Mitosis—the undivine act of one splitting off into two, of self-destruction turned into creation—was a term that Elfilis bitterly remembered from their days in a lab full of white-coats. It was one of several words that had (like osmosis) been absorbed into their mind through decades of staring through unbreakable glass at dark, susurrating silhouettes with nimbuses of pure sterile white.
The term came to mind as their other half was ripped from them once again. There was a pain—a deep one not like that of lacerated flesh (they knew that one well enough)—and then there was the subsequent hollow. A mother cell had been forcibly split into two unequal daughter cells.
Elfilis took in a breath that clotted in their still as of yet intact throat. Their flesh began to slough off, sliding and dripping off like condensation going down test tubes. Everything was blurry, and their mind was melting.
Their eyes slid to the blob of bleary pink, its hue beginning to veer into white, white, candid like camera flashes as their vision gave in. A wet growl burbled in their chest. They didn't have much time left until they lost all solidity and became chunky slush on the ground to be shoveled back into a tube in an attempt to stabilize their life.
They would rather die than go back to that laboratory.
So they stood on two semi-gelatinous legs and batted their ears. A good chunk of them shot off and splat against the ground as they launched upward into a sky that had eluded them for so long. (They couldn't even appreciate the stars with their fading vision.)
Pulling from the remaining dregs of energy that they had, they called out to a world that they had seen from the fragments of the penguin's mind: a star-shaped planet, its color a deceptive yellow that would become a lush blend of greens and blues once one got close enough. Gravity fields then intertangled, and both worlds, whether remembered or forgotten, moved toward one another.
Ringing dominated Elfilis' hearing as hunks of land and buildings rushed past them, sometimes wooshing by close enough to make some of their gooey form fly off. But that didn't matter. The exchange between the planets of parts of their makeup only meant that the two were close to conjoining. Elfilis only hoped that they would last long enough to see it through.
Then, over their tinnitus, a clear horn sounded out. Half of their face was starting to hang down lower than their chin, so their already bad vision couldn't be trusted as much, but they could make out the quickly encroaching presence of a pink mass... along with a pinprick of cyan.
Anger, blazing hot white, erupted in their core. Elfilin—the one who got to escape, the one who refused to become whole again, the one who could have fled back to the stars and never laid eyes on that wretched planet ever again but instead chose to stay and ruin everything all over again.
Elfilis had been naïve once. They had listened to that small part of theirself once, so long ago. But no more. They no longer cared about being whole. They just wanted him dead.
It hurt to call upon their power even more, scraping for it like a sample for just one more test, just one more test, but the portals opened regardless. Conglomerates of skyscrapers rushed out toward Elfilin, guided by their hands, only for the pink to dodge it all and continue its path toward them.
Just one more they needed, and so they ripped open another portal, larger than the other two combined. The rusty, creaky metal amalgamation groaned as they sent it straight toward Elfilin, and then it shrieked at the initial pushback.
They remembered Elfilin, staring at them in the Dream Capsule within his own miniature tube. They remembered that growing frown on his face and how his ears drooped. They remembered how he said, "...I'm sorry."
Elfilis gritted the remnants of their teeth. They just wanted him dead.
The pain no longer registered to Elfilis as they forced the conglomerate toward Elfilin once more. The ball of metal screeched to a stop as it hit the two, contorting slightly in shape as Elfilis fought to overcome the strength of the pink one. Time slowed. Their slowing heartbeat pounded in their ears. Sensations gave way to numbing tingles. Black gradually filled their vision.
They couldn't keep it up.
A sharp yell was the last sound that they heard as the metal amalgam exploded, and the pink rammed right through them.
As the massive portal was closed and all grew still, a soul lingered, no longer tethered to a body—yet it refused to move on. It refused for it to be the end. It refused to let that rat get away so easily after everything.
It would get its revenge. It would get its freedom. It would get it all back, even if it meant having to build it all back up by itself—piece by piece, cell by cell.
But first... it required a new vessel.
A/N: I feel like there's a lot of potential in exploring Elfilis and Elfilin's thoughts on each other. Does Elfilis hate Elfilin? Does Elfilin feel regret towards Elfilis? And what does that mean when we're technically talking about two parts of one person? (Could you call it self-hatred and self-pity? Someone lamenting what happened to them and how it fundamentally changed them?)