When Alissa Jagner committed her very first murder, she described the sensation to herself as "cold." Literally, the air had turned cold in that moment. But the odd thing was that it had not been a real murder. Putting down Donovan Ventimago had been an act of heroism on her part, liberating Pamela from her nightmare. His death had not been a murder: it had been an act of self-defense. Murder involved a victim, and an unprovoking one at that. Donovan had provoked… but he had most certainly been a victim.

This interior journey, discovering these truths, held much ground to be explored. The hobos in the street? They had also been victims… but again, they were also moochers on the system, public drunks, vagrants who had most likely done their fair share of rape and dealing, not to mention theft. The taxi driver, on the other hand…

Slitting the woman's throat had been transformation. Her hand had been shaking as she performed the terrible deed… terrible… No, no, not terrible. She had to punch herself in the forehead. Not terrible! Stop thinking like an idiot. That was what she wanted to tell herself… but it could not be. It had been terrible because, then, she had had no concept of such an evil act. Without the concept, she lacked appreciation. Without appreciation, she lacked bravery.

I need to experiment. A test in psychology, her old life's remnants clinging on as hard as they could. She shivered at the thought… and at the wind. Halloween was approaching. It would be here very soon. It was a time of transformation into ghouls and other forms of illusion. Thus, the test in psychology fit well.

Alissa swung and swung upon the playground swing for half an hour more, thinking about how far she had gone. She observed her attire closely. Green and black tartan… satin ribbon bodice… a skirt of frilly, layered green mesh… These cloths weren't something familiar yet. She needed more to feel like the goddess that both Woodrue and Pamela were trying to create out of her. Her leather boots brushed the sand beneath her slowly, kicking dirt up every now and then, and she sometimes kicked it hard enough so that it would flew upward and land upon her. She wanted to know how closely she cared for dirt, for soil…

Part of her resented it. Part of her yearned to love it. She was… a servant of Poison Ivy. A servant of Pamela. She had to love dirt… she had to love the earth in all of its richness. Sighing, she hung her head and smiled sadly. Perhaps this was the way to go about it, in small doses. She put a finger to her lips.

The neon green lipstick was something else she found… almost intriguing. Woodrue and Pamela had specially prepared it for use at any given time, experimenting with new weapons by the day. This lipstick was one of those special weapons, and had quickly become Pamela's favorite method of killing. A poisonous kiss. What a way to kill someone… what a dark, unfair, traitorous method.

A teenager clambered across the dirt and sat down in the swing next to her. She analyzed the ogling boy who was looking at her with a smirk and narrowed eyes. Muscular, football material with a slightly shaven head and hairy chin. Large, staring blue eyes.

"Hey," he said softly, smiling a false smile. "You sitting over here all by yourself?"

"No…" Alissa answered quietly, putting her hands in her lap and staring at her feet. "I have friends all around me. Don't you see them?"

The teenager chuckled. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Stupid question, I know. What I really meant was, are you wanting to sit over here by myself?"

Alissa smiled at him, shrugging. "Don't know. Don't really know what I want… not yet anyway. But I know what I need to be wanting."

"What's that?"

Alissa shrugged again, leaning in very close to the teen. His eyes widened excitedly.

"Who knows?" she breathed into his face, and she moved her head forward for only a second, planting a small kiss on his lips. "You tell me."

She waited. The teenager, who could not have been more than fifteen, grinned widely, chuckling softly. "Wow, you're really direct, aren't you-" And then his smile faded. It turned to horror at once, his teeth gritted, his eyes widened, and he suddenly clutched his throat. Alissa nodded sadly, turning away and staring forward again, saying quietly, "I guess so… but I need to know more things than just that. It's really hard for me to figure it out right now."

Beside her, his heavy body went limp and he fell dead, face forward into the sand. She glanced at his corpse sadly, nudging him with the toe of her boot. His body was jerking in death, spasms that she had witnessed during Pamela's own murders. Her mind reeled with acute observation on her mental state.

I feel…nothing. Sadness, but not for the act itself. It's something deeper. Something like… boredom? Is it boredom? She decided to leave the swings, leave him. She walked slowly up the darkening pathway as the sun slipped into its sleep for the night. She did not rob the boy's body. She left him be. He had gone through enough. No, it can't be boredom. How could it be? No, it's something else. Maybe… maybe confusion.

That seemed more accurate. Confusion. Woodrue had perfected her. Perfection. That had been his term. But how had he perfected her? She had vague memories of her past. Vague memories of everything that had once happened. Who had she been? Alissa… Alissa Jagner… but who had Alissa Jagner been?

She saw two more people, standing near some tall oaks. One was a girl, the other a boy, and they seemed to be about the other boy's age. Friday night was a night for teen outings, it seemed. But these teens were smoking, puffing our noxious fumes, and they casually tossed the cigarette butts into the grass. Now when she saw that, she angered. The anger, she knew, came from Pamela and Woodrue's perfections. Any desecration of nature angered her… but why was this perfection? Because Pamela and Woodrue willed it?

She walked up to the two teens, one a brunette boy, the other a dark haired girl. They both looked around as she approached, and Alissa's cold face showed only contempt for them. She waved a single hand.

"Evening," she muttered.

"Evening…" the girl replied, trying to stuff the cigarette out of view of the clearly older woman in her twenties who stood before her and her boyfriend. Alissa said no more. Instead, she stepped forward and violently grabbed the boy by the cheeks. She forced a kiss onto him, making the girl screech out loud, "What the hell!?", but Alissa released the boy, pushing him aside, and grabbed the girl, planting her third kiss for the night upon the girl's luscious lips. Her fingernails clawed into the girl's cheeks.

The girl pushed her away, backing against the tree, looking furious. She was about to open her mouth and say something before her boyfriend choked, clutching at his throat and falling to his knees. Almost on cue, the girl had no time to register what was happening before the poison hit her too, and she collapsed as well. Alissa left them, again, sadly, her head hung, to die their horrible deaths in the privacy of the trees. She crushed their cigarettes under foot as she went.

Does it really get easier? It seems to. But… but there has to be a purpose. A mission. It's all about the mission, all about- about the reward. But what is the reward?

Pamela would tell her that the reward was Mother Earth's love, and she was inclined to believe it… but at the same time, the perfection were still, well, perfecting.

She checked herself in a bathroom mirror. Most of the lipstick had brushed off of her, revealing the gleaming rubber covering she had been given to protect herself from the lethal poison. She washed her face in the sink, sighing, her heart hurting as she rid herself of the toxin for one night. Killing those teenagers had brought her no joy whatsoever. If anything, the murdering had brought her only more sadness. But why? Why must she suffer, in doing Pamela's work, when Pamela herself found bliss in the act? What did Pamela have that Alissa… that Toxica… did not?

Toxica. A christening that she must remind herself of constantly. Toxcia had been the name she had established during her second birth. Woodrue had given it his blessing. Toxica. A toxic woman. A living toxin. This was to be her mission. She was to act as Pamela's protector, Pamela's assassin… Pamela's other half. She had to be Pamela's arm, shield and temple. And in turn, she would be the arm, shield and temple of Mother Earth.

But she could not feel Mother Earth. Mother Earth did not exist to her… yet. But she would happily keep up the illusion in front of Pamela and Woodrue that she did in fact bear a connection to the goddess of the planet… and in turn, would she be able to become one? The rational part of herself told her, "No!" This rational side bore fruit in its garden. Despite her constant objections to service invitations and her public stance that she had no belief in God… she had always believed, to some point. No rational side of her could look upon the earth before her and truly believe that there was not intelligent design involved. Humans and the planet were all built into perfect rhythms, with everything just right for survival situations. Everything in life was too deliberate, too grand scale. There was no way that they had come from particles of nothing…

But that was the part, she felt, that brought her down. It was why she was unable to obtain the same bliss that Pamela embodied. She, Alissa…Toxica… believed in a higher power, a true God, who looked down upon them, encouraging His children to overcome their sins. She, Toxica, had become sin itself in her transformation. Because of this, she felt the fires of punishment awaiting her at the end of the dark tunnel, and no amount of Woodrue's perfections could steer her mind away from that fire. Not yet, anyway. She needed something. She needed to wipe God Himself from her heart and from her mind. In removing Him, in removing her fear of Him, she could embody the sin that her soul so desperately craved to become. She yearned for the demon, and yearned to reject the traces of good within her, or what she perceived to be good…

So she would become sin and destroy God's influence in her life. She would renounce the deity that she had always believed in, yet had always rejected publicly anyway.

I will burn… I will burn…

Forever.

Walking down Barker Road, the street desolate save for a crackhead wandering into a dark alley, his hands fumbling with the cash he held, Alissa wandered into one of the yards. The window before her was wide open and uncovered by curtains. Inside, a family sat before a large television, an animated film flashing away on the screen, a popcorn bowl shared between two young children, a redheaded, plump wife and her balding, dark-skinned husband. Alissa let her darkened soul guide her every move. She leaned forward against the window, staring inward at the family… and all too soon, they were staring right back. The wife noticed her first, and, with a deep frown, nudged her husband in the ribs, pointing.

Alissa cared not for their wide-eyed expressions. She hung her head, the depression deepening, and her hands slid down the pane. Her heart hurt. The tears slowly fell.

The husband was moving around the couch, and he opened the door, sticking his head out and peering around the corner at her. Alissa showed no sign of being aware of this.

"Can we help you with something?" he called to her, looking rather annoyed, but also concerned.

Alissa slowly regarded him with a tilt of the head, staring back at him with her reddening eyes. God how the depression cascaded down upon her.

"Help me…with something…?" she breathed, her head still hanging low. It was now physically a burden upon her.

"Why are you staring into our window?" His voice had become softer, more gentle, more filled with concern than irritation. She shrugged slowly, biting her now unpoisoned lips.

"I wish I knew," she replied softly, her lip quivering. She gritted her teeth. She was going to cry, and she did not want to! "I… I r-really wish I knew…"

She cried. She collapsed to her knees and began to bawl into the man's flowerbeds. Now the husband was looking very concerned, but she hardly noticed this. The pain in her heart was too much to bear. She could not remember her mother's face. Her father, either. Did she have siblings? Had she even known her real parents? There was nothing there, no memory to come and comfort her… so the man did it for her. He was crouching down beside her, the wife and children staring out the window at the scene, and he placed a hand upon her shoulder.

"What's going on, lady?"

Alissa instinctively grabbed his hand, still fighting back her sobs. "I'm so scared… I'm so scared…"

The man paled. "My God… did someone… did someone do something to you?"

Alissa shivered. She thought about the question for a moment… and then nodded her head. It was the truth. "Y-yes… Oh, God, yes…" Her hand slipped and it hit the dirt. The man looked up at his wife, frowning, and then he was helping Alissa to her feet, half carrying her into the house with him. The wife and children stared as he led Alissa to the kitchen and sat her at a round, mahogany table. The wife quickly shut the curtains at the window, and then ran forward, looking very troubled, whispering for the children to stay back. She had paused their animated film.

"What's going on?" the wife whispered to her husband. He shook his head.

"I don't know. Miss…? Can you tell us your name?"

Alissa laid her head across the table, staring at the children in the distance. Both of them stared back with beaming eyes of fear and curiosity. "Alissa."

"Alissa… And a surname?"

"Isley." She said the first name that came to mind, and knew not why she had said it. It just came so naturally.

"Okay, Alissa Isley… do you want to tell us what's happened. I bet we can help." He sat down opposite her, his eyes intent with a fierce concentration. "My name's Doug. Doug Alvarez. This is Lola." He gestured to his wife. "My kids are Nate and Patricia."

"Doug," Alissa whispered. "Lola. Nate. Patricia."

Doug nodded, biting his lip. Lola looked very nervous. Alissa could tell that she scared the lady something silly.

"So, Alissa… do we need to call the police for you?"

"I know how to use a telephone," Alissa replied. "Ask yourself if calling them would do me any good…" She spoke the words that came to her as well.

"How so?"

"I'm just a troublemaker," Alissa sighed, wiping her tears away. "A sinner. I don't even know if there's a God who wants me to see justice or not. Not with… not with these things following me…"

Doug and Lola exchanged looks. They had no idea what this woman was talking about… but it was clear to them that this woman needed help. The look on Doug's face said Drugs. The look on Lola's said Alcohol. Whatever the source of this blonde woman's oddness, they wanted the matter resolved quickly.

"Did someone…hurt you?" Lola suggested.

"You could say that," Alissa whispered, sitting up and staring up at her. Her hair was almost as crimson as Pamela's. This brought a little comfort to her… and a little fear. Lola did not have Pamela's beautiful green eyes. Hers were a boring brown. The color of dirt… and so, she supposed, Pamela would have her appreciate Lola's eyes for this reason. "Someone did hurt me… and then I hurt them back."

Lola instinctively stepped away. She backed into an owl clock, frowning. Doug looked sympathetic.

"What did they do?"

"Perfected me," Alissa answered, as if this were the understandable thing to reply with. Neither Doug nor Lola looked as if they did. But why should they? They were not seeing things with perfected eyes. This was good. It saved them from pain. "I was perfected by my friends and turned into something great. A warrior for their cause." When Doug and Lola still continued to stare in confusion, Alissa sighed. "I suppose it just…can't be explained."

"Well, actually, Alissa… I'm a psychologist." Doug tried to smile kindly. "So it might if you-"

"A psychologist…?" Her heart hammered. There, again, another trace of her past. The past life, the past eyes, and the past breath. The past that was Alissa, not Toxica. Psychologist indeed. Her test in psychology had begun. How would she react, and what methods of closure would she seek? "What a coincidence… I once went to college for the same thing."

Doug tilted his head. "You finished?"

Alissa smiled. Her tears had faded… her anger had returned.

"In my old life, before I was perfected, I would have finished… but my friends took such desires away from me, and filled me with new ones."

"New desires?" Doug whispered. Lola was looking more and more troubled by the second. Alissa nodded.

"Why, yes," she said calmly, tapping her fingers together gently. "I was to begin my practical observations next year. Providence Center in Downtown Gotham… but then I found that there were far better things to focus my time and energy on. Far more important things."

"Far more important than your education?"

Alissa's heart panged painfully again. There it was.

"Are you judging me?" she demanded.

Doug was shocked. "N-no, not judging you, I-"

"I think you should leave, Miss Isley," Lola said quietly, stepping forward and looking grim. "Please, we don't have time to deal with this, okay."

"Lola-"

"No, Doug," Lola said firmly, shaking her head. "We need to-"

Alissa moved so fast and so…correctly. It was fact. It was like breathing. Her hand were under the table in an instant, and suddenly it was uplifted, crashing into Doug and sending the man falling backwards in his chair. Before Lola could react, Alissa had leapt to her feet and forced the woman against the kitchen counter, that fire burning within her soul once more.

"Mama!"

"Daddy!"

Patricia and Nate were screaming from the living room, edging forward fearfully.

"Let go of me!" Lola cried. Alissa, however, was reaching behind Lola, where a knife block sat on the counter. She pulled out the carver. Her eyes were filled with wild triumph as her soul fought against the depression. Something about Doug mentioning her past had struck something inside. And Alissa now understood!

The past. It was the past that brought her such depression. The past involved her belief in God, her old life as an aspiring psychologist, and the weakness that she had privately associated with it. She now understood. The past had to be removed entirely… along with any mention of it.

Lola stared at the knife in Alissa's hard, her lips quivering. Doug was trying to get back on his feet. Alissa, meanwhile, her expression suddenly alight with the same joy she had displayed when murdering the men in the alleyway the other night, laughed aloud in mad triumph and sunk the blade into Lola's throat.

The woman's eyes went wide, and she grasped at the knife in disbelief, falling to her knees as the blood began to pour. Alissa watched her go down with what she would have labeled her "evil smile," before Doug saw what was happening and screamed.

Alissa was on him at once. She leapt across the kitchen and dove into him, bringing him down onto the floor, and still she laughed and laughed. Nate and Patricia, meanwhile, were screaming, collapsing beside their mother, who was in shock, attempting to pull the knife out of her neck.

Alissa and Doug struggled upon the floor in a tangles mess of limbs and flying golden hair, but Alissa kept laughing and laughing.

Fight the depression! Fight the depression!

Her hands found the sides of his head, and she lowered her head, clamping down fiercely upon his lips with her teeth. Doug's screams went off like a siren as he tried to throw her off of him, but she was filled to the brim with adrenaline and held on for dear life with such a deathly grasp. His blood poured into her mouth, and she retched, throwing her body backwards into a roll. She situated herself with cat-like grace at the end of that roll, spinning about, ignoring Doug's cries as he tried to fight through his own shock. Alissa, meanwhile, was staring at the two children, who stood before their mother protectively, staring at Alissa in terror.

Fight the depression! Kill the depression!

"What are you staring at?" whispered Alissa. "Do you see something you fear?"

"M-mama," little Patricia breathed. Despite her massive bleeding wound and bloodied hands, Lola fought hard to pull her children behind her… but Alissa leapt upon them. She scooped up the knife that Lola had dropped when she had pulled it out of herself, and with a fierce slashing motion, cut a deep gash across Lola's face. Lola choked out blood. Her children screamed. Doug screamed. But Alissa kept going. She was on her knees, and putting a fierce amount of strength behind the movement, she sunk the blade into Lola's forehead.

Now, at last, the redheaded mother toppled over, the knife impaled in her skull. She was no longer blocking her children, but instead was lying dead in a massive puddle of blood. And her children stared back at their mother's killer, who was saturated in the redness of her most recent victim.

"Do you see," Alissa whispered to the children, "anything that scares you?"

KILL THE DEPRESSION! KILL THE DEPRESSION!

"RUN!" Doug cried. He was finally on his feet. Alissa, however, stood up and reached her leg backward. Her fierce kick slammed into little Nate's head, which in turn slammed against the side of the kitchen counter. The boy toppled over at once. Patricia screamed an earsplitting sound and ran for the nearby hall, running for the stairs that awaited her there.

Alissa spun around to confront Doug. The man was bruised and bloodied, but nothing compared to the anguish upon his face as he saw his wife and son.

"Maybe he's still alive," Alissa said softly to him, kicking backwards with her boot and landing a fierce attack upon Nate. "Maybe he survived it…"

Doug let out a fierce bellow and ran forward. He, however, had not noticed Alissa pulling the knife out of Lola's head, and as she approached, the blade flew through the air. The first strike, which stopped Doug altogether, sunk into his own forehead. It was quickly pulled out, and it sailed down again, this time hitting his chest and carving downward. Alissa crouched down with him as he fell to his knees, her expression a happy one. She felt the depression leave her.

"Shhh," she advised him, and she kissed him full upon his bloodied lips as he sunk the knife into his stomach, just as she had to Donovan Ventimago. When she removed her lips from his, Doug's light had been extinguished, and he fell forward, next to his wife. Alissa stood in the center of the fallen, bathed in blood, feeling elation and bliss that she knew must be the same feelings that Pamela herself had experienced. She dropped the knife onto the floor, giggling and giggling and giggling.

After several seconds, she knelt down to check on Nate. He was quite dead. Her fierce strike and the counter had crushed his skull. So Woodrue had given her great strength indeed. She grinned.

"One more bout of depression to handle," she whispered. She followed the shrieking Patricia up the stairs. The little girl tried to barricade herself in the hall closet, but Alissa gently grabbed the little girl's leg as she dove in, dragging her out screaming. Alissa sat down atop the girl, and casually began to strangle the life out of little Patricia Alvarez, overpowering the girl's useless struggles as Alissa, feeling that bliss again, drained all light from the little girl.

When the deed was done, Alissa slowly, calmly, entered one of the nearby rooms. It was the girliest room imaginable. Pink wallpaper with purple hearts, stuffed animals overtaking the place, a Spongebob Squarepants television sitting atop a rainbow colored TV stand and a beautiful ornate bed with the furriest of blankets. Alissa fell upon the soft bed, saturating it in the blood that saturated her, and curled up in the blankets. She found the remote nearby, and in the darkness, switched on the television. It was almost nine. True Girls would soon be on.