Chapter 14: Changing Minds


A/N: Hello, my friends! The story's about to take a turn. MAJOR CONTENT WARNINGS, HERE! DEROGATORY AND FOUL LANGUAGE ABOUND IN THIS CHAPTER! DOMESTIC ABUSE IS A MAJOR THEME! ZERO DOING EXTREMELY CREEPY THINGS AND CAUSING MINOR BODY HORROR! GORE PRESENT IN STRANGER THINGS SEASON 3 IS HERE! THIS WILL BE YOUR LAST GORE WARNING FOR THE REST OF THE FANFIC! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

If you're still here, get ready for a wild ride.

Enjoy.


The wind howled as El walked deeper into Billy and Zero's shared mind. The sky had, by now, darkened entirely, and the thunder now boomed with each strike of red lightning, the force of it reverberating in her chest.

The storm before her was a strange one, for sure. For starters, it had red lightning. Now, El had only been out of the lab for about a year and a half, but she was pretty sure, in her limited knowledge, that lightning wasn't supposed to be red.

Generally speaking.

The closer she got to the storm, the worse she felt. She couldn't tell if the negativity she was feeling was coming from the storm-no doubt representing the part of Billy's mind where Zero was concentrated-or if it was from Zero's essence beginning to infiltrate her own mind. Perhaps it was even both; as the closer she got to the storm, the faster the Dark Matter on her arm, representing Zero's infection of her mind, spread; now covering her elbow.

She stopped for a moment.

This storm felt oddly similar to something she had felt before. Something that was related to Zero, but not directly. It was the thing that had caused him to take the form El and her friends had always known him as; the Mind Flayer. It wasn't hatred, obsession, jealousy, or greed, the first two on that list always directed at Kirby and herself, respectively.

No, it was a simple feeling; deceptive in its simplicity. That was what made it all the more terrifying. It was the simple nagging feeling-nagging knowledge-that something wasn't right; that she wasn't safe, far more subtle in its hostility than Zero was.

It was the feeling of the familiar twisted beyond recognition.

El stopped and analyzed her surroundings, before looking upward.

That confirmed it.

She waved her hand through the air, and when she brought it back before her face, she found what she'd been expecting; been dreading.

Flaky little spores, found only in the Upside Down.

She couldn't help but shiver as she remembered the brief time she'd spent in that place, after defeating the Demogorgon, which she now knew to be a different form of the blackness coating her arm; Dark Matter given more physicality than cloudy blackness.

She was torn from her thoughts by a man's sharp bark; "Hey! Billy, stop!"

She winced at the sharp tone. She noticed that she was at the very edge of the storm, now; and she could make out two figures, one taller than the other, just within its boundaries. El steeled herself and walked into the storm, toward the figures, as their aggressive, one-sided exchange continued.

"What the hell is wrong with you? What'd we talk about, huh? You gotta slide!"

"I-I-I know..." the young baseball gear-clad Billy stammered in response as El drew nearer; he and his...? (Father, the darkness told her as it observed Billy's suffering with as close to glee as a being without positivity could get) appearing not to notice her existence. They were only memories, after all. El couldn't protect Billy; couldn't use her powers to shove back the monster who claimed to be a father and bring Billy home with her and Dad-a real father-for a better life.

"Wait," the father-Neil-said to his son, hand wrapped firmly around his upper arm. "Afraid you're gonna get hurt, is that it?" Neil demanded mockingly. "No..." Billy whimpered, clearly about to cry. El's heart, already bruised by the sorrow she'd felt from Zero with her powers and that he was now forcing onto her through her progressing possession, took another blow. The man continued, heedless to El's feelings, and the girl could only watch as a more aggressive version of the scene that had dominated most of her life-an unstable "father" tormenting a young child-played out before her, surely heading for a climax that would leave one more bruise on her heart.

"Well, what, then, what?" Neil scoffed angrily. "What? Did I raise a pussy for a son?"

Rage joined El's sorrow, no doubt also fueled by Zero, although the Destroyer Void's rage wasn't directed righteously, as El's was. "Leave me alone!" Young Billy cried angrily, hatefully, as he ripped his arm out of his father's grasp and charged away. "Hey!" Neil barked, no doubt shocked and enraged by his son's defiance.

"That's right, run, like you always do!" Neil sneered mockingly. El took off after the young Billy. She wished she could comfort him, but he was just a recording; this scene had already played out and done its damage long before El even felt the sun for the first time, probably before she was even born.

"Hatred," observed the monotone voice in her head.

The darkness on her arm was squirming, growing, drawing power from the negativity-fueled memories.

El looked down at it; it was now almost at her shoulder. Ignoring it, she ran after Billy, red lightning crackling all around her, turning around and locking her eyes on Memory-Neil's unseeing ones, shooting a deadly glare that could cut steel. Likely literally. She then whipped back around and continued her pursuit of Billy, the two of them running ever deeper into the storm.

The next time Neil's voice reached her ears, it was much more distorted and echoey than before. "Where were you last night?" He asked; calmly but with an undercurrent of warning; of aggression. "Where were you?" He repeated, voice now fully raised. "I told you, I was with Wendy!" A voice El recognized from before as Billy's mother fired back. "Stop lying to me!" Neil roared. "I'm not lying to you!" Billy's mother argued, clearly tired of her former lover's unhealthy desire to know about and manage every detail and activity in her life.

"Obsession," Zero continued.

El could no longer see the beach behind or in front of her. She couldn't even tell what surface she was walking on, but she knew it wasn't sand anymore. The clouds swirled all around her, illuminated by distant flashes of red lightning. The memory El now found herself at was set at a dinner table, where Neil was holding Billy's mother's arm in a tight grip from where they stood at the end of it as their argument raged on.

"You saw him again, didn't you? Didn't you?!" Neil roared in the woman's face. El watched on, horrified, as the woman wrenched her arm out of Neil's grasp, backhanding him in the process and snarling, "Get away from me!"

When Neil attempted to approach her again, she screamed, "I said, get away!", grabbed a clean plate from the table behind her, and threw it at him; Neil barely ducking in time to avoid a ceramic plate to the face, much to El's disappointment. She widened her eyes at that. Sure, she'd wanted to throw him backward with her powers, maybe, but wishing he got a plate to the face?

The cold feeling on her arm reminded her that her negative feelings were being amplified and fed on by Zero, slowly corrupting her, twisting her mind until it was comfortable enough for Zero to fully settle into it, with the negativity he fed off of only making her possession progress faster.

She sighed in relief at the fact that those weren't her thoughts or desires; Zero was simply amplifying any angry or violent thoughts she may have had and making those thoughts more violent; more aggressive; more Zero.

"Y-you... whore!" Neil snapped after dodging the plate. Billy had now stood from the table, most likely, unfortunately, knowing where the altercation was going as Neil resumed his approach toward Billy's mother.

"Stop it!" The young Billy cried as he charged bravely forward (he reminded El so much of Kirby) and Neil roared "Bitch!" at the same moment. "No!" Billy's mother cried as her son charged his insane father, screaming "Don't hurt her! Don't hurt her!" Billy's mother screamed as her son wrapped his arms around his father's waist, either to hold him back or in an attempted tackle. "You bastard!" She cried as her son was thrown effortlessly to the ground by Neil. El covered her mouth in shock and sympathy as the situation in front of her only spiraled further out of control.

Neil approached his son's mother and, without any hesitation, without any remorse, punched her in the face. She fell limply to the ground, likely knocked unconscious from the blow. "Mom!" Billy cried.

Before El had much time to process what she'd just seen, Young Billy's voice sounded off to her left. She looked in that direction, and saw him sitting on the floor, against his bed, holding a phone to his ear with tears in his eyes.

"I don't understand. Why not?" He asked, sounding devastated. "Please, Mom, don't do this," Young Billy pleaded.

El's eyes teared up. Billy's mom had...left him? Left her own son alone with that monster? El's rage cooled, then redirected to a more appropriate target when she recalled what she had just watched Neil do to the woman. El understood why she left, but Billy still didn't deserve that. Wasn't there...something the woman could've done?

"Please come home," Billy begged. El's heart gained one more crack, and she felt Zero leech the sorrow out of her; felt him grow more powerful from it, felt the Dark Matter he was controlling spreading further up her arm.

"No. How long? How long?!" Billy said, looking like he was just about ready to break down into full-on tears. "I miss you," he sobbed.

El hardly had time to let her own tears break free before a slightly older-sounding Billy screamed behind her, causing her head to whip around in that direction. "Get back here!" He had yelled.

He had pinned a younger boy beneath his small body, wailing punches down mercilessly on the smaller boy. "Please," she heard the smaller, bespectacled boy beneath him moan. "Please, my mom, she'll-"

"GET UP!" Billy roared with unexpected volume, causing El to jump. "You always brag about your goddamn mommy! Are you a man, or what, momma's boy? Your mom isn't worried about shit, so be a man, quit it with the lame-ass excuses, get up, and FIGHT ME!!! What, you too scared to fight me?! Get up and fight, you pussy! Pussy!"

El felt the darkness on her arm jump up; it was now under her sleeve and on her shoulder. The rage Billy had just shown felt even stronger than how Zero had felt when he broke out of the sauna. He had grown up into Neil. His mom abandoned him with that monster, and he had become just the person that monster wanted him to be.

"Jealousy," Zero said. El imagined, had his voice not been so blank, had he been able to feel true positive emotion, he would have been purring.

A voice to El's right caught her attention, and she nearly growled, before feeling startled by the impulse. Zero's possession was almost complete. The reason El had felt so angry when she heard the voice, was because it was Neil's voice.

"Billy, come over here; I want you to meet someone."

El walked over toward the scene of the memory. Neil's hands were on the shoulders of a little girl, both of them standing in front of Billy. The girl had red hair and icy-blue eyes. El immediately recognized it as a younger Max, and resisted the urge to throw Neil away from her friend.

"This is your new sister. Her name's Maxine," Neil said. "Max," Max corrected. Paying no attention to that, Neil once more targeted his son, apparently his favorite chew toy. "Shake her hand," Neil said at the same time as the current, real-world Billy's voice called "Who's there?"

"I said, shake her hand."

"I said, who's there?!"

El turned around in the direction of the adult Billy's voice. El began walking in that direction, shielding her face from the wind that buffeted directly against it. She had to physically push her body against the force of the wind. That meant she had to be getting close. She saw a pair of headlights break through the dust, spores, and wind. She could barely make out a car sitting outside a building.

She could hear Billy's terrified screams clear as day.

Suddenly, the resistance against her body stopped. The red-tinged clouds were gone. She had broken through the storm, and was in a completely clear area. The storm swirled all around just beyond it. This was it. She was here; the eye of the storm. Billy's worst memory and Zero's concentrated influence at the center of a mass of bad memories. It made sense for Zero to reside here, to have the most control over this part of Billy.

After all, no part of the mind was more hospitable to a being of Dark Matter than the part where all the worst memories the vessel's mind had to offer were contained. The pure negativity she could feel concentrated at this one spot was so intense that she could hardly breathe the malice-thickened air.

She felt the darkness that had started on her arm reach the base of her neck.

Lightning cracked all around her as she took in her surroundings. She finally had an identifiable surface beneath her feet. Grass. The building before her looked like some sort of...abandoned factory, if all the rusted metal was of any indication.

She walked toward the building, noticing the stationary car from before, which she could only assume was Billy's. The headlights were now off, and the windshield had a spiderweb of cracks spreading from a central point of impact, like some small object had struck it.

El looked up at the sky. Indeed, the entire hurricane of negativity, of Dark Matter, of Zero, it circled around this place. This memory. This really was it. She'd found it.

She'd found the source.

She immediately knew. This place was where the missing Driscoll had gone; the place she'd been screaming that she wanted to go to; the place Zero was possessing people and spreading his infection from, hungrily consuming soul-after-soul until he was satisfied.

"Greed," Zero said, right on cue. "Hatred, obsession, jealousy, greed... these dark emotions, when they influence a Void, transform that Void into a manifestation of that corrupt power. It is cruel. It is unfair. And yet the blessed Puffball Voids get to live peacefully, blissfully ignoring the existence and suffering of their brethren, and looking upon them as foe rather than kin; doing nothing to help. So why should I not do the same? Just as all the creatures of light gaze upon the dark with contempt, why should the darkness not reciprocate that treatment in kind? If I cannot be happy, why should anyone else be? This is why Destroyers such as myself have to be alone. But we don't have to be alone. If all else suffer with us-if all else suffer with me-then I won't be alone. I can attain the closest thing to happiness I can reach."

El opened her mouth to say something. But there was nothing she could say; nothing she could do to change Zero's mind. He was the way he was, until someone ended him. In that moment, El realized there was something she could do. If she ended him, he could be free. Maybe he would get lucky the next time and become something different. Maybe, just maybe, he could even become... a friend?

Zero scoffed in her mind. "Naive child. I can never be anything other than what I am now. And while I imagine I would feel touched by your offer to end my suffering, had I the capacity, I have no intention of dying again. Not until I conquer this world and taste a facsimile of happiness once more, but by then, you will be long gone."

Zero's growl toward the end of his speech sent chills down her spine.

"I suppose there is, however, one thing you can do for me. You could become my vessel without a fight. With your power, I will achieve my goal faster than I ever could by following my current plan. When I have no more need of you, I will grant you a peaceful end."

El shook her head firmly.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't let you do that."

Zero mentally growled once more.

"Then you will suffer with the rest. Either way, your body is mine, now. I am certain that enough time trapped hopelessly within it will have you regretting your rejection of one of my rare merciful offers rather quickly."

El shook her head once more, this time with a determined glare. "Not yet. You don't have me, yet. There's still time to warm my friends; to warn Kirby. He'll stop you, just like before."

Zero did not speak. He did not audibly do anything, not even in her mind; but she felt the enraged roar all the same.

Glaring up at the sky, she said with certainty, knowing her friends in the real world would hear it, "I found it. The source."


Every single one of the Kirbies (plus Will) were openly squirming uncomfortably at this point. They could feel Zero's essence, in the form of a single Dark Matter under his control, clear as day in the room with them, sitting within El's body. The five darkness-sensitive children all estimated it would likely be about five minutes before it had full control over her.

"I think I found it," she finally spoke. "The source."

"Where, El, where are you?" Max asked, perhaps a bit too irritably. All could tell it came from a place of anxiety and stress, though. There was a lot on the line, after all, not the least of which being Max's own brother.

After a few seconds of silence, El responded, "Brimborn. Steel Works."

Jonathan quickly got up and scrambled over to the kitchen counter, returning with a small phone book. "Here. Okay, uh, steelworks, steelworks..." he muttered nervously as he rapidly flipped through the phone book. Nancy got up to help him. "Uh... here, steel," he eventually said after a few more moments of rapid, Nancy-supervised flipping.

"Uh... found it...! 6522 Cherry Oak Drive."

Everybody's heart (including four nonexistent ones) skipped a beat in a mix of anxiety and excitement at their triumph.

"That's close," Nancy said hopefully. "All right!" Tuffy said, punching one nub into another and cracking his nonexistent knuckles. "Time for round three with this asshole! Let's make it our last!" He cheered, earning him a few hesitant, nervous smiles and a cheer from Keeby, while Greeny only groaned at the prospect of the upcoming fight.

Or perhaps he was dreading the more imminent one, like Kirby was. Unlike his fellow Puffballs, he hadn't made the mistake of forgetting about El's possession in his excitement, and one nervous period of eye contact with Will told him that the Human boy hadn't, either.

"El, El, we found it. Get out of there," Mike urged, though he managed to keep his cool. "Get out!"

A few moments passed. All waited with baited breath.

And then Mike felt Kirby slip off his shoulder.

He twisted around in the black armchair and picked his pink buddy up. The Puffball softly snored, a small stream of bubbles escaping his mouth. With a flash, a cute little star-covered night cap appeared on his head from seemingly nowhere.

"Kirbs?" He asked curiously. The little guy was, somehow, fast asleep. The alien had done some weird things before, things that made no sense, but this took the cake. He had been so worried about El, how could he have fallen asleep, just like that? Did the stress get to him?

"Bit of a shitty time to take a nap, don't you think, Pinky?" Tuffy asked. Was Mike crazy or was that... concern in the red Puffball's voice and eyes? Tuffy noticed Mike noticing him and glared, crossing his nubs and looking away with an indignant "Poyo."

Mike chuckled and laid Kirby down on his lap. The Puffball must've just been that tired. Still, though, El was taking unusually long to come back. A shiver crawled down Mike's spine as he looked down at the softly snoring pink Puffball in his lap. Surely it was ridiculous, but Kirby-no-life had never disappointed him in that department before.

Either way, Mike had the nagging feeling that El's unusually slow return and Kirby's sudden bout of unconsciousness couldn't have been coincidence.


El closed her eyes, and found herself going through a rewind of when she'd first been infected by Billy in the void and experienced that rapid flash of his and Zero's memories. Their hands connected once more, and she shot back into the real world, panting as she ripped her blindfold off.

Bright pink immediately caught her eye. She turned to her left and saw a sleeping Kirby. That was odd. She remembered him having been sitting with Mike when she went into Billy's mind.

She looked behind her, and saw that the couch was empty. Her entire living room was empty.

Something wasn't right. Something wasn't right.

"Mike?" She called quietly. "Mike?" She called a little louder. "Max?"

Kirby stirred beside her. "Poyo...?" He asked blearily. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked around tiredly.

"Mike...?!" She called again, real urgency entering her tone now as she shot to her feet. Something didn't feel right. "Mike!"

Her voice echoed with that final call. Her voice only ever echoed like that in the void.

Kirby jumped to his feet, now wide awake. "El, poyo, your arm!"

The pink Puffball was panicking. He glared both furiously and fearfully at the black mass and familiar orange eyes coating his friend's arm, creeping up her neck. Countless horrible memories flashed through his mind as he looked at those eyes, which glared right back as soon as they saw him, with an equal amount of anger; although where Kirby held anger and fear, they held only anger and hatred.

Not again.

Dark Matter. It had taken his friend; and he'd let it; let Zero. He should've just stopped it; should've just gotten the Kirbies and beaten Zero's dark essence out of her. They could've done something else; they didn't have to find the source. There must have been something else they could've done, some other way to stop Zero without letting El get possessed! He had let this happen to one of his bestest friends. What kind of hero-what kind of friend-was he?

It was all his fault.

"Poyo..." he whimpered as tears broke free and rolled down his body. El noticed and stopped calling out for her friends, only now appearing to notice Kirby had fully awoken. She kneeled down and hugged him close to her chest. She was about to tell him everything would be alright; that they would find a way out, that she would protect him; she wouldn't let Zero hurt him.

If it weren't for the fact that she'd hurt him first.

As soon as her infected arm touched Kirby, he yelped and jumped backward, and El cried out and fell away, as well. Her arm felt like a white-hot lightning bolt had struck straight through it, and when she looked at it, she watched as all the orange eyes squinted in pain and the darkness opened into a small hole, showing her fair skin beneath. The darkness trembled for a few seconds before the hole closed back up, drowning that part of her arm that had finally been allowed to breathe in the cold once again; and after a few moments, the eyes opened back up as well.

"Poyo..." Kirby whimpered. El sat back up from where she had fallen onto her back and looked at him. He was on his back as well, and his foot twitched as he slowly sat back up. Though neither of them saw it, the spot where her hand had touched Kirby was black, but not with Dark Matter. It was black because that small spot had been scorched.

The scorch mark slowly faded from his back as the surrounding pink slowly seeped back in, the skin immediately around the mark having become a very pale shade of pink-bleached almost white-until the mark disappeared and all, more or less, returned to normal.

Before either of them could make a move to apologize, however, Billy's echoing, distorted voice sounded off from the entrance to Hopper's room.

"Ouch," he said. He stepped out, snuffing his cigarette out on an ashtray. The orange eyes on his own body were openly glaring at El and Kirby, revealing the true feelings of the one making Billy say the things he was saying, though he was putting on a polite, casual front.

Unlike how it coated El's entire arm, Dark Matter only covered Billy's body in smaller patches, orange eyes gazing up from little toxic pools on the surface of his skin.

"I thought my counterpart would have given you a crash-course on Voids after I revealed him. It appears I gave him too much credit, if the fact that you're trying to mix our essences is of any indication," Zeroed Billy continued with a lazy smirk.

Kirby gave the most keening, enraged cry El had ever heard from him as he charged at Billy. "LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE!!!"

The Puffball jumped as he reached Billy, prepared to punch him in the face. Billy's smirk dropped. His expression seemed bored; almost disappointed, and the eyes scattered across Billy's body assumed the same look of bored disbelief as he lazily opened a palm.

A spike of Dark Matter shot from it and struck Kirby right between the eyes, launching him back toward El as he cried out in agony. El barely managed to catch him with her powers, right before he would have slammed into her, setting him down on the floor as gently as she could. The tenacious Puffball stayed on his feet-albeit swaying slightly and still looking a bit dazed-though he glared at his old nemesis' newest skin-suit all the same.

As if Kirby was of none of his concern, Billy turned his bored gaze to El. "You shouldn't have looked for me," he said. "Because now I see you. Now I have you."

His eyes glinted maliciously, briefly flashing red as he emphasized the latter point by making the Dark Matter briefly squeeze painfully around her arm and the side of her neck it gripped.


https/youtu.be/Gs7wDIlHHJY

Even as the Fourth of July celebration flowed warmly throughout Hawkins, even as the festival thrown by the secretly corrupt mayor continued on, sweat-drenched figures emerged from crowds and houses alike. Dark patches on their skin that emerged only in private fading into their bodies to avoid the public's prying eyes.

As for their own eyes, they were blank; emotionless.

And, perhaps, if one looked closely enough, they could see a red tint hidden beneath the normal color of their sclera.


Billy was now deathly serious as stalked toward El and Kirby, eyeing them with an intensity matched only by a predator who had found and cornered its prey. He pointed at Kirby, who had positioned himself, nubs spread wide, in front of his much taller Human friend.

"You... sent me to the Dark World."

Kirby's glare intensified. Billy now pointed at El. "And you... let me into its counterpart: your world."

"And now... both of you are going to have to let me stay."


As sprinklers crackled around the festival area, a man who had been managing a grill suddenly ceased his duties and began walking away. His wife, chatting eagerly with one of her friends, noticed.

"David, where are you going?" She asked. "David?"


At the other end of the festival, a firework was ignited. It wouldn't be long before takeoff. Caleb was so excited. Out of nowhere, though, Adam stiffened next to him, excited smile fading from both his face and his eyes. He turned around and walked away.

What was he thinking?!

"Adam, you're gonna miss it!" Caleb called after his friend, who ignored him and continued walking away, soon disappearing into the crowd. "Adam!" Caleb called. He was disappointed; sad. Why had Adam left? Had Caleb done something wrong?


"Don't you see?" Billy asked, voice growing more distorted by the minute as Zero's own voice slowly emerged from within his baritone. "All this time, we've been building it."

El sobbed as she backed away. This only made Kirby harden his face and his protective stance, giving Zero a warning "Poyo."

Billy looked down at Kirby in an approximation of amusement, brow quirked. He maintained eye contact with Kirby as he resumed his speech. "We've been building it..." he began, before moving his eyes away from Kirby and locking them onto El's own as he spoke his next two words.

"For you."


A small army of figures marched toward a dark building in a clearing in the woods; shirts drenched with sweat as they drew ever closer to their destiny.


"All that work, all their pain... all of it...for you," Zeroed Billy said, eyes locked on El's. "Because if the pink cretin and his friends free you from my control, you cannot be allowed to live."

"Hey!" Kirby warned as Billy continued approaching. He growled. "I'm warning you, Zero, back the hell off! Leave my friends alone! There's four of us Puffballs and one of you; whatever horrible thing you've built, it doesn't stand a chance!"

"Believe me, Puffball, I know it doesn't. But the choice is yours. You surrender and leave her to me, and she lives, but under my control. You free her, and she dies. And then you will be too broken to defend yourself. Whether you live or die, both of my adversaries will be defeated tonight."

"That's not gonna happen, Poyo! I have friends waiting for me back home; and a whole world to save here. They're all counting on me; I won't fail them! Just like I didn't fail the Fairies back on Ripple Star! I will never stop fighting you, Zero, even if I have no friends left!" Kirby roared.

"I see you have made your choice," Zeroed Billy said flatly, unmoved. "You will stand against me and this Human child shall die. I am glad you chose this option. I will enjoy making you pay for all you've done to me, pink nuisance. I do hope you are happy with your choice, because now it is time. Time to end it."

Billy closed his eyes with a pleasant smile. Then, he opened them and his mouth at the same time in a smile. El screamed and Kirby uncharacteristically cursed as the two of them gazed upon Billy, every one of the orange eyes on his body now opened impossibly wide and trained solely on them, as his now completely white eyes stared into their own, a blood-red eye sitting within his wide, welcoming smile as he spread his arms.

"And I am going to end you, and when you are gone, I am going to end your friends. And then, I am going to end... EVERYONE."

"Get away!!!" El screamed, the darkness now having climbed from her neck to her cheek, as she shot her good hand out and flung Zeroed Billy away from Kirby and herself.


"Waaahhh!!!" Kirby screamed as he jumped back into the land of the living, terrified out of his wits.

As he landed back on Mike's lap, his friends all surrounded him, concerned, asking what had happened to El. Kirby could only quake with fear as he watched his friend's lifeless, slumped body.

A body which, unbeknownst to all but the watching Kirby, reached up a hand and pulled away the blindfold, before opening orange eyes that pierced into his own azure ones.


The Zeroed walked into the steel mill, filing down a flight of stairs into a basement; where a monster made from pulverized rat meat shivered in the full moonlight. One by one, the figures shivered in turn and collapsed into a pile of meat and bone.

Puddle after puddle flowed into the legs of the spider-shaped creature, fusing with it and increasing its size. It rumbled and chittered as it grew; as bone shards formed teeth; as gristle and tendons bound together into flexible mouthed tentacles, watchful orange eyes awaiting in each mouth.

Swirling white energy formed two soulless white eyes as a mouth formed beneath them, crescent-shaped like a smile, though it could open much wider, should the need arise. And finally, countless reddened eyeballs melted into one colossal crimson orb that sat within the smiling mouth of the beast, white sclera meeting red iris and pinprick black pupil; a callback to his old forms; though especially to his very first form; the form the PINK CRETIN had robbed him of.

Had he the ability, Zero would have laughed in glee at the plans he had to break the irksome Puffball's spirit, the plans he had to kill every last one of his friends and make him watch. As it stood, however, he could only roar his triumph into the night as he burst through the roof of Brimborn Steel Works.

Yes, one way or another, that Puffball would pay tonight.


"You who left the doorway open..."

A/N: Yeah, I... don't really feel right writing an enthusiastic Author's Note this time around. Doesn't really feel appropriate. However, there's one thing I want to know: did you enjoy? I know I enjoyed writing it. Did you not enjoy? Sound off in the reviews. Reviews means motivation which means faster chapter updates! The Zeroed El fight chapter might be short enough to post, but here is probably where my break till summer is going to kick in fully, since I have now finished E Pluribus Unum, which was my goal before break.

Hope y'all enjoyed! Have a good day or night, and I will see you all...

Next time...