A/N: Please read, it's pretty important. XD So I went back and rewrote these last few chapters. I wasn't happy with it, and I feel like I should be happy with what I'm writing. Needless to say, I'm very, very happy with what I'm writing now and I can't wait for you to read it. I hope you can forgive me.

I would suggest going back and reading this from the very beginning. Otherwise you'll miss some pretty big plot details. Thank you so much for your support, it means the whole universe to me. The universe is pretty vast.

I love you!

-Phan
(Ps. These chapters have some pretty dark themes that help deepen KrishnaLan's character. Reading discretion advised.)

Krish, with all the time she spent killing them, had a lot of time to think about criminals.

Criminals, she decided, are a completely different species from the average human being. They think differently, they act differently. When they look out into the world, they don't see it as beautiful, they see it as a series of potential crimes.

For some psychopaths, it isn't even their fault that they're different. They have diseases lodged deep within their brain that change them, neurological pathogens that alter the very essence of who that person could have been. But, whether it's the fault of the psychopath or not, they are still different.

Krish treated her victims like livestock. She normally didn't have anything personal against them – it was just good business. She was sent somewhere to kill someone because of what they'd done to others – not because of anything they'd done to her. It was slice, dice, and move on. That's how KrishnaLan's work had always been; nothing more, nothing less.

But this.

This was personal.

It didn't take long to find Charlie's killer. Though it felt like longer, because Krish was dealing with an extreme wound in her proxy body. Also, Charlie seemed to have been near-sighted.

That didn't help.

All that aside, the killer didn't go far, and Krish didn't have very much trouble tracking him down. He was clumsy and dull, leaving far too many footprints in his wake, and Krish tracked him with ease. She was led to a small, grimy apartment building with dark windows and dark doors. It would be a quick-in, quick-out, and then Krish would be on her way.

Pulling a rusty, bent saw blade from a scrap pile next to the building, Krish eased the door open and stepped inside.

The long saw blade dragged on the stairs as Krish walked, her fingertips barely hooked over the handle. Her other hand was gripping onto her wound, keeping the bleeding at bay. She hadn't taken the knife out of her stomach yet. She planned on using that in a moment.

It had been a long time since she'd delivered someone's Karma, and she couldn't help but get the feeling that she was the masked antagonist in a bloody slasher movie. It was a pretty great feeling.

Krish eased open the doors to a few empty rooms before she got the right one. The large man was turned around, washing his hands at a sink and coughing every few seconds. He didn't hear the saw blade scraping into the room or the door creak closed behind it.

"Uh, hi!" Krish said cheerily in Charlie's scratchy, dead voice. The man turned around abruptly with panicked eyes. It was a jumpscare kind of panic. He didn't seem to register who was standing in the room or the weapon she was holding. But the realization slowly dawned on him, and Krish watched his small, rat-like eyes sheen over with genuine fear. He was muscular and scruffy, with a curve to his back like some sort of animal. His eyes looked down at the knife jutting from his victim's torso.

"I thought I…" He grunted in a low voice. "I thought I killed the likes of you…"

Krish rubbed her neck and started walking toward him. "Let me introduce myself first… my name is Krish. And I'm possessing the body of a girl named Charlie. Now, who are you?"

He was about to answer, but Krish interrupted him.

"You know…I don't really care. All I need to know is that you raped Charlie in an alleyway and left her to die. And let's just say…" KrishnaLan lifted the saw and ran her hand slowly over its surface, watching the blood from her fingers trail over the fading metal. Her eyes slowly tipped up to look at his again, dark and sinister with the spirit of KrishnaLan shining through. "I really didn't appreciate that."

The idiotic brute finally processed what was about to happen, and he tried to take action; he scrambled for a gun that was placed on the countertop on the wall. But KrishnaLan was quicker. She pulled the knife out of her abdomen, yanked his shoulder so she was facing her again, and plunged the blade into his chest.

She wanted to make it more colorful, more brutal, but he dropped to the ground before she could carve him out any more. And he writhed there slowly.

Krish stooped next to him and held the saw up to his neck.

"I'm going to cut off your head. And I hope you know," irritation pricked at her voice. "I'm missing a date with a Norse God because of you."

Meanwhile...

"Come on, Renette, let me just walk you home." The young man threw his arms around his girlfriend, and she laughed and tried to resist.

"No, I can get home by myself, I promise." She said simply.

"You don't know what kinda creeps lurk around this place." The young man insisted again. "I don't want you to have to deal with anything without me there next to you."

"I'll be fine, really, Paul." Renette insisted again, though she didn't resist when Paul put his arm around her and walked with her. "I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand. There aren't many people around here anyway. Just a whole lot of abandoned complexes and old homeless men."

"Old folks nowadays, you never know how dangerous they can be until one of 'em bites you."

"Oh, come off it Paul!" Renette laughed and gave him a light shove. "You're acting like I'm going to be decapitated or something."

"In places like this, heads will roll."

"You're scaring me."

"I'm sorry, Renette. Listen, just let me walk you home. And if your folks let me, I might even crash the night. Just to make sure you're okay." Paul's voice descended into more serious tones. "I've been watching the news recently and after everything that's been going on in New York, I don't want to take any chances."

"Are you talking about that whole superhero ordeal?" Renette's voice held a note of 'you have to be kidding me.' "Come on, Paul, all that got cleaned up. Remember? Everything is fine."

"I hope so." They approached a narrower street with more of the abandoned buildings that Renette talked about. But when Paul looked up at one of the windows and saw shadows moving around inside, he couldn't help but point it out. "Renette, I thought you said these buildings were abandoned?"

"They are."

"Then what's…?" Before Paul could finish his sentence, something was thrown from the window. It fell down the few flights and then splattered onto the concrete, rolling a few feet awkwardly.

Renette let out a bloodcurdling scream. Paul's eyes were locked on it and he started to feel sick at both the situation and the irony.

It was a decapitated head.

Krish stumbled through the park. This was as far as she was going to be able to go.

The skewered swings rocked back and forth slowly with the breeze, aching with each motion. The playground remained absolutely motionless. Krish could feel an inkling as to where Loki and her hairclip were, but there was no way she could reach him with how quickly this body was dying. And she wouldn't be able to reach him with a mortal body anyway.

But the hours she spent in this body were well worth it.

Feeling the demise of Charlie's body being evident, KrishnaLan crawled underneath the branches of a willow tree in the ghetto children's park. She propped herself against the trunk and breathed heavily, looking back at the trails of blood she'd matted down the grass with. The willow branches swayed around her like ghosts, first one way and then the next, beckoning her back into the void between life and death; a particular void that Krish had spent the majority of her time floating in.

Her head bent down slightly, and she looked at the blood covering her hands. Some of it was Charlie's. Some of it was her killer's. And sitting there in the quietness, Krish noticed something that she hadn't noticed before.

She could access Charlie's memories.

It was an incredible, humbling experience, to look through those index cards of memory and vicariously live a life that Krish had always wanted. Charlie lived freely. She didn't have any Hindu gods that she needed to work for or report back to. Charlie was just a mortal. And yet, in her 18 years, three months, and four days, she had lived more life than KrishnaLan had lived in millennia.

KrishnaLan closed her eyes.

When Krish died under that willow tree, it was Charlie's life that flashed before her eyes. Not her own.

In a few moments, the death was over and KrishnaLan's spirit was left to wander senselessly again. All pain, all feeling in general, was gone and Krish was looking at Charlie's dead body from the outside. Aside from the blood, Charlie's expression was at peace – she looked like she was sleeping. Krish felt like she'd known this girl forever. For some reason, as KrishnaLan's spirit walked away from Charlie's body, she felt like she was leaving behind a friend.