>>5288451“Grrrrahaha, oh wow! Oh wow, this is…” ‘A’ tries to laugh before the sound turns into a groan of pain, one hand clutching her stomach while the other claws at the side of her head. “Welcome to a world of h-hurt!”
“Alicja? Alicja, look at me—do you remember what you made me promise?” Mara pleads, kneeling down at the girl’s side. “Do you remember that?”
“That you’d…’welcome to die!’ HA! I…yes! Yes, remember!” Alicja groans through painfully grit teeth, tears welling up in her eyes.
“...Do you need me to do it?” Mara asks, her grey-blue eyes meeting Alicja’s tear-swollen gaze.
“I want…I want…” She mutters, pushing herself up as she struggles for breath.
“…I want to help people.”
A shriek from just inside the cabin prompts Mara to whirl around in alarm just in time to see a wretched form stagger across the threshold. The miserable creatures’ body is a screaming, motile thing—its very skin and bones tearing themselves apart to lash at anything in reach. When the mangled form shrieks again, it’s answered by a cacophony from the woods. A hundred howls and screeches echo through the trees, a calamitous thundering coming from all around as the forests’ denizens start to converge.
Mara curses under her breath, reaching out to the thing with her left hand extended until Alicja seizes the woman’s leg.
“No! No, it’s…it’s a nice doggy. It’s goodest boy-girl-thing! Please don’t! They hurt! Hurt like me!”
For once, Mara hesitates.
The mutated thing is pulling itself apart to draw anything in, and by the time the first amalgam breaches the clearing and hurtles towards the house it’s clear that something’s been started that cannot be undone. The chitinous ball of rat-like appendages that burst onto the scene is the first to be promptly swallowed up by the writhing mass, but it’s by no means the last. Dozens of Amalgams barrel towards the ever-growing mass of maddened flesh, but before it goes any further Mara raises one hand above her head, the familiar shape of Escher’s Gear clutched in one hand while the other holds on tight to Alicja.
Then…they’re gone. The scene fades to nothingness, leaving you staring at the empty floor alongside Amara, Julia, Dorian, and-
You turn to find ‘A’—Alicja—staring at the diminutive stage where her past played out, slack-jawed.
“I…” She begins, uncertain until she shrugs exaggeratedly. “...have seen better! Is there post-cred scene? I need to know if they join Avengers!”
Alicja’s smiling, but it’s an expression that doesn’t fully reach her eyes. You reach out, words of comfort barely on your tongue before she claps her hands over her ears. “Maybe not talk about it right now okayyesgreat?!”
(Continued)
