January 1st, 2023

Arya's POV:

Somewhat to my shock, when we dashed back to camp and started kicking open doors, everyone was fine. Freaked out by our sudden entrance, sure. Annoyed and confused at our insistence that they needed to get out of their cabins, yes. But none of them were injured or even inconvenienced in any way, since most had started getting dressed when they'd heard the explosion.

We had them assemble by the ashes of their earlier campfire and did a quick headcount. Three boys, three girls, and all of them eyeing me and the now-human Rex in a dubious sort of way which made me uncomfortably aware that all of us were the same age and any authority Rex and I had over them was nebulous at best.

"Okay, here's the deal." I said, striving to sound as professional and competent as possible and absolutely not someone you should fuck with. "We're part of a DWMA task force that got called here because of a suspected Kishin Egg in the area, and we came to this camp following its trail. Since the bridge back to town just got blown up by a person or persons unknown, stranding all of us out in the wilderness, I think it's safe to assume that it's actually here."

There was some alarm at that, and they stopped eyeing me and Rex like we were an invading clique and more like the monster-hunters that we actually were.

"Right, so." I clapped my hands together. "Everybody's here… where's Jenny?"

"Miss Morrison?" one of the girls asked. I hadn't yet attached names to faces. "She should be here."

The other teenagers started looking around nervously at those words, and most of them edged closer together. I exchanged a panicked glance with Rex.

Shit and fuck.

I knew, I knew that there was only one fate for a person who wandered off on their own and then failed to show up at the panicked headcount later. Even if I'd known her for only about ten minutes, my heart plunged.

"Okay," I said, taking a deep breath and fighting down both grief and guilt. "Okay, so, I'm gonna ask that everyone heads to the dining hall ASAP. We'll be with you, so-"

"So what good'll that do?!" one of the boys cried, interrupting both me and Rex –who was an amazing partner– as he was already trying to shepherd them in the right direction.

"You'll be in a locked building with food, water, and facilities, for one thing." I snapped back without missing a beat, grabbing the idiot's arm and tugging. Outdoorsy or not, I'd been doing muscle exercises and combat training for two years, and I could yank him along easily. "Leaving us free to do our jobs."

There was a volley of nervous protests and questions at that, but I let the barrage of noise wash over me without paying attention. They were panicking, quite deservedly so, but we needed to get them all in one defensible location and lock it down quickly, before the killer struck again.

Back into the resin-scented dining hall we went, parking the campers by where we'd met with Jenny earlier.

"Okay, here's how it's going to go." I said. "There's food and water in the kitchen. Me and Rex will sweep the building to make sure it's clear, then lock you in. You will not undo those locks. You will not open the windows. If someone comes frantically knocking at this door, you will ignore them. As far as you are now concerned, nothing outside this dining hall exists, and you will stay put until we find this Kishin Egg and kill it. Got that?"

Everyone nodded with varying degrees of reluctance and relief.

"Good. Rex, I'll get the kitchen, you make sure that it's not hiding under the tables or something."

With that, I left the group, with Rex starting a wary scan and the campers suddenly raking the room with desperate suspicion in their eyes, like they were searching for a human-sized spider.

The kitchen was semi-industrial, with shining steel fixtures and a bucketload of larger appliances meant to cook for groups. The walls and floor were still wood, but it was paler, and had been covered with some kind of coating that was likely meant to make it both more resistant to heat and easier to clean.

I pulled out my Colt the moment I stepped through the door, thumbing the hammer with a click. Now that the incident of a slasher had been incited, any time I was on my own was a moment of premium risk, especially searching through a place like this, with so many excellent places to hide.

Trying to remember every horror movie I'd ever seen, I slowly circled the room. Nothing on the floor, nothing hiding under the large, cut-scarred table that was floating in the center of the room as an island counter. Nothing underneath the empty sections of the counters lining the room except closed cupboards and buckets of cleaning supplies and rags.

When I reached the back door, I slowly reached out and tested the handle. It turned freely, which meant it wasn't already locked –something that I was quick to remedy with a firm click. I tugged at the handle again, and it refused to move. Good.

That done, I finally felt safe enough to turn my back to the wall and inspect the room again. I was thorough. By god, was I thorough: I opened the cupboards, I checked the freezer and the fridge, and I even opened the oven and squinted inside. Only when I was completely satisfied that there was nothing and no one inside the kitchen except myself did I slowly, cautiously scoot over to the walk-in pantry, keeping my gun cocked and at the ready.

I nudged open the door with my foot. At first glance, there was nothing but food both prepackaged and otherwise stacked on the shelves, and I tossed a wary look over my shoulder before hooking my foot around a bag of peas on the ground at the front corner near the door. I dragged that hefty sack over the lintel, making sure that if someone did leap out and try to slam the door shut to lock me in the pantry, the sack of peas would prevent the door from even closing. Only then did I feel safe enough to creep inside.

Moving cautiously and always making sure that I would be able to swing and shoot my gun at anything that moved, I sorted through the pantry, pushing bags and boxes aside and making sure that there was no impossibly-contorted serial killer hiding behind the groceries on the shelf.

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

My entire ribcage collapsed with a sigh of relief as I clicked the safety back on my Colt, easing out of my tense and ready position. Okay. Okay. So, if Rex didn't find anything in the dining room –and I was almost certain that he wouldn't– this building, at least, was safe.

I nudged the peas back into their prior position and stepped out of the pantry, closing and locking it behind me just for reassurance's sake before heading back to the main hall.

…a very odd sight greeted me when I arrived, since Rex was standing with his back firmly against a service closet with the other teenagers gathered around him, all babbling at top speed.

"Uh, mind telling me what the heck is this?"

Rex looked towards me with unmitigated relief.

"Arya!" he gasped, and the kid from before elbowed me.

"Elaine thought that since we'd be stuck here all night, we'd get out some blankets to make it easy, but hat boy over here took one look and slammed the closet shut, and now he says we can't open it."

I looked towards Rex and raised my eyebrows expectantly. He rolled his own eyes slightly and reached out to seize my wrist, dragging me in so that his mouth was against my ear.

"There's a body in there." he hissed frantically.

"What, are we talkin' dead body or enemy body?" I asked, maybe not as quietly as I should've. The other kids all stiffened, and before either of us could do anything the blond kid had bodychecked both me and Rex to the side and ripped open the closet door. Something wet and lumpy tumbled out from his force –or maybe just the sheer narrative momentum– and landed on the polished wooden floor with a gory splat.

There was enough of the body left to recognize that it was Jenny, but that was just about it.

"Fuck." I muttered under my breath from where we had landed on the floor.

Rex groaned and nodded agreement.

As may be expected when civilian teenagers were confronted with the mangled body of someone they knew, panicked chaos exploded in the room. Several of the girls screamed and clutched each other, starting to babble at a pace which very quickly ascended to the hysterical, and the guys all shouted and jumped back. One of the girls even seized a bench and heaved it up, slamming it against the floor with an almighty crash to apparently try and wrench a length of wood from it to use as a weapon. Another kid turned green and began to heave into the nearby trash can.

Among all this chaos, Rex and I were hastily getting to our feet and moving to block the exits.

"Hey!"

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!"

"Hey, listen-"

"I-I think I'm gonna hurl too-"

"The fuck is going on here?! We're trapped like rats, we need to get out before-"

"Before what? The bridge is out!"

"Now, hang on a minute-"

"HEY!"

"There's no way, there's no way, this isn't happening, oh god…"

Rex and I exchanged frustrated looks as the conflicting torrent of shouts rattled over us, completely blocking out any efforts to restore order.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Fuck it.

Eyeing the frantic campers, I took my Colt out of its holster, thumbed the hammer, and swung it up towards the ceiling, before firing off a single shot. Though only a .45 caliber, the sound still roared through the cavernous room, bringing everyone's terrified babbling to a sudden halt.

"Hey, hi. Remember us?" I asked pointedly. "The two DWMA students that got called in to take care of this? Nice to meet you too. Now, can everyone sit down, shut the hell up, and let us do our jobs?"

Unsurprisingly, they sat.

"Look," I continued in as utterly reasonable a tone as I could manage as Rex came to stand beside me and I holstered my gun. "The two of us are professionals. We know what we're doing here, and we've checked over this whole building. Whatever killed Ms. Morrison and stuffed her body in the closet isn't in here anymore –and we've locked all the doors and windows, so it can't get back in. What we need you guys to do more than anything, is stay put while we go out and hunt this thing down."

"And pile barricades in front of all the entrances and exits." Rex added.

"Yeah, that too. We can do our job a lot quicker and easier if we don't have to worry about you guys being in a secure location." I said. "Trust us. This will be fine. Everything's under control. Now, uh, let's drape a tablecloth over Ms. Morrison, and Rex and I will head out."

"I feel sorry for them." Rex said when we stood outside the dining hall again, listening to the scraping noises inside as they shoved furniture against the doors and windows.

I did, too. I'd unfortunately had enough experience with corpses that what had happened to Jenny was unfortunate rather than sickening, but I couldn't imagine the same ran true for her campers, who also had the dubious benefit of much more time to bond with her and therefore be grieved by her death.

Not to mention that her corpse would start to smell and decompose before too terribly long, even under a sheet. There'd already been a strong tang of blood in the air by the time we'd squeezed out through the front door, although that may have something to do with just how brutally she'd been chopped up.

"Right, well, we'll need to be quiet for this bit." I said. "Transform?"

Rex obligingly twisted into the shape of a giant fuckoff sword, which I caught.

He remained silent as I cautiously crept away from the dining hall, sticking to the shadows and hopefully –if anyone or anything was watching– blending into the darkness. My flashlight was turned off, and the only light came from the stars peeping through the trees (the moon hadn't risen yet) and the faint gleams of yellow light shining through the cracks of the dining hall's doors and windows. Still, I didn't know where or what the Kishin Egg was, so it was best to be cautious.

I felt a slight hum of confusion vibrate the sword in my hand as I stopped at one of the nearby buildings –the long one used for official purposes and paperwork– and very carefully began to climb the drainpipe, Rex dangling from my free hand.

"Arya, what-"

"Shh!"

Being excruciatingly careful not to let him scrape against the wall, or make the pipe creak with our combined weight, I finally mounted the roof and rolled into a ready position, belly-down and with Rex laid flat beside me. I caught his nonplussed reflection in the faint light, and he raised a silent but very eloquent eyebrow in my direction. I held a finger to my lips, then looked back down at the camp below.

My logic here was very simple. Teenagers were the natural prey of slasher villains, and so with us, the nominal remaining authority figures, having left after very sternly telling said teenagers to stay put, we had primed them to leave the safety of the dining hall and fall right into the slasher's open, bloodied arms. I had no doubt a furious argument was currently going on in the building we had left –I could hear raised voices even through the thick log walls, although I couldn't tell who was saying what– about whether or not they should listen to us or, well… whichever excuse to leave the cabin made most sense to them.

Go for help in the city, maybe, ignoring the fact that the bridge was out and it would take days to get there on foot.

Get revenge for what happened to Ms. Morrison, once again ignoring the very simple fact that they were not trained to fight at all and the killer was definitely carrying something sharp.

Make out in a private corner because the threat of death is super hot, actually, although that seemed more in line with pervy B-movies than anything actually realistic. Eh, it was possible. This universe did tend to have a lot of male-oriented fanservice.

Whatever the actual content of their argument was, though, our teenage campers were going to try and leave the dining hall, and I knew that the Kishin Egg would almost certainly be waiting for them when they did. Maybe it was more than a bit messed-up to essentially use these kids as bait to lure out a murderer, but… well, I didn't have any other ideas. If the Kishin Egg had gone to the trouble of blowing up the bridge, then the phone lines would undoubtedly have also been cut, and we had no way to contact the outside world. Classic bottle-episode scenario. Any solutions I had, I had to come up with using the resources that were on the ground here.

There was too much ground to cover for me and Rex to effectively search for the Kishin Egg even with the campers' help –spreading yourselves thin and getting isolated was basically a death sentence in slasher movies. Therefore, shoving them all into one secure building was the best move –but because it was the best move, I knew something was going to happen to disrupt it. This sort of thing happened all the time in horror: find shelter, hunker down, then get overconfident, leave, and get whacked. Even if I individually tied each and every one of these kids to a chair, I was pretty sure at least one of them would find a way to wiggle free and bolt out the door to look for help.

Therefore, if I couldn't make sure they all stayed in one place, I had to make do with the next best thing, which was keeping most of them in place, and scooping up any errant idiots. Using aforementioned errant idiots as bait to lure and then destroy the Kishin Egg was just the next logical step in that dance.

And sure, waiting for one of these kids to basically shove their foot in a beartrap was pretty heartless, but I just… I didn't know how else to counteract the slasher tropes that I knew were at play here. Everything so far had seemed to be right by the book: a group of kids isolated out in the wilderness, all lines back to aid cut, any authority figures killed and their bodies mutilated to build suspense. The bodycount built as the story progressed and the protagonists made decreasingly stupid decisions until they were almost-rational by the end, and so my best way to deal with that was to wait for their original, biggest and stupidest decision, and then stop the bad guy cold before he could punish them for it.

My throat bobbed in a swallow.

I hope.

I wished there was a way to convey all this to Rex, but since I was pretty sure there was a serial murderer hanging around here somewhere below, (hopefully) unaware of how we were waiting like cats at a mousehole, we both needed to stay quiet.

One of my fingers nervously tapped against the cold, smooth edge of the roof. Rex would be able to tell me if the killer had silently climbed up behind us and was about to plunge a knife into my back, but that didn't stop the nervous tension ratcheted tight in my body. The chill of the roof didn't help either, despite my long coat and pants, as the minutes slowly ticked by, lengthening into an hour.

Rex seemed increasingly restless as we waited, too, which was distracting me. I needed to pay attention to what was going on, and so I took a deep breath and thought. Even if we weren't yet completely synched as meister-Weapon partners were supposed to be, there was still something of a bond between us, and I called up a teeny, tiny spark of magic to my fingertip, just enough to grease the metaphorical wheels, and laid my hand flat over the broad metal of his blade.

We're waiting for one of the campers to do something stupid and leave the dining hall. I projected at Rex, as strongly as I knew how.

?! Why?

Trust m-

I reconsidered that apparently-overused statement.

Because they just will, okay? One or two of 'em will try to sneak off to try and get help or something, which'll make them the Kishin Egg's first targets, which we will deal with before they get hurt. Savvy?

Rex was quiet for several moments, considering.

I guess I appreciate you telling me your train of logic before you do something weird, even if it doesn't help. He finally said.

What's that supposed to mean?!

Your explanations don't explain.

Which is why I always say to just trust me! I haven't been wrong yet, have I?

Arya, there is no way that any of those guys are going to leave the dining hall. They're freaked enough already, and it's a safe place. We'd have to drag them out of there if we wanted them to go.

My eyebrow twitched slightly.

You'd love to think so, wouldn't you. I thought, although I wasn't sure if I meant that for him or for me.

Our semi-companionable banter was cut off at sound and movement from below us, and we both tensed. It was hard to explain, but I could feel Rex do it alongside me even in buster-sword form, like a winkle in the skin of my mind. Small blessings, I guessed.

In the now-moonlit clearing below us, a small sliver of light grew, widened into a bar, and finally disgorged two of the campers: one of the girls, and one of the guys. We hadn't really had time for proper introductions, so I still hadn't pegged names to faces.

The guy looked around, grinned, and then tugged at the girl's hand as she giggled and they both slipped out of the dining hall. Feeling rather smug, I glanced at Rex and pointedly raised both eyebrows.

Rex looked back at me, openmouthed. I grimaced at him, tapping the side of my head several times in quick succession, and shrugged.

Teenagers. Go figure. I mean, okay –we were both also teenagers, but we were not teenagers in what was rapidly shaping up to be a slasher movie, and therein lay the key –and in fact, crucial– difference. Our brains were not rotted by tropes and hormones.

In either case, it was now time to get serious, and I pinned my gaze back to the young couple, slowly moving my hand up to wrap around Rex's hilt. Laying on the roof for this long had chilled my body, but I fought down the urge to shiver, knowing that if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop.

Problem was, though, that the two lovebirds moved fast –and away from the dining hall. I was struck by a sudden hesitation even as my grip firmed around Rex: if we followed them, we'd be leaving all the other campers behind, possibly exposing them to the Kishin Egg. The shitty thing about how slasher movies subverted expectations was that it was a toss-up whether the group that left or the group that stayed were going to be the targets, because either answer could conjure up some prime gory horror.

Rex seemed to feel my hesitation, and my hand twitched with the sudden urge to throw him.

Towards the dining hall?

Yes.

I glanced back to his reflection in the blade, and Rex gave me a nod. A small glow of pride welled up in me even as I carefully stood and hurled him downwards, piercing the earth like a sword in the stone near the wall of the dining hall. We'd finally managed to mind-meld, even if it was just a little bit.

Rex transformed back into his human shape and centered his weight, putting his back against the thick log wall and pulling out the gun I had given him. We made eye contact and shared another quick nod, and then I ran lightly to the other side of the roof, in the direction the two idiots had gone, and crouched down. Waiting for several moments revealed nothing, no hint that I had been spotted, and I fixed the two campers' trajectory in my mind and grabbed the drainpipe, sliding down as silently as I could manage and heading off in that direction.

I also pulled out my Colt again, making the effort to creep quietly –so quietly!– through the underbrush as I inched after the giggling duo. I wasn't at all worried about being outreached, since I had never, ever heard of a slasher villain with a gun, but I was worried about getting close enough to do damage before the Kishin Egg managed to get to the two teens. Most slashers had that, uh, invulnerability thing? I didn't remember the name from TV Tropes, but there were usually as close to bulletproof as you could get while retaining plausible deniability that they totally weren't tricked out in Kevlar or with supernatural assistance.

And, of course, there was no guarantee that this particular Kishin Egg didn't have supernatural assistance in the bulletproofing department.

It was deeply tempting to sigh, but the tension in my stomach and the wariness prickling along my arms forbade such things. The giggling duo up ahead seemed to have come to a stop, and I sank lower into the undergrowth, inching forward bit by cautious bit as I edged my way through the wispy weeds and high ferns.

When I peeked through a clear gap in the shrubbery, it was a monumental struggle of several moments not to smack myself in the forehead as I caught sight of one of them pressed against a tree as they nuzzled at each other.

Seriously? Seriously?

Being mostly devoid of any potential partners due to living on a farm and then being isekai'd into anime with casts above my age group, my life had been kind of sparse in the romantic experience department –but even at my theoretical horniest I couldn't believe I'd be so stupid as to sneak around kissing in corners while a serial killer was on the loose.

"Ooh, baby, you're so sexy when we're both worried about taking a machete to the throat. Let me kiss you with more tongue."

I rolled my eyes to the sky, mentally praying for patience.

Then I froze, because there was a shape in one of those trees that looked a whole hell of a lot like a human, arms and legs spread outwards like an enormous hulking spider as it hung in a bulky greyish blur above the clearing. The clearing that the two idiot teenagers were kissing in.

Oh, fuck me backwards.

I clicked the hammer back on my Colt and swung it up at the same time the Kishin Egg gave a terrifying roar and dropped out of the tree. If it had been me down there in the clearing, I would've been scared shitless: it was so dark out under the trees that all I (or they) could make out was how big this Kishin Egg was, like a six-foot footballer who had strapped on several layers of puffy winter coats, except that the nondescript grey clothing was thin and everything beneath it was solid muscle. Combine that with the bellowing howl and the beady eyes and the dark hole of a mouth in that face hurtling down towards me out of the dark out of nowhere, I would've jumped out of my own damn skin.

As it was, my hand must have been shaking, because my aim was off and the gunshot that echoed through the clearing a moment later only knocked the Kishin Egg aside slightly with a spray of blood arching from one of those huge, ham-like shoulders.

"Get the fuck back to camp!" I shouted, straightening up and clicking back the hammer in the same motion as I took a step to the side, straining to keep my eyes on that huddled patch of darkness in the greater darkness of the woods. The two resident idiots rushed past me, and their terrified shouts and crashing noises faded into the distance the Kishin Egg slowly began to get to its feet –something that made me obscurely grateful, since that seemed to mean this would be the "unstoppable juggernaut" type of slasher rather than the "terrifyingly cunning mastermind" one who would've slunk around me in the darkness or something similar, using the high ferns to hide their movement.

We measured each other for a split second. The face still seemed like a mask, paler than the body with dark holes for the eyes and mouth, but not much else. Right now, frankly, I was more concerned with the fact that the arms were almost as thick as my waist, and that the torso looked like a solid block of muscle and bone. The bullet hole in the Kishin Egg's left shoulder looked less like a .45 and more like a .05, with a teeny tiny trickle of blood oozing down.

"Howdy." I said, and would've continued (in a similar semi-sarcastic vein) except for how the Kishin Egg suddenly tore an axe from its back and hurled it at me, making me leap aside and fire my gun again. It hit the chest this time, somewhere around the vicinity of the lungs, and the Kishin Egg didn't so much as flinch as it reached back for another axe.

Hmm.

I swallowed thickly, eyes fixed on those two apparently-negligible bullet holes.

The "unstoppable juggernaut" part of the slasher trope suddenly seemed a lot less reassuring.

Thankfully, my brain broke out of its self-imposed frozen state a few seconds later as the Kishin Egg hurled another wickedly sharp axe at me, and I jumped aside through the swishing underbrush, then turned once I'd gotten my footing firm and ran. I'd seen this mistake on countless screens –and even once or twice in real life, on the ill-fated voyage of the Campania ship which had been overrun by not-quite-zombies. Standing still and pouring my bullets into the ponderously advancing enemy was a great way to invoke the narrative and get myself killed.

Nope. Nope. No way. Nuh-uh.

If one or two bullets didn't work, emptying my chambers wouldn't either, and I was not sticking around to find that out personally. I'd seen the conclusion to that train of thought before, and it always looked like a bloody train accident.

Given the way my life had been going this past year or so, I knew my chances of having an open-casket funeral were slim in any case, but I'd at least like to go into the grave with all my limbs attached.

So, I ran.

I wasn't panicking, so I was still more than smart enough to remember to weave between the tree trunks as I bolted in order to avoid sprouting a surprise axe from my back. It seemed to work well enough, as I heard one crash into the undergrowth on my left and saw another slam into a tree just about at my eye level the same moment I ducked behind the trunk. I holstered my Colt in order to run better, and soon I could see the faint and few lights and open grey space of the camp up ahead.

Playing to type, the Kishin Egg had been completely silent after that roar, and the only sounds as I burst into the cleared patch that designated the grounds and ran for the cluster of cabins were my own panting breaths and the crashing of ferns and leaves behind as the slasher charged through the undergrowth after me.

Now that I could actually run properly without fear of tripping over a furrow in the ground or a twig as I waded through shrubbery, I bolted with all my speed towards the smaller buildings. An axe thudded blade-first into the ground next to me as I ran, so close that I could feel the impact of it through the sole of my shoe. Ponderous, rapid thuds continued behind me as the Kishin Egg broke out of the forest, the ground trembling a little underfoot as it continued in hot, wordless pursuit.

I whipped around the corner of the cabin circle and dashed up the small service ramp of the closest dinky little four-bunk cabin, leaving the door open behind me. The Kishin Egg thundered after, the boards creaking frantically under those heavy steps, and entered the cabin.

Vaulting over the wooden railing of the service ramp, I slammed the door shut behind the Kishin Egg, and the lock clicked as it automatically engaged. My ability to handle spontaneous illusions was still somewhat janky at best, but I didn't need it to be perfect, only to look like a fleeing blonde shape with my figure and the right colors for my clothes. I hadn't even needed to do anything extra to make it have sound.

My next course of action was to immediately wrench some of the railing off with a loud crack and wedge the resulting length of wood against the door, (hopefully) jamming it closed, since these doors could obviously be unlocked from the inside. It was only just barely in time, too, as there was an enraged roar from within and the door bulged outwards, a crack splitting its way through a good half of its length as there was a gleam of metal in the center.

I hastily jammed a few more pieces of the thin pine wood against the door for safety's sake –hopefully it'd delay the Kishin Egg for a minute at least– and then ran back down the ramp towards the dining hall.

Rex met me halfway there in the open space of the central field, since he'd have to be both deaf and blind to ignore what was going on.

"Arya?!"

"Hey." I gasped, bending over my knees for a moment to take a few bracing breaths. Oof. I needed to build my endurance more. Or maybe the adrenaline was sapping my energy –this was a lot more exciting than our mafia hit. "Those two idiots get back to the dining hall okay?"

Rex blinked at me, then grimaced. My heart sank.

"They, uh… they sort of ran off towards the bridge." he admitted slowly, tugging on his earring and averting his eyes.

"Ooooof course they did." I sighed, letting my head flop down bonelessly for a moment. "Why start making good decisions now? That just sounds silly."

Rex winced in sympathy.

"Right." I said, hauling myself back up. "Well, the Kishin Egg's in one of those cabins-"

There was an almighty crash and sound of splintering.

"The Kishin Egg was in one of those cabins." I amended. A moment's concentration had five of my gold magic walls glowing in a box around the dining hall –I figured that this particular Kishin Egg wasn't a digger. "That'll keep the rest of the idiots penned in, so transform, and let's finish this guy off."

After casting a glance at the very-clearly-magic walls softly humming around the dining hall, Rex sighed and did so, letting my catch him by the handle. For a moment, I was torn between going for the Kishin Egg and going for our victims, but then quickly decided to cut the problem off at the source and ran, despite my better judgment, towards where the enormous crashing sound had come from. After all, I felt like I could rely on the final girl trope to keep at least one of those two idiots alive. And besides, maybe we'd get the Kishin Egg before it got to either one of them.

So we bolted back across the length of the camp, me holding Rex over my shoulder like a bat again.

Disregarding all laws of common sense and logic, though, the Kishin Egg seemed to have vanished from the scene of the smashed-open cabin, and my heart sank. It appeared, at first blush, that I'd chosen my strategy wrong, and that the Kishin Egg had gotten away –probably, given the run of things so far, towards the couple running around the woods like chickens with their heads cut off.

Fuck and shit.

Standing around swearing wasn't going to accomplish much, however, and I turned on my heel with a groan and sprinted off again, heading towards where the smoldering remains of the bridge had been. I didn't want to run the whole way, because the two campers had probably seen it burned down and started to double back by now… but that was definitely the direction I wanted to head in.

Halfway there, I stumbled on something soft, and barely managed to keep myself from breaking my fall on one of Rex's pointier edges as we both splayed on the ground with a yelp. I looked back at what we'd tripped over, and made a face as I felt a tide of nausea wash over me from Rex's side of our connection.

"Well, that's the final girl trope in action." I mumbled, fighting down my rising gorge –Rex didn't have a throat right now and was thus spared that particular problem– as I scrubbed my ankle against the pine needles and leaf litter on the ground to try and get rid of the disgusting squishy warmth from the remains of the bloody body I'd tripped over.

"What?"

"Don't ask." I said, shoving his point against the ground and using him like Excalibur to haul myself to my feet. "And listen for some screams, will ya? She should be howlin' like a banshee soon."

"Arya, that's horrible."

"I don't- I don't mean as she's hacked up, jeez, I mean she's going to be screaming and panicking as she runs from the slasher."

"Kishin Egg."

"You say tomato, I say tomato."

Sure enough, though, as we paused and listened, we began to hear the cries of the remaining girl camper as she sobbed and ran through the woods with the slasher in inexorable pursuit, twigs crackling and fronds crunching under her desperate feet.

"Right." I said, hefting Rex. "Here goes nothing."

We ran after her, and in a truly eye-rolling turn of cliches, it seemed like the slasher had chased her in a circle. We'd run into the corpse of her maybe-boyfriend a little ways away from the main field, and we followed her footprints and the broken greenery across the road, back up down towards the ravine, and finally burst onto the scene of the clearing just before the burned-out bridge as a brilliant wash of moonlight lit up the scene in unearthly detail.

She was collapsed on the ground, crawling backwards on her elbows as the Kishin Egg raised one of its bloodied axes high above her. I gulped and tightened my grip on Rex, doing my best to flood my feet and legs with soul energy as we'd been taught in EAT gym as I bolted across the clearing. Whether I was noticeably faster than before, I couldn't tell, what with all of my attention being focused on that looming grey figure and the almost-weight of Rex in my hands as I turned the gleaming edge towards my enemy. Slasher villains were durable as shit, I had to get this exactly right.

Even with all the momentum of my run, my swing, and the muscles in my well-trained body, it still felt like we were hitting a tree trunk as I cleaved Rex into the Kishin Egg's left arm just above the elbow, going in for a diagonal high slash. One huge arm dropped to the ground, and I immediately jumped back out of the retaliating blow as the Kishin Egg cut at us with a venomous hiss of the axe –which, of course, it hadn't dropped despite losing a hand.

It turned to keep the remaining arm away from us as we circled each other, but that was fine, because then we could loop in and hack away its left leg… or, as it turned out, only manage to gouge a deep, bloody slash into the back of its leg and hamstring it. Fuck, this thing was tough, I thought as I jumped away again with Rex and the Kishin Egg buckled onto one knee, still trying to lash out at us with the axe.

I swallowed down excess spit, trying to keep my breathing even as I carefully circled the Kishin Egg, staying just out of range. It was still, and seemed to be overcome by exhaustion or pain as it knelt there and bled freely from the stump of its arm and that gash in its leg, but that was only making me even more reluctant to approach. Playing injured and exhausted before lunging in a sudden attack at your enemy was one of the oldest bluffs in the book.

Taking one hand away from Rex's handle, I reached for my holstered Colt and carefully –very carefully– clicked the hammer back. As expected, the supposedly exhausted Kishin Egg jerked as upright as it could get, half-raising an arm to block its face from the expected gunshot –and leaving the only remaining arm that held the axe in a perfect position for me to swing with an overhead blow from Rex, slicing cleanly through the wrist and marking the ground with a thick spurt of blood. The axe dropped, still clenched in that severed meaty hand, and I jumped back again before it could even try to retaliate.

This time, I stayed out of range, pulling my cocked gun out of its holster and taking careful aim for the Kishin Egg's head. A gunshot rang out, and it jerked back, but didn't slump to the ground. I used Rex's blunt edge for an awkward moment –both physically and mentally, as I could feel him giving me betrayed puppy eyes for using another weapon while he was actually in my hand, and also physically in the sense that the gun's hammer was a very small and delicate piece of moving machinery while Rex was decidedly not– to cock the hammer again, before taking another shot.

From five barrels to none, I carefully emptied every last shot I had into the Kishin Egg's head as it gradually slumped to the forest floor, and then, and only then, did I shove my gun back into its holster and warily approach, taking Rex's handle into both hands. It didn't even have hands to grab me with anymore, but it could certainly knock me off-balance, and the difference in our size was great enough that once I was on the ground, the Kishin Egg could probably just roll over my body and crush me from the sheer weight alone.

No movement. I lifted Rex high above my head, waited a moment for any supposed surprises, and then brought him down hard, the heavy blade shearing through the Kishin Egg's neck and severing its head from its spine. With a gasp, I lifted up the bloody, dripping blade, then angled the tip downwards and shoved with all my strength, stabbing downwards through that broad chest as I buried Rex's considerable length of sword in the creature's heart.

That huge body writhed, blackened, and finally burst in a soundless explosion of dark ribbons and red streaks of light, which solidified into the same sickly, reddish sort of soul that we'd harvested before.

I let out a relieved breath and let go of Rex, staggering back to land on my rump. It occurred to me that we hadn't heard from the erstwhile Final Girl in a while, and I glanced over in her direction, only to see that she'd fainted. Figures. Anything to give us more trouble dragging her dumb ass back to camp.

"We… we did it." Rex said, blinking in surprise as he shifted back to human form in a dazzle of light.

"Yeah." I said, resting my arms on my upturned knees. I tried to ignore the wet soggy patch of red lingering around the bottom of one of my pant legs and the beginnings of my sock. "And with a probably-minimum amount of casualties, too."

Rex gave me a slightly pained look as he reached out to cup the soul, and I grimaced and looked away. Minimum did not mean none, and I knew that that was probably my fault. Strategize all I would, plan for tropes as much as I could, I was still only a teenager, and not a very tactical one at that.

"We'll do better next time." Rex said after an uncomfortable pause, offering me his hand and helping pull me to my feet. "Everyone makes mistakes some time. You didn't need to use so much… er, overkill about it."

I blinked at him.

"Huh? Overkill?"

Rex mutely lifted the soul in his hand, giving me a very deadpan look.

"You shot it almost half a dozen times in the head, decapitated it, and stabbed it through the chest. I think anyone would call that overkill."

"Oh yeah?" I asked, raising a pointed eyebrow at him. "Then how come the soul didn't pop up until I stabbed it?"

Rex froze. He knew as well as I did that Kishin Eggs only burst and faded like video game bodies when they were destroyed –or, if they were still alive like this one had been, when they died. Which meant that despite shooting it in the head almost half a dozen times, despite decapitating it, despite stabbing it through the heart…

"Overkill, huh?" I asked, folding my arms. "Was it? Was it really?"

Rex, for lack of anything he could use to retort, hastily stuffed the soul in his mouth and swallowed. I looked away with a slightly smug grin, which turned into a narrow-eyed sneer as I looked at the place where the Kishin Egg had dissolved and finally yielded up its soul.

Try to make me fodder for a sequel, will ya? No fucking thanks.

9.50 AM, USA Central Time

7-Cabin in the Woods:

Ah, a slasher cliché as old as time. Buncha dumbass teenagers are, for some reason, at a remote location inside the deep woods, usually inside some kind of charming rural cabin, almost always gifted or in possession of a family member, otherwise a cabin at a lake at some kind of summer camp. Some murderous slasher nonsense happens, killing the group social-outsiders first (slut, stoner, etc.) and leaving the Probably In Relationship Difficulties That have Now Been Resolved By Murder main protagonist pair (possibly with Best Friend) the only survivors, who somehow miraculously manage to kill the monster/disable/arrest the perp by the end of the movie.