"This is me now."
Ryūko looked at one of the windows of a subway car and saw her dyed hair. Her red streak was gone, as per the dress code of her job.
Currently Ryūko was patrolling the subway and she couldn't risk taking anything more than a micro-instant to dawdle by looking at herself, otherwise she'd risk getting reprimanded again. It had been a while since she last got in trouble, and that was because she'd learned that society would not allow her any leeway.
As such, Ryūko put her cap back on and returned to patrolling through the subway.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patroliing.
Patorling
Patroln.
Patorl.
Patrl.
"Focus! You can't get in trouble for dozing off!"
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Once again Ryūko mentally bemoaned her life, but she only did so just enough to let out a smidge of her frustration. Ryūko had to stay focused. She couldn't get in trouble.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
Patrolling.
"I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this."
Ryūko's day was business as usual, even the fact that she was on the brink of flipping out was standard affair.
What wasn't standard was the individual hidden in a bulky trench coat that stood in Ryūko's path. Both Ryūko and the trench coat were standing next to a train dock that was empty of any cars at the moment.
"Excuse me, do you need help?" Ryūko spoke with a polite tone she had created after years of practice.
"Wow, you really have changed. You were way cuter when you were always yelling and getting mad." A squeaky voice came from the trench coat. "This'll be unsatisfying unless you act the way you used to."
"Hold up." Ryūko recognized the trench coat's voice. It was too annoying and was connected to too many bitter memories to forget. "How are you…?"
"Hmm? Jeez, this really will be a snore." The trench coat hunched forward, but then they shot up straight. "Oh well! Gutting you while you're alive should be fun no matter what!"
The trench coat was tossed away by the girl wearing it. She had blonde twintails as big as her body, and she wore a pink goth lolita dress. While one of her eyes was blue, the other was missing with dozens of Life Fibers sticking out of the open socket, wriggling. The girl's skin was black and decorated with lines that constantly changed color. In her hand was a giant pair of scissors colored purple.
"Hi, Ryūko! I missed you!" Nui Harime had returned and she had the Scissor Blades.
"Is this real?" Ryūko didn't yell, nor did she mumble.
"Of course this is real, silly!" Nui giggled.
"How the hell are you back?"
"I fused with the Primordial Life Fiber which Mama ate up! When you got rid of most of the Life Fibers on Earth by taking control of them, I managed to resist you thanks to having my own mind, and so I escaped in the form of a bundle of Life Fibers. I was super weak from resisting your commands, so it took my Fibers a long time to weave together into a proper body, but I managed to do it after ten years! Ten. Whole. Years." Nui's voice turned cold. Her eye was wide. "All I could do was sit and struggle as I put myself back together. Can you imagine what that's like? Ten years of struggling all alone. I'm here to teach you what ten years of suffering is like using these scissors I dredged up from the Tokyo Bay. I'll get revenge for myself, for Mama, and for the Primordial Life Fiber!"
Some civilians began to crowd around, gawking at the bizarre Nui and her rambling, while other people rushed away as soon as they spotted the giant pair of scissors.
"Lookie! We've got an audience! They'll get to see what I'm gonna do to you!" Nui had a sharp toothed grin. "Sure hope they don't get caught up in this."
"Shit! Everyone, please disperse! It's not safe! That girl is armed and dangerous!" Ryūko spoke deeply and loudly. Thankfully Ryūko was a security guard so there was a chance the civilians would actually listen to her orders.
Before the crowd could even think to run, Nui lunged at some of the people to chop them up with her scissors. She was trying to force Ryūko to focus on protecting innocents and thus neglect her own safety.
That plan failed as Ryūko appeared behind Nui in a flash and grabbed the girl's arms which stopped her from swinging the scissors. Nui's arms were difficult to keep in place. The lolita was stronger than ever thanks to her having fused with the Primordial Life Fiber, but Ryūko hadn't spent the last decade resting on her laurels. She had also gotten stronger after training for years in preparation for a potential second Life Fiber invasion.
The surrounding people began to run away, screams of terror echoing throughout the tunnel. As if to replace the escaping people, a train pulled up to the dock and opened its doors, people unaware of the danger in front of them filtering out.
Nui's arms morphed, spikes forming out of them that stabbed Ryūko's hands and reduced them to a few strips of flesh. With her arms freed, Nui tried to attack the new group of civilians. A risking kick from Ryūko got Nui right in the groin and shot her upward. The lolita's body burrowed into the ceiling. Once again the surrounding people ran away in fear, but thousands of Life Fibers appeared from the hole in the ceiling and stretched towards the civilians to restitch their brains and make them attack Ryūko .
Ryūko's hands returned to their proper shape and she zipped around the tunnel, grabbing each and every single thread before they could reach anyone. A yank ripped Nui from the ceiling and towards Ryūko who smashed her fist into the lolita's face so hard the entire subway system quaked. The ground and walls crumbled while the ceiling collapsed. In less than a second the area would be buried in rubble.
Tendrils formed out of Nui's amorphous body and wrapped around Ryūko like an octopus. Nui opened the combined Scissor Blades in preparation to close them on Ryūko's neck to decapitate her. Her regeneration would be nullified from being cut simultaneously from opposite sides.
Right when the blades snapped together, Ryūko jerked her head back so hard her neck broke. This allowed her head to move beyond its normal range and thus pull out of the way of the Scissor Blades.
At the same time that she dodged, Ryūko slipped her arm free from her bonds and punched Nui's forearm, breaking it and causing Nui to let go of one of the scissors. Ryūko grabbed that scissor and broke it off from its sister blade. A single slash was all that was needed to sever all the tendrils constricting Ryūko. Her neck fixed itself and she swung her Scissor Blade as it turned red. Nui used her remaining Scissor to clash swords with Ryūko. The collision of weapons created a shockwave, reducing the falling rubble as well as the entire surrounding area to mist.
Ryūko and Nui pressed their Scissor Blades into each other as they stood in the cavern they created. There were no sources of light and thus Ryūko couldn't see Nui. In order to fix that, Ryūko ground her Scissor against Nui's, creating sparks that provided a modicum of light and thus visibility. What Ryūko saw was that there was more than one Nui. The lolita had created an army of clones of herself that flooded the cavern.
The light faded and was replaced with a chorus of giggles. Hundreds of unseen tentacles and blades assailed Ryūko. Her body went from perfect health to a mangled mess in a second, and yet she still fought back. Even without sight Ryūko dismembered hundreds of Nui clones. Ryūko's senses and combat skills sharpened as the battle progressed, enough so that she eventually was able to fight perfectly well despite being unable to see. Her sixth sense allowed her to detect each and every Nui, and she could even tell which one was the real one. Despite having trained for ten years, Ryūko had been out of practice when it came to genuine life or death combat, but now she had her groove back.
"Geez Louise, you still don't know when to quit, do you, Ryūko? But I guess that's what makes you worth getting revenge on. It wouldn't be satisfying if it was easy! I mean, I can't just kill you, y'know? I need you to know what my pain is like! You killed mama and got rid of the Life Fibers! You got rid of everything we cared about; everything I cared about!" Nui ranted as Ryūko felt the lolita's Scissor Blade approaching. Ryūko blocked with her own Scissor, the two weapons once again creating sparks that lit things up enough that Ryūko could see Nui's stretching grin. "You'll learn what it's like to lose everything when I-why are you smiling?"
"Huh?" Ryūko touched her face to feel what Nui had just seen in the light of the sparks. A smile had materialized on Ryūko's face. "Why am I smiling?"
The answer was obvious. Nui's reemergence necessitated combatting her, and Nui wouldn't go down easy. It would be a whole new war like the one years ago. That meant Ryūko would have to ignore her job and all the other responsibilities in her life to focus on the war.
No more dull days. No more focusing on making money.
Just fight. Fight whoever was an enemy.
Easy. Simple.
Fun.
Ryūko's dream had come true.
"Hehehehehehehehehe." Ryūko was giggling uncontrollably.
"Why are you laughing?" Nui lost her own smile as she transformed her Scissor Blade into a double bladed scythe and chopped Ryūko in half at the waist with it. This was followed by all the Nui clones stabbing into Ryūko with sharp tentacles as the area returned to darkness.
And yet Ryūko kept giggling.
Then she began outright laughing. She was so happy.
Not just happy, she was manic. It was the kind of mania that Nui was accustomed to, the kind where you felt a sense of omnipotence as you received everything you wanted.
The blood in Ryūko's veins boiled from the sheer excitement and passion she was feeling, so much so that her body became hot enough to ignite all the tendrils stabbing into her, and by extension the Nui clones. All the fake Nuis screamed as they burned away and lit up the cavern like the inside of a furnace.
"Wha…" Nui backed up as Ryūko's skin turned red while her body put itself back together and the stone below her feet began melting into white hot magma. The rags that were once Ryūko's uniform caught fire. Ryūko was now dressed in flames vaguely shaped like how Senketsu looked when he and Ryūko Synchronized. The air around Ryūko ignited into a blazing aura that forced Nui to jump to the edge of the cavern just to avoid getting burned. It was getting so hot that the oxygen in the cave would soon be depleted. Heat waves made Ryūko's image distort. She held out her Scissor Blade which opened up into Decapitation Mode and was wreathed in more flames.
Ryūko's hair left its bun and began to flow like a raging fire, the dye in it burning away to reveal the streak of red in it that now glowed.
"Infernal Regression Mode!" Ryūko was barely able to declare the title of her new state through all her giggling.
"Huh?" Nui had her back to a wall as her skin burned from radiating heat. Sweat evaporated as it left her pores. She wasn't smiling, and she wasn't angry. The teeth in her mouth chattered and her whole body trembled. The only thing Nui felt at this point was fear, that was inarguable upon looking at her face. It was at this moment that Nui learned how it felt to be on the other end of her own terrifying mania.
"Let's go!"
Before Nui could react, Ryūko had grabbed her by the face and jumped up through the ceiling. The next thing Nui knew, they were both above ground as well as above the clouds. Nui shrieked in pain as the skin on her face bubbled and turned to vapor. Her whole body was consumed by Ryūko's blazing aura.
Ryūko threw Nui one handed, sending her smashing into a distant desert, the Sahara Desert in fact. Nui coughed up blood from the impact, and she coughed up even more when she felt Ryūko's heel punch right into her gut. Flames burned Nui's internal organs while Ryūko's heat turned the surrounding desert into a sea of burning, liquid glass.
There was no way Nui could win if she didn't retaliate, so she stabbed one of the blades of her scythe into Ryūko's neck. A quick twist and Ryūko's head was lopped off.
But that didn't stop Ryūko.
Ryūko kept on laughing and her blade swung wide, slicing right through Nui's torso and a tidal wave glass behind her. The upper half of the wave burst into a flaming rain of glass that pierced holes into Nui's body.
Threads connected Nui's upper and lower halves, reconnecting them. Nui wouldn't die as long as she could keep regenerating, but said regeneration was under strain from having to constantly fight back against the inferno trying to burn her away.
As if skating on ice, Ryūko and Nui dance across the liquid glass, their blades slicing each other up. Every wound repaired itself, but in Nui's case the repairs took longer each time. Her threads were getting eaten through by flames from all sides. Soon enough they would burn away completely, and Nui would burn away along with them.
"Noooo!" Nui jumped away from Ryūko and created another army of copies of herself that charged at Ryūko like living rockets. The manic woman happily cut and burned through the thousands of projectiles while running at Nui, laughing all the while as if she were a little kid playing tag with a friend.
A pair of bat-like wings formed out of the real Nui's back, and she began to fly away at speeds so fast that the flames covering her were put out.
"No ya don't!" Ryūko rapidly swung her blade, creating numerous arcs of fire that flew at Nui. The lolita zigged and zagged to avoid all the flaming waves, but as she did Ryūko propelled herself through the air using her flames, causing her to resemble a meteor. The tip of her Scissor Blade stabbed right into Nui, setting her on fire again from both the outside and inside. Nui couldn't even scream, because all the oxygen in her body had burned away. Ryūko and the impaled Nui soared over dozens of countries before smashing into the peak of Mount Everest.
The tip of the mountain melted and caved inward, resembling a volcano. Standing atop the lava was Ryūko who still had Nui impaled on her Scissor Blade. Nui's body was limp, she had no strength to fight back, so she just kept on burning helplessly. Ryūko took the purple Scissor out of Nui's hand, the weapon returning to its original shape as well as going back to being red.
"C'mon, get up!" Ryūko shook the blade Nui was stuck on, the lolita's limbs flapping about. "C'mon, we aren't done yet! Move!"
Nui didn't move.
"Move! Come on! You can't have lost this easily! We just started!" Veins bulged against Ryūko's skin. "You got my hopes up for this!"
Nui didn't move.
"You're my excuse! I can't avoid doing normal work if you die now! Why are you this weak? You thought you were going to get your revenge when you're this weak? Get up so we can keep fighting until I'm satisfied!"
Nui moved. Her charred face fissured and crumbled as her teeth gnashed.
"You mad? You mad I called you weak? Get mad! Get strong! We gotta keep fighting!"
Cracks formed in Nui's teeth as she kept grinding them, but then she smiled.
"Ryūko!"
"That voice." Ryūko turned and saw two people at the edge of the molten pit she had created in the mountain.
One of the people was a Nui clone with a toothy grin on its face. This Nui had morphed its body to be like a serpent that was currently wrapped around a certain woman.
"Ryūko! Help! Also, this is pretty nostalgic! Remember how I'd always get kidnapped when we were kids and you'd have to save me? You were always so cool! By the way, why are you on fire? Wait, you're on fire! Ryūko, stop, drop, and roll!"
Mako.
"Lookie, Ryūko, I've got your girlfriend real snug right now! She's so snug that I'd just have to squeeze a little more to pop her head off!" The Nui clone spoke for the real Nui who was soundlessly laughing as she continued to burn.
"But I need my head!" Mako tried to move but couldn't.
"If you don't want her to die, you'll free the real me, put out your flames, give me the Scissors, and then let me do whatever I want to you! Got it?"
"Of course this happened. Why wouldn't it? Mako always gets captured. How come, when I wished for the Life Fibers to return, I never thought about how Mako would be put in danger? No, I'm lying to myself, I did think about the danger Mako and other people I care about would be in, I just didn't want to think about that. I wanted some world ending threat to come to Earth again and I got it, even though that could lead to millions of people dying, all so I wouldn't be depressed anymore. What is wrong with me?" Ryūko covered her face with her hand. She wasn't mad at Nui, she was mad at herself. She was utterly disgusted and horrified at herself.
Ryūko exhaled, flames coming out of her mouth. All her veins pressed up against her red skin, some even bursting and causing jets of evaporated blood to shoot out of her body in a way that resembled steam leaking from pipes. The blood vessels in Ryūko's eyes erupted, causing her sclera to be dyed red. The inferno around Ryūko intensified to the point that they were comparable to the hottest flames of the Sun in temperature. The light Ryūko was giving off was blinding.
For so long Ryūko had not felt rage. As Ryūko learned to temper her emotions in order to keep a job, she lost the ability to properly feel certain emotions, and one of them was anger. Despite all she had to be angry about when it came to her current job and her life as it was, often she only felt sadness, revulsion, and emptiness. There was a wall keeping Ryūko's capacity for anger away from her, but now that wall had fallen. Not only was Ryūko feeling anger over the current situation, but she was also feeling all the anger she couldn't feel for so many years.
"What are you doing? I told you to put out your flames!" The Nui clone couldn't look directly at Ryūko. She was about to begin squeezing Mako to get Ryūko to stand down, but she didn't get the chance.
A glance. Ryūko glanced at the Nui clone, and that was all that was needed to kill the replica. Willpower alone reduced the fake Nui to nothing without harming Mako.
The real Nui was also reduced to nothing by Ryūko's flames. Ryūko didn't even bother to look at her.
Mako was about to fall now that she was free, but Ryūko caught her and landed on the pit's edge. All the flames around Ryūko that had become a miniature star disappeared. Ryūko had returned to her normal form, her flesh turning cold as her anger faded into despair. The blood in her eyes trickled down her cheeks.
The diversion was over. Ryūko would have to go back to her normal life.
"You saved me! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" Mako kissed Ryūko on the cheek. Ryūko didn't react, she just stared absentmindedly at the mountaintops poking above blankets of clouds. Everything she saw was colored red. "Ryūko, are you okay? Are you hurt? You're not dead, are you? Did you do the thing you see in tv shows where you die on your feet?"
"I'm not dead, at least not literally. Let's go…home. I'm gonna have to dye my hair again."