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Prelude - Faceless 2,373 words
Prologue - Everchanging 9,423 words
Chapter 1 - War of Change4,970 words
Chapter 2 - Figure 6,706 words
Chapter 3 - Half-Truism2,405 words
Chapter 4 - Beast 6,566 words
Chapter 5 - The Animal 3,290 words

Chapter 5 - The Animal

For the animal's soul is mine
We will be completed right before your eyes
I have no control this time
And now we both shall dine in Hell tonight

Just another night. Well, for the most part.

As he walked along the path, he glanced down at the envelope in his hand. It was heavy with bills, just the way she wanted. When he looked back up, the first thing that caught his eye was the bright yellow streams of light escaping the glass windows of the bakery. It was more of a cafe but that's what it was initially. She was there, waiting for him. He saw her through the window, idly glancing around, bored as she was. His lips twitched upwards a little at that. Noticing what he was wearing as he crossed the road, his form seamlessly writhed in a haze of viral tissue. Just as quickly as it came, it was gone, replacing his jet-black leather jacket and hoodie in return for simple denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He felt her eyes on him the whole time. He caught her looking at him from the inside and instead of what was once terrified shock, instead was calm content at the sight of him.

He strode into the building, barely getting a glance from anyone inside. He knew all of them just by scent alone. After all, this was a fairly popular hangout for really any part of the day.

She waved him over. He nodded and sat down across form her in the booth.

"Hey, bro."

"Hi." Without another word, he slid the envelope across the table towards her. She picked it up, silently, opened it up and sighed when she took sight of the contents.

"You know, you don't have to keep doing this."

He folded his arms. "I told you. It's what you need to live. Not me." She sat back and flickered idly at the amount of bills she had in her hand. He just watched her. That seemed to be the only thing he did anymore. Watch, listen, watch. What else did he have to do now? He never felt obligated to, he just...didn't know what else to do.

"I'm gonna get us some drinks." She muttered under herself, slipping away from her seat.

"No thanks, Sli-"

"Kickback." For the first time in what felt like forever, he actually was taken aback by something. The look in her eyes when she spun around to glare at him was something he hoped to never see again. She sighed, closing her eyes and overall softening up. When she looked back at him, her gaze almost pleading to him."Please?"

His jaw slowly worked in his favour, there was only one thing he could have said. "Okay."

With that, she walked off. He didn't watch her go, just slumped back in his chair, focusing his gaze into the table. There was something engraved in the wood, he brushed it off at first, he could never understand idle graffiti. That is until he took note of what was actually written. Two letters, initials, he presumed. Scrawled into the material was a simply written 'V' with an 'S' next to it. He didn't need to think twice as to who it could have been.

His eyes snapped up when he heard the clanging of a aluminum can against the table. "Back."

She sat back down in her spot and cracked her's open. His hand reached out and gently clamped around the drink. Before, he'd never hesitate, he'd just open it up and chug it down, almost as a way of convincing himself of...

...nowadays, no matter what he did, he couldn't feel like that. Feel normal, like one of them. Like his sister. "Thank you."

Every now and again as they sat, mostly silently together, she always seemed to have something to say, despite everything, he'd sip at his drink. He knew it was sweet but he barely tasted it. She knew now, knew that he didn't want or need it but it seemed to make her more comfortable around him. He didn't mind, she could pretend if she wanted to and he'd do the same with her. He'd pretend for her.

As she went on about something, his ears twitched at a sound. The drink went down hard as something caught his senses. He'd never felt anything like it before. The noise was...hypnotic, enthralling even but not quite obligating. He tried to shrug it off but when something like this happens, when something different happens, nothing can force him to be at ease. It was new. He didn't like new. Besides that, there was really only one thing he noticed and it scared him a little...

"You know..." She tone shifted. "I can take care of myself."

He stared at her, her brow lowered as she stared down at her twiddling thumbs and her mouth creased into an annoyed line. He wanted to say how he wanted to take care of her, that now his greatest purpose was to protect her but instead, something made him lose his cool a bit. "Oh, really?"

He played it over in his head and more and more, it felt like something was definitely wrong. That didn't sound like him, that didn't sound like how he talked to her at all, he would never talk to her like that. "Yes, really. Why? You think I can't?"

Her angry glare snapped up to him. He didn't feel threatened like before, he just felt more annoyed. "On the salary you get, no."

Wait, what was that...? "At least I make an honest living."

What is that? "Lotta good it does, huh?"

Stop it. "Pfft, what the fuck would you know about the word 'good'?"

Stop getting angry. "You don't complain when I come home with rent money."

No...No, no, no. "I feel sick to my stomach when you do the things you do to get that fucking money!" Calm down. His teeth bared behind his lips and his fists clenched. "What's the matter, brother? Oh wait, that's right, he's dead." At that, he could feel tendrils surged through the surface of his skin. Why was he so angry?

Fuck it, Slip had crossed the line.

"Oh, what's this? The freaks finally showing his true colours, is he?" His eyes flashed a bright crimson.

By now, he could feel the small spikes forming subconsciously under his clothes. How fucking dare she? He'd never been so pissed with her before. Her complete mood-shift was so like her but it never got to him like this. Thought after though ran through his mind. His anger at his sister, the confusion as to why he was angry at all or even why she was and then the fear. Fear of lashing, succumbing to his rage. He only wish he could control himself enough to not turn the building into a massacre. He tried to compose, have some clear sight of who he was, maybe that would calm him down. He loved his sister, he would never hurt but goddamnit, did he want to right then. That scared him the most.

Something was very, very wrong. He never got like this around her. His muscles tightened under his surging skin, he could feel it coming. It was only a matter of seconds before he lost it completely and bathed the restaurant in blood and-AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT NOISE?!

Get out.

Kickback's body fought him as he slid out of the booth and onto his feet. His rage filled his psyche to the point where his head ached and burned with it. "And just where the fuck do you think you're going?"

Had to get out.

His eyes snapped shut as he walked to the door, straining his mass to stay in place. He didn't even notice the shouting and the bickering from everyone else in the building, none of it. Even still, every time his sister even breathed, he heard it and it annoyed him. Impudent little bitch thinks that just because he's never hurt her, he wouldn't? If she kept it up, he'd be all-too happy to prove her wron-Damnit!

Get the Hell out!

His hands covered his ears. The noise. That insufferable unidentifiable, beautiful, horrible, hypnotizing noise. He had to get away from it. Block it out. His shoulder crashed into the door, sending it spiraling open. He could still feel his anger, his sister's anger, all of it surged through his ever-morphing body and it hurt. She screamed at him as the cool night air touched his viral flesh. Under the cover of darkness, he let himself go, his body flailed in a hideous mass of tendrils uncontrollably. So...ANGRY!

Kickback ran.

She watched him escape into the darkness. Even after he was gone, she was still just...so pissed off with him. Slip muffled her scream between clenched teeth, folded her arms across the table and hit her head hard against them.

Just as suddenly as she felt it, all the anger, all the rage, it was gone. She couldn't help but feel like a force was lifted off her and her ears felt...free to her. It took her a moment but she began to think back to what had happened. She just snapped...but she had a good reason. Kick was always taking care of her and she couldn't stand that! She could take care of herself, like she told him, she didn't need him to look after her, provide for her, care for her...be with her...love her...

It was at that point did Slip Stream realize that she just fucked up royally by pissing off her brother. Her brother that had superpowers...She needed to find him.

"Kick'!"

Slip Stream ran.

Neither sibling was there to hear the conversation three girls were having in the back of the bakery.

"...Did you feel the energy coming off that guy?"

Just one of those days, it seemed.

Vinyl Scratch slumped further back in recliner, her limbs dangled idly off the sides as her eyes stared, bored into the screen ahead of her. It wasn't like she had nothing better to do or anything planned to do today, she was just...waiting for the plan to arrive. It was days like these that gave her time to think. Think about stuff she normally wouldn't, like what would it be like to be one of them. One of the sheep, the general demographic public, typical teenagers, them. Here she was, slouching away and bored-as-all-Hell while the rest of her dubbed fellow adolescents were out and about, hanging with their friends, doing whatever it is mainstreamers do. What would it have been like, she always wondered, to be one of the popular kids, the kind that everyone knew and were obligated to love in due of their reputation. For a moment, it seemed nice.

That is until she remembered that bitch, Sunset and she almost gagged at her own thought.

With a flick of her wrist, she idly switched through her preferred channels because let's face it, everyone only has about five of so that they like and everything else is miscellaneous. At least, that's what she thought. She glanced up at the time and groaned, he was late. Hell, he had amnesia, right? He must've forgotten where she-

Knock knock. Speak of the Devil.

With no time to be embarrassed by how eager she was to bolt upright, dash to the door and swing it wide open, presenting herself for the whole world to see, Vinyl looked straight ahead and was, to put it mildly, pleased to find her friend standing there on the welcome mat. His emerald eyes snapped to her and he stared blankly at her through his bangs. He didn't even say a word, just stood there, never turning away from her gaze. Typical. "Hey, Kick'."

"...Hi."

Now, out of all her friends, she had known him the longest. She always took pride in the fact that when everyone else found him mysterious and weird, she could read him like a book and know exactly what he was thinking. Now though...something was different. Off, even. Kickback had a different aura about him as he stood there in front of her. At first she wanted to just wave it off, take it as a response to her being, admittedly, a little under-dressed but he never much cared about anything like that before. Maybe she could just take it for just Kick being Kick but that excuse only worked if he was acting like himself. Not like now. "Well, c'mon in "

He just gave a nod and strode his way inside, closing the door behind him as Vinyl walked back over into the lounge room. When she noticed he wasn't following, she turned, eyeing him confusedly. Her lips parted to speak but he beat her to it. "...I remember you."

She grinned. "Well, I'd hope so. I'm your best friend."

"...Vinyl."

"Mhmm, that's my name." She cocked an eyebrow, smirking. "Any other ground-breaking pieces of info ya wanna give us? just shut up and get in here.

Kickback wasn't sure what to expect when he strode his way into the house. Part of him dreaded the thought of another flash sparking it's way across his mind. Silently, he watched the pale girl saunter passed him and plopped herself in a dark red chair. Never did he feel more out of place...at least, to his knowledge. The previous night with his sister gave him some clue as to what to do but his mind was void of any and all social norms and mannerisms that he presumed he used to know. Kickback decided to go with his gut on this one and walked to the other side of the room and gently sat himself down on a couch, adjacent to Vinyl.

"Alright, man." She began. "What's goin' on?"

"...what?"

"Why do you think I invited you over?" Her eyelids lowered, condescendingly. "What happened to you, dude?"

Kickback looked down into his lap. "I don't remember."

"Well, what do you remember?"

His muscles tensed. "Slip asked the same thing. I don't remember what happened."

"Don't get snippy with me, Kick'." Vinyl waved something in his face. "I'm just worried about you."

He wasn't sure what to say to that. Should he thank her, was that appropriate? "...okay."

"Yeah, well...whatever." She slouched back in her chair and pointed something up at the big, black screen adorning the wall. With a flick of her wrist, colour came to life within it's frame. Vinyl smirked. "Alright, 'nough o' that. 'Least you're alive, right?" She added, turning her head to smile at him.

Kickback forgot how to smile. When he suddenly recalled how to call it forth at whim, she had already looked away, back to the screen. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, his eyes widened slightly at the familiar image. There was a person standing there, high above the streets on a rooftop. It was weird, like looking into a mirror but it wasn't him and the surrounding environment certainly didn't look like the area he was in earlier but it was still all eerie to his psyche. That sense was immediately replaced by sheer confusion as he watched, blankly at what happened next.

"Go web!...Fly."

...what?

"Up, up and away web!...Shazam!"

The Hell is he...?

"Go! Go!! Go, web, go!"

"This is so friggin' stupid." Vinyl laughed. "Why do I love it?"

Kickback slowly turned to the girl recoiled, her elbow digging into the armrest while her face lay lazily against her closed fist with a scrunched up grin on her face. When he looked back, it felt like his brain just exploded. Twice.

He watched as the same figure spun out a strand of...he was certain he'd seen something like it before, recently. His eyes never even blinked while he stood up on the ledge and sent himself swinging above the busy street below, screaming all the while and crashing into a billboard.

Kickback stared at Vinyl, unwavering. "What was that?"

Slowly, she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes piercing with scrutiny. "Wow. You really do have amnesia."

He looked down at his thumbs. "She said that too."

Vinyl sighed and shot right up and onto her feet. He watched her curiously walk out into the house, he heard some rummaging and after a quick while, she came back, walking up to him with two cans and a bowl of yellow stuff in tow. Gently, she placed the plastic container down on the table in front of them and passed one of the aluminium canisters over to him. Kickback decided that he much preferred this than having it thrown into him. It was a different drink though, so now he had to decided whether or not this one was better. "Well..."

Vinyl plopped herself down beside him and scooted closer to where he sat, apparently barely taking notice of how much space or lack thereof there was between them now and cracked open her drink. Not even a second went by before she groaned, turning herself over with her can raised to the sky and settling to rest her head in his lap, her feet pointing up over the side of the couch. "Looks like it's gonna be my job to get you up to speed a little bit."

Her arm extended back towards the TV, Kickback took notice that the sound emitting from it got louder. Without much to protest or say, he slipped a finger into the cap of his drink and with a quick flick, the aluminium collapsed in on itself. At least he was quick learner.

He stared at the large box at the other end of the room. None of them even noticed that he never once blinked throughout the little improv movie marathon. Kickback barely moved, not even when he felt his apparent best friend's hands wrap around his arm and hold it close to her body while she lay there, he just didn't know what to say to that or anything, really. He only had one question on his mind and even he found it irritating, so he chose to keep silent unless when he was being spoken to. Kickback found that just taking all of the confusion of what he was seeing head-on was probably for the best.

If anything, it all gave him one or two ideas.

He took a quick sip from his drink.

Tasteless.

Author's Note:

C'mon, how could I NOT sneak a little Disturbed in here?
I don't know how to write exposition.

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