ruthless at what they do."

"Pl- j- can ya help me!?"

"Hang on, hang on," Eda said, taking control of the situation, "The Shui Jing isn't just someone you can take back from. We'll have to go at this smarter than them."

"And the only person here with an IQ of at least 200 was kidnapped by them," Sofia noted, "We're screwed."

"Maybe not," Eda said.

Several hours later, Mar'ya woke up in a concrete room with a few men standing over her. Looking around, the walls seemed bare, she was sitting in a folding chair and was chained to the wall, and her glasses were in the floor, something she quickly remedied.

Now focused on her two new captors, Mar'ya thought it would be for the best that she kept her focus on them

"She's got a pair of big ones!" the demon said to the witch.

"What in hell are you doing?" Mar'ya said as the witch stuck his hand in her shirt and started groping her breasts.

«What in the fuck are you doing?» she asked as his hand ran across her breast before she clawed it.

Recoiling, he looked between his now-bleeding finger and Mar'ya before knocking her out of the chair and onto the floor before the demon started trying to hold him back and pull him out of the room.

«Oh my fucking god,» she muttered when the door slammed, «That hurts like shit.»

After a few moments, though, she began to notice physical changes in her body. The first things were her eyes becoming a richer shade of blue, as well as constricting and dilating rapidly upon seeing her eyes' reflection in her glasses. Moments later, the pain in her body intensified as she began convulsing strangely as something began shooting through her veins.

«Motherfucking whore!» she screamed as she began convulsing up the wall and toward one of the ceiling lights, decorating the room in a shower of electrical sparks for several moments before slowly floating back down as she grabbed onto the chain with all of her willpower.

«Holy hell!» she said as her body was dragged to the corner of the room and her world began to spin and disorient itself.

With the chain pulled taught, she looked to her side in a panic before running in a semicircle, as long as the chain would stretch, into the wall on the other side of the fixture.

20%

Mar'ya laid on the floor as her humanity left her. As her ability to feel pain dwindled to nothing and her body normalized to its new conditions, she lay there for a moment before setting the chair back upright and sitting down, facing the opposite wall with a cold, dead stare on her face.

Moments later, the demon came back in the room, tossing a set of keys while keeping his gaze on Mar'ya, who responded by cocking her head, smiling, and opening her knees, seemingly to allow the demon to rape her.

"Now, we getting somewhere," he said, opening up his belt and grabbing at her thigh.

In a swift motion, Mar'ya slammed her thighs together and glared at the demon as he fell down in excruciating pain before taking his belt off and throwing him across the room so she could use it to bring the table across to her to snag the gun and keys from it.

«Say goodnight,» she said, shooting him in the head and leaving.

Her next stop was anywhere there was food.

«Hey!» she screamed in Russian at a table of Mr Fang's people before shooting into them, killing them as she walked over to the table and began scarfing down whatever food she could get her hands on that she knew she could digest, not stopping until the glass of water was completely empty.

"Hm," she muttered, looking over to the front of her shoulder and seeing a bloody wound before digging into it moments later and dropping a bullet into the glass before grabbing a bag and filling it with guns.

Walking outside, she grabbed a gun and headed for a pair of taxi drivers.

«Listen! Speak Russian?» she said in her native tongue before switching to English, "Speak English?"

The first one begged and pleaded, only repeating "No!", so Masha shot him before pointing the gun at the other.

"Russkiy? English?"

"Yes, yes! English!"

"Take me to hospital now," she said, shoving the gun in his throat.

「Ow, my leg!」 the first driver said, collapsed on the ground as the English-speaking one began driving Mar'ya to the hospital, 「It fucking hurts!」

Back at The Owl House, Sofia was finally calming down, although nobody was sure if it was because of the terrible plans to get Mar'ya or her own realizations.

"Okay, so we leave the boiling isles and-" Eda said before being interrupted by Sofia as she came back into the living room, smoking a cigarette.

"Why are we fighting this?" Sofia asked, "Masha can get out of there alive, I know she's smart enough to."

"Could you not do that in here?" Lilith asked as Sofia stomped out the butt on the floor.

"You told me he was a good guy for her!"

"I didn't think he was involved with the Shui Jing!"

Sofia looked at everyone in the room for a moment, "Have any of you had any luck with these people?"

A chorus of noes sounded in the room before Luz started with her idea.

"They wouldn't have kept Masha in Bonesborough," Luz said, "When they found out what an asset she was, they took her back to their home base in Lel'acht! That way, they could pick her brain and keep her from running away!"

"How do you know that?" Sofia asked.

"Homegirl didn't get her own 'Wanted' posters for nothing."

"Aw, I knew you'd earned that poster!" Eda said.

«Are you serious?» Sofia said in Greek.

"What did you just say?" Willow asked.

"Sorry, in the summer, I go to Athens to see my family, so I grew up speaking English and Greek together," Sofia said, unsteadily getting an airgun that Mar'ya had given her and making sure it was ready to shoot, "I'm not comfortable doing this."

"Doing what?" Amity said.

"Gah- shooting this!"

"Oh, please!" Eda said, taking the gun, "There's nothing to it! Just point and shoot," she explained, hitting a tree outside, "See?"

"You people terrify me," Sofia said.

Meanwhile, during the drive to the hospital, Mar'ya noticed even more physiological changes going on with her person. She looked out the window and understood the glyphs, as well as became able to make out people's conversations from the other side of the street.

The whole time, the cab driver was looking between her in his rearview and the road in a panic as she took in all of the new information and sensations around her.

Soon, they made it to the Tri-Service General Hospital, where Mar'ya was finishing putting a silencer on a handgun.

"H- hospital!" the cabdriver said, pointing at the building.

"Wait," Mar'ya said, getting out and walking in the building.

As she looked at the signs, the Chinese Characters, to her, moved out of the way and allowed for Russian text to show in their place as she headed to the OR, only a single gun in her hand.

Mar'ya looked around to make sure she had the best OR room chosen, she did, so she pushed her glasses up to her face and went in, immediately looking at the screens in the room.

"Miss? Hello?" one of the doctors said with an accent, "Hey, miss!"

"I need help, it's urgent," she said, her Russian accent beginning to fade away as she looked at the images.

"You cannot be in here!" the doctor said, pulling his facemask down, "We are operating! Please, get out!"

Mar'ya looked at the images for a few more minutes before holding the gun up to the doctors and looking for a gown in her size, shooting the unconscious patient when she found one and dumping him off of the table before swapping out her jacket with the gown.

"You wouldn't have been able to save him anyway. The virus made it to the Medulla," she said as the doctors looked at her in a shocked panic while she sat on the bed and held the head surgeon at gunpoint, "Some person put spell on me and now it is affecting my body. I need you to remove it now."

One of the surgeons moaned and collapsed.

"Do it now."

"Yes, I'll just… administer a local anesthetic-"

"Don't bother," Mar'ya said, motioning for him to start with the gun.

"Right- I'll… okay… Please, calm down," he said, moving over to his tools and putting her arm down, "Please, put the gun down. I'm just going to examine, okay?"

She pulled her phone out of her jacket, "Do you mind?"

"No," the surgeon said, proceeding to operate as she called Sofia.

"Hello?" Sofia said, answering the phone after one ring.

"Hello, Sofia," Mar'ya said, trying to sound as normal as possible.

"Hey!" Sofia said, putting her phone on speaker, "It's great to hear from you! Is everything okay?"

"At current, yes," she said, finding her normal way of speaking feeling more like an impression.

"I going to have to go inside," the surgeon whispered quietly, earning a nod from Mar'ya.

"Lucian came back to the owl house and said you were kidnapped! Do you need us to come help you?"

"Net."

"Oh, thank God. You remember what Aunt Janice and your mom both said, don't you?"

"Mhm," Mar'ya said, "I am trying to take care of myself."

"Well, thanks for calling like this! I was starting to get worried about you!"

"I will see you soon," Mar'ya said.

"Alright, we'll be here when you get here!"

"Sofia?"

"Yes?"

"I feel everything."

Everyone thought for a minute before Sofia answered, "What do ya mean, Masha?"

"Space, air, vibrations, people… I can feel gravity, I can feel the planet's rotation… the heat leaving my body, blood in my veins… I can feel my brain, the deepest parts of my memory."

"Masha, we have a bad connection. I can't hear you so well, what did you say about 'memory'?"

"The pain in my shoulder after that car accident… I can remember the smell of your uncle cooking syrniki the morning after and bringing it to me in your bed. I remember... surprise trip to Tokyo."

"Trip to Japan?"

"You planned a trip for my twenty-second birthday, and the flight was called off due to a typhoon northeast of Okinawa."

"Masha, you can't possibly remember that, we never told you."

"I remember the feeling of you giving me baths when I was in week-long coma," Mar'ya said, "The soap, the sponge, everything. You massaged my body after every single one of them to keep my circulation good."

"Masha, what are you talking about?" Sofia said, now thoroughly freaked out, as was everyone else in the room.

"I just want to tell you that I love you, Sofia."

"Masha…"

"And I want to thank you for everything you did to help me adjust. I love you, Sofia."

"I love you too, Masha, and I'm glad that I got to meet you more than anything else in the world!"

"How much is left?" Mar'ya asked, ending the call.

"About fifty percent?"

"And how long will it take for my body to purge the rest?"

"For me to answer that, I would need to know the original spell."

Back at the owl house, Sofia sat on the couch, completely emotionless, for several moments before firing back her analysis of the situation.

"That was not normal," Sofia said.

"Especially for Masha," Amity said.

"Eda, do you have any bright ideas?" Lilith said.

"I've never seen that kind of magic before."

"Gah!" Sofia said, the rational part of her exploding after long enough, "What the hell kind of magic makes a Soviet with no EQ turn into a chick-flick-style-waterworks!?" Sofia looked at Lucian, "Where did they take her!?"

"I don't know!"

"Edalyn, don't you have the fucking internet here!?"

"Uh, no?"

"Dammit!" Sofia said, hurrying over to Mar'ya's things and fishing out her motorcycle keys, "If you're coming, get on!"

"Have you ever driven one of these before?"

"Nope! Now hang on!"

Before too much time had passed, Mar'ya was outside of the Shui Jing headquarters, getting out of the taxicab and heading inside, shooting down anyone who stood between her and Mr Fang.

Until she made it to his tattoo room, where she waved her gun at the artist, who promptly fled before walking up to him and stabbing both of his hands to the chair with a pair of knives.

"Learning is always a painful process," she said, noticing her lack of an accent, "Like when you're little, and your bones grow, you ache all over. Do you believe I remember the sound of my own bones growing? Like grinding under my skin?" she said as he glared at her, "Everything's different now, sounds are music that I can understand… Like fluid. It's amusing, I was concerned about who I was and what I wanted to be. Now, however, that I have access to the furthest reaches of my brain, I can understand things with a new clarity, and realize what makes us 'us'… it's primitive. They're all obstacles. Does that make sense? This pain you're experiencing, for instance, it's blocking you from understanding… all you can know now is pain, that's all you can know, pain. How many more were there? I need the rest of it," she said, grabbing his forehead and finding the information he wanted to know, "Bonesborough… Trillaghnt… The Knee," she let go of his forehead, "Thank you for sharing."

Walking back outside, Mar'ya found a map of the Boiling Isles and deduced that she could get back to Bonesborough soon enough, regardless of any mode of transit she opted for. Still, she decided to fly.

After an hour at the library and thirty more minutes at an internet café, Sofia just wanted to go home and lay down. The Demon Realm's internet was different than the internet back on Earth, and there wasn't even a version of Google in this world!

At least the TV would help her with something.

"Breaking news! At 08:00, a woman shot a patient dead. It happened at the Tri-Service Hospital in Lel'acht," the first anchor said before cutting to another, "The suspect is 26, dark-haired, human, above-average height, and wearing glasses! Police are searching all over the isles! She is armed and dangerous!"

"What the hell?" Lilith said.

"That's Masha!"

As Masha, meanwhile, walked through Lel'acht in a pair of heels and a new dress, two new laptops in her hands, she overheard the broadcast as well and morphed her hair to a reddish color with curls and put on a pair of large sunglasses, continuing through the crowd before taking out her phone and making a call.

"I need to speak with whoever is in a position of authority, I have information about a group of drug traffickers." she said, her accent completely neutral now.

"Thankfully for you, I'm the highest authority in this room. But let's start at the beginning."

"Listen up here, Darius, get off of the fucking desk and sit in your chair, grab the red pen to the left of you, and get everything I say down on paper."

Darius worriedly looked at the phone for a moment before moving her focus to a red pen.

"There are no cameras, hurry up, dammit, I don't have any time to waste."

30%

"Go ahead," Darius said, sitting at her desk and getting ready to write.

"I'm gonna be sending you the details of two people arriving in the Boiling Isles, both are carrying illegal drugs. I'll need you to arrest them and collect it, I'll need it for later."

"How are they being transported?"

"Scrolls in their intestines."

"Excuse me?"

"Make sure to be extra careful when you remove the scrolls, it's an extremely powerful spell," she said as a drug dog started making its way over to her before cowering when she looked at it over her sunglasses, "Believe me."

Darius looked on in confusion as two files appeared on his computer.

"Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Good," she said, taking her plane ticket, "I'm counting on you."

The plane ride was comforting, and she was able to run enough calculations on her computers by the time the plane was at the Bonesborough airport, but Mar'ya was too caught up in her work to care about that or the weird guy looking over her shoulder.

"Miss, I have to ask you to put away your computers now-" a flight attendant said before being interrupted by Mar'ya.

"You should wipe your nose."

"Excuse me?"

"May I have a glass of vodka?"

"Um, yes, of course!" she said, heading up to get the drink and some napkins as her nose started dripping blood.

While she waited, the Russian got the finishing numbers on her calculations before another flight attendant brought back a mustard glass of vodka.

"Miss, your vodka."

"Thank you."

"I'm very sorry, but you really need to closeyour table now."

"Of course," she said, holding up the glass after he left and drinking it, «To knowledge.»

40%

About halfway through the glass, she couldn't tolerate the taste anymore, definitely something out of the ordinary for her. Examining the glass, she found one of her teeth in it and gasped.

Moments later, she coughed and spat out a few more teeth, letting them fall to the floor before she started disintegrating and panicking, inadvertently knocking someone else out when she tried to cover up her "ashes".

"Miss, miss!" an attendant said as a few of them came into the cabin when she started acting erratically, "You must remain seated!" he said before being thrown across the cabin as she went into the lavatory and, after multiple times, got the door to lock.

"Miss, you have to go back to your seat! We're going to land soon, please open the door!"

Mar'ya focused only on figuring out why she was disintegrating before she took what was left of the spell and tried to use it on herself, only to pass out briefly moments later.

"Miss, please say something! Are you okay? Miss!" the attendant said as she sat in the lavatory, gasping.

Later, Mar'ya woke up in a hospital room. She was connected to a heart monitor and restrained to a bed.

«Those cunts,» she said, undoing the restraints and sitting up.

Meanwhile, outside the room, a few people were discussing her.

"With a scar on her lower abdomen?" Darius said, looking at a sample of hair and the girl's ID.

"New enough to still have the thread in it," Drœnda said.

"How is she?"

"She's out cold right now, but otherwise fine. I gave her a shot that'll keep her out all day long."

As she "recalibrated" her body to what Masha was supposed to look like, she peeked through the walls to catch a glimpse of what was going on outside.

50%

Afterward, she sat up, fully lucid and looked around the room. Her dark dress and heels were on a stool, and the heart monitor died the moment she focused on its existence.

Moments later, a nurse came into the room to check on her, but immediately frightened, turned around, and left the room again.

"She's awake!" the nurse said, gathering everyone's attention.

"Are you sure?"

"She was sitting on the bed looking at me!"

Immediately, the cop, doctor, and nurse all ran back to see her walking out of the room, back in her dress, heels, and eyeglasses.

"That's her!" the doctor said.

"You didn't restrain her?" Darius asked.

"Of course we did!"

"Miss!" Darius said, holding a gun up to her, as with every other armed person in the room, "Don't move!"

"I need to talk to you alone," she deadpanned.

"And I need you to put your hands up, please."

Not taking her eyes off of him, Mar'ya waved her fingers, making everyone, sans her and the cop, pass out, unnerving Darius somewhat as she walked over to him, eyes locked on him, and caused his gun to empty itself, causing him to look at it extremely perplexed.

Standing at point blank range of an empty gun, Mar'ya looked at Darius and asked, "Did you get the scrolls?"

"Yes."

"Where are they?"

"They're safe, here, in Bonesborough."

"They'll be safer in my hands," she said, walking around him and leaving, Darius following soonafter.

Later, in his cop car, while stopped at a crossing, Darius figured he'd try to get something off of his chest.

"You know, as a cop, I see some pretty weird shit, but to be honest, what you did back there, that freaked me out," Darius said as Mar'ya looked at the cellphone signals, "To put everyone to sleep like that, do I need to be worried?"

"No," she said, flatly.

"Good."

Moments later, she started scanning through the radiowaves in Bonesborough before looking between the radio and Darius, "May I?"

"Go ahead."

Within moments, she picked up a conversation in a foreign language.

"What's that?" Darius asked.

"Korean. I'm gonna drive," Mar'ya said, getting the siren and getting out of the car.

"Hey! Hey, hey! No no no no! This is a police car!" Darius said as she walked around to the front, "No, you can't! This is not possible! This is a police car!" he said before getting forced into the passenger seat before Mar'ya laid into the gas like her last ex at a drag race.

As Masha floored the Dodge Dart and sped through the streets of Bonesborough, that new inhumane expression that had, within the past few hours become Mar'ya, stared coldly out the windshield as the Italian engine begged for mercy.

"Do you always drive a car like this?" Darius asked, grabbing onto the interior handles of the car.

"I rarely drive," Mar'ya said, her thick Russian accent now long-gone.

"Great," Darius said as the human girl drove into heavy oncoming traffic, "Hey, that's the wrong way!"

"We're late," Mar'ya deadpanned.

Mar'ya said nothing as she continued flooring the sedan, causing huge amounts of mayhem in the process before cutting onto the sidewalks.

"I'd rather be late than dead!" Darius said as Mar'ya turned onto a sidewalk.

"We never really die."

As she sped through oncoming traffic, pedestrians, and through a building, causing even more mayhem, Darius shot a few looks at her as she shot through an underpass, the engine bouncing on the rev limiter on multiple occasions, before she caused one car to go flying through the air.

All while she was seemingly unfazed while Darius had taken to looking behind them as he held onto an interior handle for his life, knowing full-well that the seatbelt wouldn't do anything to stop his demise if Mar'ya was lying.

A minute later, Darius noticed sirens behind them, "I'm gonna tell them to stop following us-"

"Don't waste your energy," Mar'ya said as the street barricades slowly went down and came back up as she dug her foot into the floor, just barely making it past them before two cop cars hit them and a third one hit them and rolled over the front, headfirst, taking out an entire streetcorner stand.

Eventually, Mar'ya and Darius made it to the Bonesborough General Hospital mostly unscathed and soon enough to witness a shootout between the Bonesborough Authorities and the Shui Jing end.

Stopping the body with her foot, she looked dead-on at the scene as Darius pulled his gun on the guy who was scrambling to get the second scroll while the Shui Jing pulled their guns on Mar'ya as she looked dead on.

"The case," Mar'ya deadpanned to the higher-up member as he came into the hallway, inciting a dismissive laugh.

"Kill her and get the scroll," he said in Korean before turning and heading to the other exit.

60%

Mar'ya focused on where he was walking to in order to make an invisible barricade that he ran into and began panicking at before magnetically pulling all of the knives and guns to the ceiling.

"What the hell are you doing just standing there!?" he said, turning around and seeing the scene for himself, "Kill her already!"

The members of the Shui Jing began to take fighting stances, but Mar'ya walked up to each of them, tossing them out of the way without so much as moving a muscle until giving a flick of her hand to toss the last man between her and the man with the case through a wall.

As Darius looked on in disbelief at the several men suspended in the air, he was having a hard enough time believing that one person could do all of this, let alone a human of all beings, as he lowered his gun.

«Thank you,» she said in Russian, taking the case from the man as he had a full-blown panic attack, completely unable to move, before she turned and headed back to Darius.

"Open it," she said, giving him the case as she rolled over the third carrier.

Darius looked at Mar'ya with disgust as she reached into his intestines and pulled out a plastic-wrapped scroll before setting it in the case and closing it.

"Let's go," she said, walking out.

"Th- there's no way I could be of any help to you," Darius said, getting Mar'ya's attention.

"Of course you are," she said, walking back to him.

"What for?"

"A reminder," she said, kissing him, "Shall we go?"

Walking out to the car, Darius held his questions for later, but they came as soon as he started the car.

"Where are we even going?" he asked as Mar'ya turned on the navigation system to take them to the owl house.

"Continue straight for five miles, then turn left."

Meanwhile, at The Owl House, Lucian's body had been very-well hidden from Mar'ya, should she ever decide to start looking.

"Sofia, until we know exactly what kind of magic that Masha was hit with, we have no way of knowing what's gonna happen," Eda said as Sofia crossed out and tor yet another page from the third notebook she had been writing in, "Not to mention that you two are humans and, if Luz is any sign-"

"Magic could react very differently between you two," Lilith concluded.

"I've gotta try!" Sofia said, now thoroughly neglecting herself as her phone rang, "Lemmie at it!"

"Not until you take a break!" Liltih said, holding her down as her and Edalyn's mom answered the phone on speaker.

"Hello?"

"Gwendolyn Clawthorne, Masha Buryakova," Mar'ya said.

"Oh, where are you, sweetie?"

"I'm in Bonesborough," she answered.

"Oh, that's great! My daughters and I can-"

"I'm not broken, it won't have an effect. I estimate that I'm at 64% of my cerebral capacity and counting. With me, I have Darius, as well as two duplicates of the scroll that was activated inside of me."

"Well," Gwendolyn said, seeing everyone in the room at a loss for information, "Can you meet us at my daughter's house?" she asked immediately before Mar'ya and Darius came through the door and the Russian ended the call, "I… I'm very pleased to meet you."

"Likewise."

"Captain Darius."

"How are ya?" Eda asked.

"I hope you didn't mind that I brought over some of my friends who might be able to help you. This is Amity, W-"

"I know who everyone is," Mar'ya said causing everyone in the room to recoil.

Finally able to get out of Lilith's grip, Sofia went over to Mar'ya and introduced her, "Everyone, this is my friend from Soviet Russia, Masha."

"I need a sheet of paper," Mar'ya said as Darius gave her a blank sheet of parchment, "Thanks."

Focusing on it, it slowly turned into a prescription that looked like it needed a trip to Taiwan to be filled before giving it to Sofia.

"What's… what's this?" the Hellenic girl asked.

"A prescription."

"When the hell did you learn Chinese?" Sofia asked looking between the paper and Mar'ya.

"Two hours ago."

"Mash, I don't understand any of this-" Sofia said, but was interrupted by Mar'ya.

"Your kidneys aren't functioning efficiently, your liver's failing you, and your white blood cell count is low, you need to make some lifestyle changes. Take this medication, eat organic, workout; you'll be fine."

Sofia looked at Mar'ya speechlessly before trying to explain what she thought was going on, "Masha is… using areas of her brains that nobody has ever used before. I've never seen anything like it."

"Can you show us?" King said as Mar'ya walked over to him and grabbed his shoulder.

"You're the last remaining Titan, your father left you in that rock formation to become a relic that was lost to time for your own security, your species is functionally extinct."

"Is this true, King?" Eda said.

"Hey, you can't say stuff like that about him!" Luz said, setting Mar'ya's next target as King teared up.

"You left your mother, Camila Noceda, in Gravesfield, Connecticut so you could live out a fantasy world in an alternate reality that's almost gotten you killed six thousand, four hundred ninety-seven times to date!"

Luz recoiled in pure shock as Sofia intervened.

"Okay! I think that we all have a good reason to be terrified of Masha right now, so why don't we all listen to her and Luz and King, could you go get this prescription filled for me?"

"How did you manage to access all of this information?" Principal Bump asked as Luz and King went to the corner of the room, opting to stay in the Owl House until everything was over.

"Electrical impulses, of course," Mar'ya said, "Every cell knows and talks to every other cell, exchanging up to a kilobit of data among themselves per second; cells grouped together, forming a giant web of communication," she held up her hand and mirrored it at her wrist, looking at it casually, "Which, in turn, forms matter," the mirror vanished, "Cells get together, take on one form, deform," she said as her face became like a horrid monster, "Reform," her face became horselike, "Makes no difference, it's all the same," she said before her face morphed back into the one that was hers, "Dominant species consider themselves unique, so they root their whole theory of existence around their… uniqueness. One is your unit of measure," Mar'ya said, taking Hooty's portable backpack and levitating it, "But it's not. All social systems put into place are a sketch: one plus one equals two, that's all we've learned," the backpack duplicated, "But one plus one has never equaled two," she said as the two backpacks morphed back into one and their matter changed form, "There are no numbers, letters. You've quantified your entire existence to bring it down to you size, to make it comprehensible. You've created a scale so you can forget its unfathomable scale," she said as the now-web flashed and vanished into nothing.

"If we're not the unit of measure," Lilith said, "And no world is governed by mathematics… what does?"

Mar'ya turned around as a holographic image materialized and followed her narration, "Film a car, speeding down the expressway. Speed up the image infinitely, and the car disappears… so what proof do we have of its existence?" she said as everyone else in the room looked on in awe, "Time gives legitimacy to its existence, time is the only true unit of measure. It gives proof to the existence of matter. Without time, we don't exist."

"Oh Titan," Principal Bump said, "Time is unity."

At that moment, everyone heard several cars being stopped before Hooty left the inside of the house.

"Time to go, then," Mar'ya said, opening the case and giving the two scrolls to Eda and Lilith.

"Are you seriously expecting us to cast this on you?" Eda said.

"In such huge doses, no less!?" Lilith added, "You won't survive!"

"Some cells will fight to defend their integrity until the very end. In order to attain the last few percent, however, I need to force the reaction to crack my cells open to their nucleus."

"We still can't do magic!" Eda said.

Mar'ya looked at Eda and Lilith with her new dead-faced stare and waved her hand as she snapped her fingers, knocking them both across the room, "You're welcome," she said as they got up and realized they could do magic again, neither sister carrying any part of a curse.

"All of this knowledge, Masha," Sofia said, sitting next to her friend, "Do you really think we're ready for it?"

"Mankind will never be ready," Mar'ya said, "But I'll download all of my knowledge onto a computer for you to access when you feel you're ready."

As the Shui Jing got closer to the owl house, Gwendolyn sat up an old camera while Lilith and Eda began to activate the spells.

As they ran their course, Darius left to take what was left of the Shui Jing. Mar'ya's eyes began glowing blue as she focused on the camera, screaming a few moments later and making a sound powerful enough to send massive amounts of data out with it, briefly leaving her in a dormant state.

70%

Waking back up and focusing on the camera, she turned the two scrolls into lethal projectiles, sending them flying through the house, further shocking her audience, before the skin on her arms grew rougher, turning into gray plastic at her hands, with her fingers becoming cables that searched anywhere, everywhere, for energy.

"The… hoot's she doing?" Hooty asked, now back inside.

"She's looking for energy," Sofia said, equally as stunned.

As Mar'ya's new appendages ate any and all matter they could get, everyone in the room tried to get as far away from her as they possibly could.

80%

As Mar'ya sat, facing forward with her new, dead-faced stare, everything in existence suddenly vanished to a singularity, everyone bracing themselves for the worst as it happened.

"What's going on!?"

"Oh my God!"

As the black appendages materialized into a tower structure in front of Mar'ya, more questions were raised.

"What the hell's she making?" Amity asked.

"The most powerful computer I've ever seen," Sofia said, more stunned than before.

90%

As Lilith and Edalyn looked to Mar'ya, uncertain of what would happen next, Mar'ya was blasted by a force to the middle of Sverdlovsk, bringing everyone in the room with her.

A single heartbeat later, they found themselves in prehistoric Bonesborough.

"What the hell's going on!?" Sofia asked as Mar'ya's heart beat again, sending them to present-day Alpines' City.

Looking around from her seat, Mar'ya froze time and observed human society before rewinding time a few months and then back to the 1850s, letting time advance normally when the first buildings on Linson Road were beginning to show signs of regular life.

On one side of her, a trolly coasted past, and a horse-drawn carriage trotted by on the other. The cobblestone roads felt old under her heels, and the air was cleaner to breathe. Looking at the theater intently before rewinding time back centuries again, stopping when a group of natives on horseback noticed her.

"Masha, those people are savages!" Sofia said to Mar'ya, who only rewound them back to the Late Jurassic era several moments later when they were slightly closer to figuring her out.

Looking up when she heard a screech, she saw a few pterodactyls flying overhead as well as a stegosaurus that thought it had its next meal.

"Get us the hell out of here!" Gwendolyn said, Mar'ya only getting them out at the last possible moment.

"What… the hell…?" Sofia said, panicking as Mar'ya looked at an apelike creature, holding her finger out to it, "Masha?"

Letting the creature figure her out, it eventually touched fingers with her, sending them all far above the Earth as time began speeding in reverse.

As their planet, solar system, and universe all were unborn, Mar'ya was the only one not looking on in awe and horror.

99%

As Mr Fang walked up behind Mar'ya, holding her at point-blank as the universe de-aged before her and the others stood in a white void, watching as her would-be assassin came to within inches of her as she became engulfed in a dark material as her cells fused and busted their nuclei wide open, she was ready for what was coming next.

100%

Mr Fang shot, repeatedly, at where the girl had just vanished from, only leaving a dress and a pair of shoes and earning the confusion and shock of everyone else in the room as reality returned to what it had been moments prior.

"Where is she?" Mr Fang asked, "Answer me. Answer me!"

"Hey, you!" Darius said, getting Mr Fang's attention before unloading his gun on him in several lethal spots.

"L- look!" Willow said, pointing to the computer, "The computer! It's moving!"

As everyone looked at the "alive" computer, hesitant to take the cosmic flash drive that came out of it, they were all silently wondering what had just happened.

"Sofia?" Edalyn said, "You knew her the longest. It should be you."

Sofia went over to the computer and started to grab the flash drive, but stopped as she looked between it and the computer, eventually taking a deep breath and pulling it out, the computer turning to dust immediately after.

"Hey, where is she?" Darius asked, his phone playing an odd tone as it malfunctioned before showing a white sentence on a black background.

I AM EVERYWHERE, it read.

Darius read those three words and looked all around the trashed room, slowly heading out.

"M- Masha?" Sofia asked, glancing at the phone and looking around the room, "You can still live with us?"

A reply came on the television almost immediately.

I'M NOT A PARTY TRICK

"No, but you made me feel good to be some kind of beatnick, I could never get that from anyone else! I know you don't believe in family anymore, but I still do," Sofia said, figuring out how to push Mar'ya's new buttons, "And if you're taking something away from me that helps me when I have it, then you're hurting me in the end. I know you're some kind of weird, computer goddess now, but you're still the Soviet I went to Vegas with and scored bigtime with in those casinos. Don't you miss how that feels?"

THE PAST NO LONGER MATTERS AND I DON'T FEEL ANYMORE

"Well, wouldn't you like to analyze it?" Sofia said, "You might not think much of it, but I do. You being here, actually here, helps me in more ways than you could imagine!"

At that moment, the TV began to stop working and slowly deform into the black material that encapsulated Mar'ya before sucking up her clothes and Mr Fang's body, eventually forming into Mar'ya in her new dress and heels, staring deadly at Sofia.

"Masha?" the Hellenic girl said.

"We were given life a billion years ago," she said flatly as her eyes turned from black orbs to what Sofia knew Mar'ya's eyes to be, "Now you know what to do with it."