45. Employee Relations

Twelve minutes later, the shelling had stopped, the convoy was parked outside the town, and Hikari was approaching the Highway 42 barricade, white flag in hand, trying to look as non-threatening as one of the most powerful daemons on the planet possibly could. It probably didn't help that the flag in question had been conjured out of raw warp-energy, and thus contained the destructive potential of a small nuclear bomb, but it had been the best they could get at short notice.

"Good morning," she said politely, sorcerously amplifying her voice to reach the fortifications ahead. "I'm Hikari Horaki. May I speak to Mayor Wright, please?"

"I'm here," a middle-aged man in a threadbare suit replied through a megaphone. "You have five minutes, daemon. Start talking."

Isaiah Wright was not on the local government databases as the mayor of Frenchburg – in fact, they had little to say about him at all. Still, Hikari knew for a fact that he was an extremely brave man, if only because he was the last non-combatant remaining in the town. The convoy's sorcery cadre had detected the remainder of the town's civilians evacuating to hiding places in the nearby hills, leaving the militia to stage a delaying action. It was up to her, of course, to persuade them that such a thing was not necessary.

"Very well, to business then. I am, as you probably know, perhaps the highest-ranking representative of the gods on this planet. This convoy contains extensive food and medical supplies, as well as all the sorcerous assets, security systems, and specialist personnel your town may require to get back on its feet. Furthermore, we have legal personnel, signed authorisation from the highest authorities in our shared civilisation, and just about every other symbol of authenticity you might require in order to check whether we are who we say we are. There's no way we can compensate for the hardships you've been through already, but at the very least, we can end them right now. So, what do you say?"

A pause. "Well, Miss Horaki, that certainly sounds inviting. Tell you what, why don't you send over some of that authentication? Human emissaries, of course. Just to show us you've got 'em."

"That can certainly be arranged. One moment." Captain, send in the legal team. Unarmed, of course. We don't want to escalate this situation any further than it already is.

Aye, ma'am, the Marine replied over the telepathic link, the words slurred and indistinct through inexperience with sorcery. Bit of a risk, though, isn't it? This backwoods crowd seems mighty twitchy.

Hikari smiled, despite knowing the expression would not reach through the link. If it was that much trouble, do you think I would have asked you to do it? Relax, I can ensure their safety well enough without them bringing guns along.

Roger that, ma'am.

The diplomatic limousine was one of the latest civilian models, a sleek, metallic-blue affair gliding over the mangled, potholed road on its four gently humming grav-projectors. It touched down a short distance in front of the barricade, disgorging the smiling, sharply-dressed legal team as they held up the documents bearing the gods' signatures. Slick, professional, and as unthreatening as possible. After all, we've had plenty of practice.

As the meeting-and-greeting began, though, Hikari could not help but feel that something was very, very wrong.

There was a slight pressure on her temples, a vague, indistinct presence emanating from the sides of the valley. It could almost have been dismissed as background interference from the Warp, but it was too coherent, too... structured for that.

Captain, do you have access to the Scholastica Psykana's recruitment rates from this area?

One sec... looks like it's been pretty quiet around here, ma'am. I know that psykers are rare and all, but the Scholastica patrols haven't found any here in over a decade. Weird, huh?

Not if they didn't want to be found. Get your people under cover, captain. I don't like this.

Acknowledged.

Back at the barricade, she could see movement amongst the guards. Again, it was subtle, almost random, but with a clear purpose if one knew what to look for. The legal team were being drawn inward by the Frenchburg negotiators, with more and more militia personnel interposing themselves between the foreign diplomats and the outer defences. Oh, no. I really, really wish I could say I didn't see this coming...

"Mr. Wright," she said aloud, "would you mind telling those soldiers you've got hidden in the hills to call off their ambush, please? I really don't think it would be terribly productive for either of us."

The mayor looked up, eyes wide. "Wait, how did you- fuck. Lieutenant! NOW!"

The hillsides exploded, mortar shells arcing down towards the convoy as the remainder of Frenchburg's militia charged out of their sorcerously-hidden burrows. The barricade guards piled onto the legal team, pressing guns and knives to their vital areas as their compatriots laid down covering fire.

Hikari raised her shield again, projectiles hammering into it like a hellish monsoon and hedge-sorcerers' spells fizzling and dying beneath the otherworldly might of a daemon princess. She wasn't particularly worried by the attack itself – there was nothing they could do to penetrate her wards, and she could teleport the kidnapped diplomats back to safety if it started to look like they were in genuine danger. It seemed likely that Wright's militia knew that too – this was clearly a suicide mission, intended only to stall the intruders long enough for their non-combatants to get to safety. Far more concerning were the reasons behind it.

Her voice carried over the mayhem as though in absolute silence, clear and distinct as if she were speaking directly into the ears of every living being in the valley.

"And what, precisely, would this be about?" she asked calmly.

Mayor Wright, for his part, was rather less tranquil.

"You think you're the first, daemon?" he yelled. "The first to come here with the same fancy documents, with food, with human cat's-paws forced to do your bidding by God-knows-what? We believed you once. We let you in, hoping that our ordeal was finally over, and when you'd taken your toll, when we'd buried the few bodies you'd left, we vowed that it would never happen again. I don't give a crap what title you give yourself, what sort of freakish power you wield, or what promises you want to shove down our throats – this is our city, and so long as we breathe, you will not have it!"

Hikari blinked. "Wait, what do you mean, the same documents? These were signed by the gods themselves!"

"Yeah, then they've got a bit of a counterfeiting problem, haven't they?" The mayor chuckled grimly. "Word to the wise, daemon, don't try the same trick twice. It gets stale."

"Wait," Hikari called, "we need to talk about-"

A sound from behind interrupted her, sending a thread of liquid nitrogen down her spine. It was not especially loud or jarring, just a gentle, rising hum... the sound of an automated turret powering up.

It was routine policy to deactivate a convoy's sentry guns when a convoy arrived in town, lest they respond to any perceived aggression with lethal force. Hikari had never forgotten it before, but with the extra pressure, with Asukhon looking over her shoulder, it had completely slipped her mind, and now hundreds of innocent people who only wanted to protect their homes were going to pay for it. She closed her eyes, knowing that she could not shut them all down in the scant picoseconds she had left, and not wanting to see the carnage that would follow. The carnage that would be entirely her fault.

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

The sky turned red, streamers of fire dancing across it as every turret in the convoy shattered like day-old icing. A figure hundreds of metres tall rose from the vanguard, towering above Frenchburg like the incarnate wrath of God.

Which was, in fact, exactly what it was.

"Hi, Asukhon here, Eightfold Victor, Lady of Rage, unquestioned ruler of this planet and all who dwell upon it, and the closest you inbred yokels are ever going to get to encountering a genuine Supreme Being. Assuming you don't count me as one of those anyway. You at the back, stop grovelling, you'll only get that shiny uniform your mum made for you all dirty. And we don't want that, do we?" Her colossal eyes narrowed. "Now, here's what you're going to do. You're going to stop shooting at my best friend, you're going to take those supplies we were going to dump in your ingrate hovel, and you are going to like them. Then, we will get answers. And if we do not get answers, I will be angry. I am not a fun person when I am angry. Some have even called me... impolite. DO WE HAVE SOME MUTUAL FUCKING COMPREHENSION HERE?"

The shooting stopped, silence ensued, and a not-inconsiderable number of upstanding citizens quietly voided their bowels.

The goddess grinned. "Fantastic. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. This is Hikari's operation. Listen to Hikari. She's nice. You'll like her. Sorry, Hikari. Didn't mean to hog the spotlight."

"That's... fine, Asuka," Hikari managed. "Really, it's fine. OK, we'll start with the medical equipment. Squads one through three, you'll help with unpacking. And don't worry about the autoturrets. I'm sure Asuka can fix them. You... ah... can fix them, right?"

The convoy began to resume its journey, paying a deliberate lack of heed to the titanic deity standing over them. The Frenchburg defenders, for their part, were busy disassembling their roadblock with a quite unseemly amount of haste, some of them stopping every so often for a round of panicked prayer.

It was safe to say, Hikari thought, that this job was not going precisely as she had envisaged.


The mood in Frenchburg was decidedly subdued, like that of a child faced with explaining to his parent why setting the cat on fire had been a completely justified, sensible decision. His abusive parent, in fact, who was fondling a studded belt in a decidedly unsettling manner.

The unarmed civilians had been persuaded to return, as much through fear of divine retribution as through hope that their ordeal was over. They lined the main road, watching wide-eyed as nine-foot-tall Space Marines hauled crate-bedecked grav-pallets towards the courthouse aid station. There were whispers in the crowd, hushed and furtive, and some of the townsfolk would surreptitiously make the sign of the cross every time they thought they were out of sight of the convoy's various nonhuman personnel.

It was not, in short, the sort of welcome that Hikari would have hoped for, but she had to admit that it was far better than having to scrape those same citizens off the Kentucky landscape after the autoturrets were done with them.

She and Asuka were also headed for the courthouse, the goddess having shrunk herself back to less sanity-shattering proportions. Mayor Wright – who had turned out to be a short, round, sleep-deprived man obviously unused to the enormous hunting rifle he carried – had had his staff set up a stage there for the daemon princess to run a Q&A session and assure the citizens that everything was now all right.

This would have been considerably easier if Hikari had been convinced of it herself.

The damage to the town was worse up close, particularly since she could more easily tell what had caused it. Here, a wooden door blackened and warped by a Reigling's acidic bile. There, the charred remains of a building hit by several Black Pharaohs' concentrated fire. And nowhere was there even the slightest hint of the devotional imagery that had once bedecked the inhabitants' homes.

Then her foot struck an irregular object lying in the road, and she saw that she'd been wrong. It was a statuette of red sandstone, still darkly stained with its former owners' modest daily blood-offerings. The head had been snapped off, and a series of crosses crudely scratched into the body, but it was still quite recognisably a depiction of the goddess walking beside her.

She vaporised it with a bolt of hellfire before Asukhon could notice. Warp's teeth, do I trust her so little now? And for that matter, when did I start using the phrase 'warp's teeth'?

Mayor Wright had already started addressing the crowd at the courtyard, explaining to them as best he could that the great big army of monsters, mutants, and daemon-worshippers that had just turned up only wanted to give them presents, and were being refreshingly laid-back about the whole 'extended artillery bombardment' business. Most of them looked more surprised by the fact that he was still alive than anything else, and Hikari was reminded yet again of the astonishing courage it must have taken to stay behind with his pitiful little army and try to delay the certain doom approaching his people. If anyone were to come out of this well, she vowed to herself, it would be Isaiah Wright.

"... but that's enough from me," the mayor said. "In addition to the Lady Asukhon, who most of you have already... erm... experienced, we have the privilege of playing host to the gods' chosen daemon princess, the First Ascended, Hikari Horaki herself!"

Hikari strolled onto the stage, carefully ignoring the mutters at the back and the scattered nature of the applause. Wright, for his part, gave her the sort of awkward, please-don't-hurt-anyone smile that only someone who had recently tried to blow said smile's recipient up could accomplish.

"Thank you, Mr. Wright," she said into the microphone. "People of Frenchburg, I wish I could tell you that I understand what you have been through, that I could bring back all that you have lost, that I could take ten years' worth of pain away in the blink of an eye. I cannot. All I can tell you is this – it has ended. No longer will you eke out a living from the bare, dry ground. No longer will you watch and wait as your population dwindles through sickness, through accident, and through predation. No longer will you live in fear for every minute of every hour of every day, for the world has not – for we have not forgotten about you. We have food to fill your bellies. We have clothes to shield your bodies. We have building materials to repair your homes. Whatever you wish for, you will be provided wi-"

A rock flew out of the crowd, bouncing harmlessly off her forehead. In an instant, Asukhon was beside her, blades drawn.

"All right, who the hell threw that?"

"I did."

The Frenchburgers drew apart, revealing a scrawny, bald-headed old man who glared at the two women with undisguised hatred.

"Do you think that's it, daemon?" he spat. "Do you think that you can buy us off with cheap gifts? Do you think you can make us forget what your kind did to us in the first place?"

Asukhon gazed at him, her expression impossible to read. "And your name is...?"

"James Macpherson. Born and raised in Frenchburg, witness to everything that you filth tried to-"

She waved him off. "OK, yeah, you're old, crazy, and pissed, I get the picture. You can shut up now."

Black iron spears rained from the sky, forming a cage around the heckler. Red fluid trickled from where their points had struck the ground, as if the very earth itself were bleeding. The Goddess of Rage grinned, her razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the flickering light of the warp-storm above.

"Now... where were we?"

"Asuka, it's fine, you don't need to do this..." Hikari began desperately.

"Sorry, Hikari, I do. See, complaining is fine with me. Disagreeing with our policies? Absolutely cool. Hell, Jimmy, you might be right that our response here is a tad on the half-assed side, considering what this town's been through. But then you tried to hurt a friend of mine during a ceasefire. Doesn't matter that you failed. Doesn't matter that you had less chance of succeeding than a gnat trying to kick down Everest. You. Tried. To. Hurt. My. Friend. And it's a crying shame, Jimmy, but that shit just does not fly."

Her face was an inch away from the bars, her golden eyes burning with the promise of divine retribution. Macpherson, however, did not seem appropriately intimidated by this. In fact, he was laughing, tears streaming from his eyes.

"Oh, missy, that's touching. That really is. So what about those who aren't your friends? What about the rest of us? Do we just have to eat dirt whilst your servants tear us to shreds, then act all grateful when you bother to remember we exist? Is that how it works?"

Asukhon hesitated, eyeing her captive from head to toe. "Hold on, am I missing something here? Some kind of medical record, senility, Alzheimer's, whatever? You, uh, do realise that you're talking to a god here, right? You know, really really powerful being who could squash you like a bug in seconds? Just want to know where we're standing, is all."

"Yeah, I know what I'm looking at," Macpherson replied. "Some girl who thinks that killing me qualifies as some sort of evidence of divinity. Missy, I've lived on this Earth for ninety-six years. A cold winter could kill me. A steep flight o'stairs could kill me. Some tiny little bug that'd hardly inconvenience someone half my age – bam, I'm dead. So go ahead. Show these good people what a mighty, powerful being y'are by slaughtering an old man, and send me off to meet some genuine god on the other side. It ain't like you've left me much that I particularly want to hold on to."

"A genuine god, eh?" the goddess purred. "And where, exactly, are you going to find one of those?"

A bony hand reached into a breast pocket, drawing out a tattered Bible. "Here, for a start. And sure, I've read that propaganda you pumped out, about how the old faiths ain't done nothing for us, about how it's pointless to cling onto our ancestral delusions when genuine divinity walks among us... but y'know, He has done something for me. When the skies changed, He listened. When the plants withered and died, when the plagues came, when the hellbeasts cut a bloody swathe through man, woman, and child alike, He listened. He guarded our souls through ten years of hell on Earth, and when the daemons came to take away my daughter and her family, when their claws tore out my grandson's spine as he tried to stop him, it wasn't His face they were wearing. It was yours. Yours and your husband's and all the rest of you posturing filth's. You ain't a god, missy. You ain't a bringer of hope, a preserver and creator. You and your kind belong somewhere a little bit lower... and a whole lot warmer."

"I see. And here I was, giving you an out with the whole senility thing. I'm not totally unreasonable, you know. Still, if that's how you want to play it..." Asukhon gave her muscles a long, feline stretch, her claws extending to the length of breadknives.

"L-lady Asukhon, I feel I must object."

Hikari snapped her gaze away from the mesmeric sight before her, becoming aware once more of her immediate surroundings. The Frenchburgers were drawing closer to the goddess and the pensioner, led by the trembling form of Mayor Wright. Asukhon glanced at them, and they shrank back... but not by very much.

"Wow, that is a lot of disappointed faces," she said, a smirk flickering across her face. "Let's see here, we've got heresy, blasphemy, treachery, a whole bunch of misdemeanours ending in Ys, and none of you give a crap. Why should you, though? He's not the only one to lose faith here, is he? Not the only one so scarred by this decade out of our sight that he's forgotten about the eighteen years of paradise we granted you before?"

"All we-" Wright began, before a claw gently placed at his lips silenced him.

"Oh, hush, it's fine, I get it. Hell, if I were in your place, I'd probably be thinking the same. I'm just another warlord, right? Just another monster who crawled out of Third Impact, broke your stuff, and would not go away." She knelt down until she was face-to-face with a wide-eyed child hiding behind her mother's leg. "How about you, little miss? Scared of the big red spiky-lady? Of course you are."

The crowd was silent now, paralysed. The convoy crews had stopped working, listening as raptly as those they had come to assist. Nobody wanted to interrupt an all-powerful Warp-being in the middle of her monologue, accidentally or otherwise.

"To be honest, we haven't been doing much to help, have we? Those eighteen years... they weren't bad, exactly. We made this world a nice, safe place, somewhere that you could raise your children and people wouldn't look at you funny for having three noses. Problem is, that's all it was. Nice. Safe. Good enough. A comfortable dead end. We created a retirement home for our species, then fucked off to do our own thing. And when the rest of the multiverse noticed us, when we had to get off our backsides and act, it was you folks who got hurt. You folks who suffered. Am I right or am I right?"

In an instant, she was standing again, her aura flowing over the crowd like a river of invisible fire. "But none of that changes the fact that we are gods. In fact, for all our complacency, for all our neglect, we're still more deserving of the name than any tree-spirit or beard-in-the-sky you care to name in this old dirtball's long, long history. Everything we have promised, we can give you, and I think it's high time I provide a demonstration."

The air pressure rose oppressively, the world taking on a faint crimson tinge, and the townsfolk stepped away from Macpherson's cage – all except for Wright, who bowed his head and dug in his heels as the etheric storm washed over him.

"Thing is, though, even when you're playing in our league, you can't get something for nothing," Asukhon continued. "To make a change – a proper, lasting change – you have to make sacrifices. For light, there must be darkness. For life, there must be death. For relief, there must be suffering. And above all of these, above everything in this universe, there must be blood."

Carmine lightning poured from the sky, dancing across Frenchburg's low, shallow rooftops.

"Blood... for the Blood God."

And inside his bladed prison, James Macpherson started screaming.

At first, it was impossible for Hikari to tell what was hurting him so, why he curled into a ball, clawing at his face. Then she, along with everyone else, saw the shapes moving beneath his skin, the unnatural twisting of his limbs, and the way the ground began to shift beneath him.

Macpherson's back arched, his head thrown back, his face a bloody ruin. Thick, brown roots burst out of his mouth, bone crunching as his skull was forced beyond any human tolerance, and sprouts of bright, vivid green emerged from his arms and legs, pushing through wrinkled, aged skin. A moment later, more plants erupted from the ground beneath him, wrapping around their parent and carrying his disintegrating body upwards.

The cage-spears collapsed outwards, carried by the tide of vegetation along with the shredded fragments of the old man's mortal remains. The screaming continued, and Hikari knew she did not want to find out what part of her goddess's newborn creation was still capable of human speech.

Perhaps the most horrific thing of all, though, was that she understood what was happening.

Asukhon was the one who had explained it, in fact, in the days after Third Impact when Hikari was wondering why she wasn't dead any more. It was incorrect, strictly speaking, to say that the gods fed on suffering. Instead, they fed on emotions – in Asukhon's case, rage, hatred, and similar expressions of the desire to do deeply unpleasant things to people you didn't like – and times of great turmoil and suffering tended to cause and be caused by the kinds of unhealthily strong emotion that offered them particular nourishment. Frenchburg, with its years of pent-up resentment and xenophobia, was a particularly tasty treat – though, admittedly, one that barely registered to the universe-spanning appetites of a Chaos God.

Mostly, this feeding was passive. All that a Warp-entity had to do was exist in the same universe as beings capable of its patron emotion, and it would be nourished indefinitely. The more suitable mortals present, the more powerful the entity. It wasn't even parasitic – that would imply that something was being taken away. However, it was also possible for a god to engage in active feeding, directly touching a living being's soul and drawing out a more potent, purified form of food-energy through appropriately holy conduits, if they wanted a quick and easy power-boost. Like now.

Asukhon was using Macpherson's blood as her conduit, drawing out the light of his soul in order to bless Frenchburg with the new life it had been denied for so long. It was a genuine miracle, the hand of the divine at work in a way that no-one present could refute.

Hikari just wished that it didn't involve a frail old man being ripped to shreds. Particularly since a few milligrams from the veins of everyone in town would have done the job just as well. Ah, but that wouldn't have been nearly as fun, would it? a nasty little voice in the back of her head whispered. Got to keep the glorious Lady Asukhon happy. Even if it does involve being an accessory to murder. Because if we don't... who knows what's going to happen?

She ignored it, as she had the past dozen times she had heard it, and kept watching. It was all she could do.

The wave of plantlife broke against the crowd, racing past them towards the distant hills. Red light began to gather around where Macpherson had once stood, steadily building in volume and intensity until it erupted in a vast, blinding flare. When it dissipated, everything had changed.

The sky was a deep, cloudless blue, the sun shining down on acre after acre of ripened crop-fields that gently rippled in the wind. Beyond, the endless forests of the Daniel Boone reserve stretched to the horizon, seeming greener and more welcoming than at any other time in living memory. Frenchburg's streets were clear of debris, broad and welcoming and lined with tall, graceful trees sporting fruits of every description, hanging alongside each other, bulging and ripe, regardless of climate, season, and even the boundaries of species.

The area in front of the courthouse was now a flower-covered meadow, their petals a bewildering, hypnotic array of colours both known and unknown to human sight. Delicate vines trailed over the ruined sculpture-barricade in front of the entrance, the curls of their tendrils depicting scenes from the gods' ascension in minute detail.

At the centre of it all, where Macpherson's cage had been only a few minutes ago, was a single, massive tree of completely indeterminate species, its mighty boughs dragged down by an even greater variety of fruit than any of the others, and its swaying leaves shielding the entire assembled crowd from the bright midday sun.

There was a creaking from inside its trunk, the bark pulled itself apart... and Mayor Wright popped out, roots bursting from the ground to catch him in a makeshift chair.

At that point, Hikari stopped watching. The sacrifice had been bad enough on its own, but she could deal with that. She couldn't like it, but she could deal with it. To cap it off in such an absurd, cartoonish manner, though, to show just how insignificant an effort it had actually been... that, she could not deal with. Not whilst remaining sane.

Asukhon had started making another speech, and the daemon princess could fill in the words without even listening. Not even a beginning, only a tech demo, obviously you'll want a little more than some nice vegetation as compensation, let's see what we can do... The energies of the Warp gathered again, drawing the decades of rage from the soil of Frenchburg as the goddess worked her magic. Still, Hikari did not, could not watch. Instead, she turned her attention back to her convoy.

The supply teams were already packing up, their efforts irrelevant before the divine intervention unfolding around them. Some were simply staring at the spectacle, their duties forgotten, whilst others muttered prayers that Hikari doubted were all from approved scriptures. A splash of too-red blood struck a grey-haired, paunchy technician in the back of the neck and he fell to the ground, the thousand imperfections of age and ill-health melting away from his frame as his eyes blazed with awakened sorcerous power. Trucks attempting to navigate the pothole-studded highway found their route transmuted into a pristine ribbon of fresh, black tarmac, whilst yet more sprays of the sacred blood, seemingly released from Frenchburg's very soil, washed away wear, grime, and malfunction from their now-gleaming hulls.

Finally, it was over, and she forced herself to turn back towards the town they had come to save. It would have been easy to say that Frenchburg was unrecognisable, but that was simply not the case. Instead, it was... more, the Platonic ideal that the old Frenchburg had seemingly been a faded, muddied reflection of. Houses had become mansions, but were still recognisably of the same general architectural style and construction. The courthouse could now more accurately be described as a cathedral, its walls covered with even more ornate decorations than the ones the townsfolk had previously erased, but retained its basic shape and structure. The valley itself seemed to have expanded, widening and deepening to contain the plenties within. Finally, the people themselves were younger, healthier, and more vibrant, their souls alight with Warp-power. Some of the younger ones had already started experimenting, taking short flights over the rooftops and telekinetically plucking fruit from the trees, whilst the adults simply stood where they were, gazing about in utter, sanity-straining incomprehension.

Mayor Wright was weeping. Hikari did not think that even he could have properly articulated all the reasons why.

A hand landed on her shoulder, causing her to start in a quite undaemonlike manner. Asukhon was standing next to her, an apologetic smile hovering about her lips.

"Hi there, Hikari. Can we talk, please?"

"S-sure, Asuka. What is it?"

The goddess averted her eyes. "The daemon attacks, the ones you've been clearing up after. The ones that wrecked this town. That was... that was me."

Hikari blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You... know how crafted daemons work, right? I told you, I must have done." Asukhon was close now, talking fast, her words tripping over each other. "They're... parts of me, extensions of my mind and body." Light flashed in the palm of her hand, a tiny female figure blinking and yawning. "See that? That's me. What I feel, she feels. What I think, she thinks. You can't deceive a crafted daemon. You can't muddy its orders. Everything they do, they do because I wanted to do it."

"Asuka, are you saying...?"

"Yeah, I am. There was a part of me that wanted to destroy those towns, kill those people. A part of me that wanted to burn them out of the mudpiles they call houses, split them apart and feast on their bones. And I know why."

Hikari said nothing. Her old friend was still gripping her shoulder, knuckles hard and pale inside her carmine skin.

"You saw it yourself, Hikari. You saw it when I ended that old coot Macpherson. I felt his death, you know. I felt every moment of it. His skin splitting, his organs collapsing, the little tingles of electricity along his nerves as his brain shut down... oh God, it was wonderful."

Asukhon shuddered, her face warring between rapture and loathing. A finger stroked Hikari's shoulder, seemingly of its own volition.

"And you know what? Every time I draw on more power, every time I try to pull ourselves out of this mess we've landed in... it gets better. I don't just want this bloodshed, this chaos any more, I need it. I'm... slipping. I know this is temporary, that it'll all be over in just a few short weeks, but... I'm feeling less and less like myself every day. I need... I need someone to talk to. Someone who isn't losing themselves the same way I am. I know you've got a lot on your plate, Hikari, and I know that most of it's my – our – fault... but can you do that for me? Please?"

Memories surfaced in the dark corners of Hikari's mind. The bloody ruin they had found in a house in Louisville, all that was left of a family of six after the Valkyries had descended upon them. The smile on Asukhon's face as she watched a ninety-six-year-old draw his final, shrieking breaths. The long, terrible hours in the darkness beneath the Palace of the Gods, with only the creature she had once called Misato Katsuragi for company.

"Of course, Asuka," she replied, placing her own hand atop the Goddess of Rage's much larger one. "What else are friends for?"

An apple plucked from the courthouse tree bounced and rolled past their feet, rapidly pursued by a laughing Frenchburg child. In its gleaming red surface, Hikari saw the reflection of an old man's screaming face.


Author's Notes: So we got a bit into real-world religion this chapter – always a fun little powderkeg. For the record, I'm an atheist – I have no real objection to religion as a concept, but have personally never felt a particular need for or inclination towards it. If you find anything I've written grotesquely offensive, feel free to rant at length in the reviews section, and I'll be sure to pay heed. Everyone makes mistakes, but that's no excuse not to learn from them.

Oh, and since Frenchburg, Kentucky, is actually a real city, that goes for any disgruntled citizens from there, too. Hey, count yourselves lucky that you got off better than any of my Vietnamese readers, at least...