Post by angelofmusic1992 on Sept 12, 2017 15:18:39 GMT
Yang tried to calm her jittery nerves. This was it. All of the Other Units’ work for the past week was about to pay off. The most difficult part had been finding out who’d bought the special concrete that prevented people from using magic. Finding the person who sold it was easy enough. Figuring out which of their clients might be the suspect was harder. But, one customer had turned out to have a fake I.D. and after a bit of searching, they found out the man was actually part of the Elemental Gang. Everyone remembered Thrax rescuing Emerald from jail back in Mardi Gras, and everything clicked into place. What Thrax had promised the Elemental Gang was up for debate, but working with them made him easier to trace. They’d found out where the gang’s hideout was. Now, the Others Unit was divided up into two teams, each one with several SWAT officers. Pitch, Yang, Aqua, and Riku would storm the front of the building, while Shadow, Sunshine, Dimitri, and Jim would handle the back.
“Okay, we’re approaching the Elemental Gang’s hideout,” Aqua said, who was driving the police car everyone was in. “Everyone be ready. As soon as the car stops, us and the rest of the SWAT team are going jump out and approach the entrance. After that, it’ll be a stop and start process. We go in, check for any danger, then move onto the next area. With both teams combing the building together, it should only be a matter of time before we find Weiss.”
The explanation was mostly for Yang’s benefit. Riku and Pitch didn’t seem nervous. They’d probably done stuff like this before. Heck, Riku seemed ready to kick some butt today. No doubt he wanted payback for what the Elemental Gang had done to his sister. Yang just hoped she wouldn’t freeze or have a flashback triggered. Going into this building probably meant she’d run into Cinder, Mercury, or Emerald. She was nervous at the idea of seeing them, and also determined to kick their asses.
“Here we go,” Aqua said. “We’re about to move.”
Yang glanced behind her. The SWAT van was right on their tail. They would be ready to move when they were.
“Now!”
At Aqua’s words, everyone rushed out at once. Yang could already feel adrenaline start to pump in her veins. The Others Unit and the SWAT team surrounded the front door. After seeing that the coast was clear, Pitch nodded at Yang. She walked up, sucked in a breath, and kicked the door with a fiery blast. It came off easily, clattering inside the main hallway noisily. Everyone rushed in, ready to attack at the first signs of danger. They didn’t have to wait long for it.
Before they’d even gotten to the main hallway, they encountered two men. No doubt they seemed surprised at seeing a SWAT team, along with members of the Others Unit. That didn’t stop them from trying to fight though. One let out a fireball from his hands. The other tore out chunks of stone from the wall and hurled them at the group. They were easy enough to dispatch. As they moved, they encountered more and more gang members, all of them ready to fight.
By the time they got to the fifth hallway, fighting started to get tricky. With so many people in such a tiny space, it was hard to form any sort of attack without hitting an ally.
“We need to split up,” Pitch said as he avoided an icicle that had been chucked at his head. “All you SWAT officers, head up to the second floor and start clearing everyone out there. The Others Unit will stay here.”
“We can’t leave you by yourselves,” one woman argued. “There’s only four of you.”
Pitch didn’t answer, verbally at least. To prove his point, he snapped his fingers. Instantly, Nightmares appeared at his side, whinnying and snorting. There would be plenty of them to help without leaving them vulnerable.
“Point taken,” the woman said. “Alright everyone, we’re heading upstairs. Keep your eyes peeled and your guns ready.”
When they came to the next staircase, the SWAT team headed up, leaving Aqua, Riku, Yang, Pitch, and the Nightmares alone. Yang didn’t feel nervous though. She knew they would be a match for any gang members they met. She rolled her shoulders, actually feeling like this was going smoothly. She had taken out a good number of gang members herself, and had done it with confidence. Maybe her first mission wouldn’t end with her getting triggered or freezing up.
“Alright, let’s keep moving,” Pitch said. “Even my Nightmares can’t protect us if we act like sitting ducks.”
Everyone nodded, and they set off to the next hallway.
Weiss let out a slow breath. There was no point in distancing herself from the pain. It was always with her now, every hour, every minute. Thrax only came in once a day, to ask if she would serve him. And every time she said no, he hurt her in some way. Dragging his claw along her arm, throwing her against the wall, suffocating her with his bare hands, whatever he thought was appropriate. The marks on her body increased. She could never sleep for long, and her appetite was mostly gone. Thrax was the only person she had contact with. Whenever someone brought her meals, she only saw someone’s hand placed the tray down before the door closed again. But, she had a plan. And it was time she put it into effect.
Almost as if he had known she was thinking about him, Thrax entered the room. Weiss had just enough time to reach under her pillow, close her fingers around a small object, and then hide both hands inside the sweatshirt she was wearing. It was a perfectly normal gesture that Thrax wouldn’t suspect.
“Don’t know what’s going on up there, with all that noise,” the demon muttered to himself. “If those earth users can’t stop challenging each other to rock throwing contests for one minute, I’ll-”
“Thrax, I want to do it.”
Weiss said the words calmly, but she could see the effect they had on Thrax. The demon froze, as if the words had hit him with the force of a truck. Then, he slowly turned around and looked at her.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Weiss replied. “I want to do it. I want to make the unbreakable bond. I don’t want to stay here in this room anymore.”
Weiss felt like the words sounded hollow, but Thrax was still overjoyed to hear them. It looked like he was ready to believe anything if it meant his plan would work.
“I know you’d come around,” he said, grinning. “Well, no sense in wasting time. Let’s get going.”
He pulled up Weiss by the arm, whose hands stayed in her sweatshirt pocket. Her heart beat nervously as Thrax led her out of the room and into a long hallway. Weiss looked up when she heard the sounds of crashing and shouting from upstairs.
“What’s going on up there?” she asked.
“No idea,” Thrax replied. “Proably some of the earth users acting stupid. They like throwing rocks at each other for fun.”
Weiss said no more on the subject. Thrax led her to a large square room made of regular concrete. It was empty, save for the door in the center of the wall.
“Alright, this should be enough space to do it,” Thrax said, who was grinning so much, he looked more like the Cheshire Cat than anything else. “Finally, I’m getting what I want. I finally get to be in control.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Thrax’s smile instantly vanished at those words. He turned to look at Weiss, who had a devilish grin on her face. In the next instant, her right hand suddenly swung out, her fist clutched around something tightly. Thrax didn’t even see what it was, for as soon as she had moved her hand, he had been thrown violently to the right, smacking into the wall before crashing to the floor below. He coughed as he struggled to stand up.
“Wha…how…”
Still grinning, Weiss quickly raised her hand up. Thrax flew towards the ceiling and hit it hard, before falling to the floor again. He uttered a cry of pain this time. What was going on?
“Maybe when you spending all that time constructing my special little prison, you should have considered this.”
Thrax looked up at Weiss’s biting words, and he gasped. In her right hand was a doll, made entirely from bread. And it sculpted into a perfect likeness of Thrax.
“You know, voodoo dolls don’t have to be made from cloth,” Weiss said conversationally. “They can be made from lots of things: clay, wax, anything that can be sculpted and changed so it looks like somebody else. And hey, I’ve heard of some prisoners who have made swans from bread. So, why couldn’t I do the same with a voodoo doll?”
Thrax’s eyes widened in horror, and Weiss laughed.
“Oh, you have no idea how close I was to breaking,” she said. “This was the only thing that kept me going. I knew that as soon as I completed it, I could make you take me outside that god-forsaken prison by agreeing to serve you. And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!”
Weiss gave another laugh. Thrax tried to stand up, but one movement from the voodoo doll, and he had slammed into the floor, his face hitting it hard enough to make his nose bleed. He managed to raise his head, her teeth locked in a snarl.
“You bitch,” he growled. “I’ll destroy you for this. I’ll-”
Thrax’s words suddenly turned into screams as several breaking, snapping sounds filled the air. Weiss had squeezed the doll in her hand, breaking several of Thrax’s bones at once.
“You’re not in control of this situation anymore, Thrax,” Weiss sneered. “I am. And I’m going to make you suffer for every bit of pain you’ve caused.”
Thrax couldn’t even reply. He just looked up at Weiss, and he felt fear coursing through him. Pitch was no longer the only person he was scared of. Weiss was too, and Thrax felt like she was more frightening than Pitch had ever been.
Yang went with the flow, moving from one gang member to the next fluidly. She had gotten into a rhythm and she didn’t want her concentration broken. Pitch, Aqua, and Riku were also taking down anyone who dared attack them, and the Nightmares offered back-up as needed. The four of them made a pretty deadly force, and the gang members were starting to get scared. However, there was one more obstacle for them to overcome.
As Yang sent a woman head first into a wall, knocking her out cold, a fireball flew over her head. She whirled around, ready to take on whoever had shot it. But, to her surprise, it wasn’t just another random thug. It was Cinder herself, standing in front of a door at the end of the hallway. And she looked livid.
“This is as far as you go,” she growled, her hands already filling with flames. “Nobody gets through here.”
Yang glanced at the door behind the gang leader. If Cinder herself was guarding this door, it could only mean one thing: it had to lead to Weiss. Grinding her teeth, Yang charged forward.
Her flames met Cinder’s, fire exploding out in all directions. Scorch marks covered the walls and ceiling, but the women took no notice. They were only concerned with each other. They continually blasted fire at each other, trying to gain the upper hand. Yang struck where she could, moved when she had to, and tried to keep her mind calm. She felt herself getting into a zone, where everything else was tuned out except for the fight in front of her. Nothing else mattered but this. She had to win.
Slowly, Yang started to gain the upper hand. Cinder was no match for her determination and strong will. And finally, Yang saw an opening. As Cinder swung her foot around, trying to aim a fiery blast at Yang’s head, the blonde ducked down and swiped at her other leg. Cinder fell to the ground, and before she knew it, Yang was standing over her, her fiery fist aimed at her head.
“I won’t let you beat me,” Cinder snarled. “I am the leader of the Elemental Gang. I have to keep this family alive! I-”
Yang cut her off by swiftly kicking her in the head. The blow was hard enough to knock the gang leader out cold.
“Looks like I just did,” she said with satisfaction. She’d taken down one of the people that had scared her for the longest time. Cinder wasn’t so frightening when she didn’t have cronies at her side to make the match uneven. She glanced back to see Pitch, Riku, and Aqua looking at her. Before Yang could ask how much they saw, she was suddenly knocked down by a splash of water. More reinforcements had arrived, determined to make a final stand.
“Weiss is down here!” Yang said loudly as she let out a fire blast in their direction, knocking them back. “We have to get her!”
That caught Riku’s attention. However, he knew the last of the Elemental Gang had to be dealt with. Plus, there was still the issue of Thrax, who hadn’t been seen yet. Aqua decided to make a decision.
“Riku, you and Yang go down there and get Weiss. Pitch and I will handle these guys. The rest of the team should be finishing everyone off upstairs.”
Riku nodded, and without another word, he and Yang went through the door. They found themselves at the top of a set of winding stairs. To their surprise, it wasn’t quiet. They could hear crashing and banging downstairs, as well as cries of pain. Riku and Yang only looked at each other before running down the stairs. The cries didn’t sound like a girl’s, so they couldn’t belong to Weiss. But that just made them wonder what the hell was going on down there.
Thrax cried out as Weiss slammed him into the ceiling. He cried out again as he was hurled into the wall. Weiss kept it up, throwing him in whatever direction she pleased. He hit the ceiling, the wall, the other wall, the ceiling again, the floor, the wall again. He bounced around like a pinball, his body slowly being bashed and broken until it was falling apart. Weiss didn’t see any need to stop. Why should she? Thrax deserved this. He’d hurt so many people. He’d hurt her. And she was going to make him pay.
After what seemed like an eternity, Thrax starting slamming into the concrete more slowly. Weiss’s anger was starting to fade, although she wasn’t done yet. With one final movement. she made Thrax crash onto the floor one last time. The voodoo doll fell from her hands. She breathed heavily, as if she had just run several miles. She walked over to Thrax, then rolled him over with her foot. He gave a soft grunt of pain as she did so. He was bleeding here and there, and some of his limbs were bent in odd places. Almost every bone in his body was broken. And it made Weiss happy.
“God, look at you. You’re pathetic,” she sneered. “A demon that’s terrorized this city for months, reduced to a pile of broken bones by a teenage girl.” She gave a hollow laugh. “And now, I’m going to finish you off for good.”
She raised her foot and slowly pressed down on Thrax’s neck, cutting off his airflow. He started gasping for breath and his eyes widened. His arms trembled in an attempt to move them, but he couldn’t even raise them off the ground. He was too broken and battered. Weiss looked at him with maliciousness and madness in her eyes. Losing her shadow spirits, getting caged, being beaten and choked and attacked, it had pushed her over the edge. At least, she felt that she had. But then Thrax looked at her, and she saw desperation, fear, and pleading in his eyes. She felt her stomach lurch, a nauseous feeling spreading. She felt her hands begin to tremble.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she yelled. “You deserve to die! I have to do this!”
Do you though?
Weiss looked up. That voice had come from inside her head, but it wasn’t her shadow spirits. She realized it was her own conscious, trying to talk some sense into her.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she muttered, not caring in the slightest that she was talking to herself and that Thrax was only witnessing one side of the conversation.
Do you really have to kill him? Why are you doing this?
“It’s to protect everyone!” she argued. “He’s hurt people ever since he came here. I have to kill him, so he won’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Are you sure you’re not doing it because you want revenge? Because you’re finally in control?
Those words hit Weiss hard. Was that why she was really doing this? All her life, she’d been trying to be in control of herself. It was why she’d wanted to become the voodoo queen so bad. It would finally let her be in charge of herself, instead of letting her parents tell her what to do. Was that why she had enjoyed tossing Thrax around like a rag doll, because she’d finally been in control for once in her life?
“Who cares why I’m doing it?” she asked. “It has to be done. I have to do it.”
You don’t have to. You can let the police arrest him and put him in prison. You’ve hurt him enough. You’re not a killer. Look at yourself.
Weiss saw the pitiful look in Thrax’s eyes again, and her stomach hurt even worse. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking and she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes. Was her body reacting this way because it knew this was wrong, that this wasn’t who she was?
“It’s what my shadow spirits would want,” she said, mentioning them as a last resort. “They’ve been teaching me how to protect myself from him, how to fight him off better if we ever met again. Now look at me. I’ve finally beaten him. I’ve got him at my mercy. I can finish him off and end this, right now.”
That’s what your shadow spirits want, but is it what you want? What do you want, Weiss?
“Shut up!” Weiss shouted, clawing at her head with her fingers. Tears filled her eyes and she struggled to keep standing. “I’m not listening to you! Go away!”
You don’t want to do this, Weiss. You’re not a killer. Leave him be. You’ve done enough.
“Stop it!” Weiss screamed. She started crying, her shoulders trembling. In her heart, she knew her conscious was right. She wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. She was only doing this because she felt like she had to, not because she wanted to. She just wanted revenge and to have control for once. Slowly, she pulled her foot back. Thrax sucked in a breath, his chest thinly moving in and out. Weiss fell to her knees, sobbing. All the fear and anger and sadness she’d felt over the past two weeks came flooding out, and she cried harder than she’d ever had in her life.
The door burst open, and Yang and Riku rushed into the room, ready to fight any gang members who happened to be down here. What they didn’t expect to find, however, was Thrax laying on the ground, with nearly every bone in his body broken. And Weiss was sitting beside him, sobbing and wailing.
“Weiss!” Riku instantly ran over to his sister, not paying attention to Thrax. “Are you okay? Are you alright? What happened?”
Weiss couldn’t reply. She just cried and cried, barely breathing in between her sobs. Riku hugged her close, trying to calm her, but it didn’t seem to do any good. Yang looked from her back to Thrax. She felt like Riku had asked a good question. What in the world had happened?
Now that the fighting was over, time seemed to pass by slowly. A lot of Cinder’s gang had been arrested, including Cinder herself. And she’d been angry. She was cursing and condemning Thrax all the way to the police car, where she was shoved into the backseat with hand-cuffs around her wrists. Like the concrete, they impenetrable to any magic or powers. She couldn’t melt them off even if she tried.
Thrax, on the other hand, would receive no such treatment. He would be transferred to a prison hospital, where he would be healed before standing on trial for what he’d done. Yang hadn’t left the basement since she and Riku had first found him and Weiss there, and after some looking around, finding out what had happened hadn’t been too hard. The voodoo doll made of bread was the answer to everything. Only that could allow Weiss to hurt Thrax in such a way. Her hysterical crying had been attributed to shock and just unraveling of everything that had happened. She’d calmed down after a while, staying silent and not talking unless she had to. Riku never left her side. Yang knew he was still furious over what Thrax had done, but was still happy to have his sister back.
Yang glanced up as she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Shadow, along with some paramedics.
"Are they for him?” Yang asked, jerking her head towards Thrax.
Shadow nodded, then addressed the paramedics. “Okay guys, he’s got nearly bone in his body broken. He’s no threat now, but try to stay cautious nevertheless. Anything else getting broken might kill him.”
The paramedics nodded in understanding, then headed over to Thrax and started getting to work. Strangely enough, the demon hadn’t said a word since Yang and Riku had come down here. Yang wasn’t sure if it was because he knew he was beaten, or he was just humiliated that he’d been outsmarted by a teenage girl. Even now, he said nothing to the paramedics as they laid out a stretcher and tried to figure out the best way to move him. He just stared blankly at the ceiling.
“You okay?”
Yang turned at the sound of Shadow’s voice. She knew what he meant by that question.
“Yeah. I guess…I’ve wanted to get back at him for a while, show him I wasn’t scared of him anymore. Kind of wanted to beat him to a pulp, to be honest. But now…” She gestured to where Thrax laid on the ground. “He just seems pitiful. It’s almost sad.”
“Well, it just goes to show that anybody can have a breaking point,” Shadow said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “He’d been going downhill for a while. Looks like this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Yang just nodded in response. She was quiet as she watched the paramedics gingerly lift Thrax onto the stretcher, then start walking. As they passed by, she and Thrax made eye contact, just for a moment. Yang expected to feel anger, or fear. Instead, all she felt was pity. Thrax had been someone she’d hated and feared for so long. Now, he resembled a pile of broken sticks more than a fearsome demon. Every bad thing he’d ever done had come back to get him. In a way, it was the worst fate he could have received. All of this ran through Yang’s mind in a second. Then, just like that, the paramedics headed up the stairs, and Thrax was taken out of sight.
((I'm so excited to publish this part. This has been sitting around in my head for months. XD It's not over yet though! I'll be posting the last part of this next week!))
“Okay, we’re approaching the Elemental Gang’s hideout,” Aqua said, who was driving the police car everyone was in. “Everyone be ready. As soon as the car stops, us and the rest of the SWAT team are going jump out and approach the entrance. After that, it’ll be a stop and start process. We go in, check for any danger, then move onto the next area. With both teams combing the building together, it should only be a matter of time before we find Weiss.”
The explanation was mostly for Yang’s benefit. Riku and Pitch didn’t seem nervous. They’d probably done stuff like this before. Heck, Riku seemed ready to kick some butt today. No doubt he wanted payback for what the Elemental Gang had done to his sister. Yang just hoped she wouldn’t freeze or have a flashback triggered. Going into this building probably meant she’d run into Cinder, Mercury, or Emerald. She was nervous at the idea of seeing them, and also determined to kick their asses.
“Here we go,” Aqua said. “We’re about to move.”
Yang glanced behind her. The SWAT van was right on their tail. They would be ready to move when they were.
“Now!”
At Aqua’s words, everyone rushed out at once. Yang could already feel adrenaline start to pump in her veins. The Others Unit and the SWAT team surrounded the front door. After seeing that the coast was clear, Pitch nodded at Yang. She walked up, sucked in a breath, and kicked the door with a fiery blast. It came off easily, clattering inside the main hallway noisily. Everyone rushed in, ready to attack at the first signs of danger. They didn’t have to wait long for it.
Before they’d even gotten to the main hallway, they encountered two men. No doubt they seemed surprised at seeing a SWAT team, along with members of the Others Unit. That didn’t stop them from trying to fight though. One let out a fireball from his hands. The other tore out chunks of stone from the wall and hurled them at the group. They were easy enough to dispatch. As they moved, they encountered more and more gang members, all of them ready to fight.
By the time they got to the fifth hallway, fighting started to get tricky. With so many people in such a tiny space, it was hard to form any sort of attack without hitting an ally.
“We need to split up,” Pitch said as he avoided an icicle that had been chucked at his head. “All you SWAT officers, head up to the second floor and start clearing everyone out there. The Others Unit will stay here.”
“We can’t leave you by yourselves,” one woman argued. “There’s only four of you.”
Pitch didn’t answer, verbally at least. To prove his point, he snapped his fingers. Instantly, Nightmares appeared at his side, whinnying and snorting. There would be plenty of them to help without leaving them vulnerable.
“Point taken,” the woman said. “Alright everyone, we’re heading upstairs. Keep your eyes peeled and your guns ready.”
When they came to the next staircase, the SWAT team headed up, leaving Aqua, Riku, Yang, Pitch, and the Nightmares alone. Yang didn’t feel nervous though. She knew they would be a match for any gang members they met. She rolled her shoulders, actually feeling like this was going smoothly. She had taken out a good number of gang members herself, and had done it with confidence. Maybe her first mission wouldn’t end with her getting triggered or freezing up.
“Alright, let’s keep moving,” Pitch said. “Even my Nightmares can’t protect us if we act like sitting ducks.”
Everyone nodded, and they set off to the next hallway.
Weiss let out a slow breath. There was no point in distancing herself from the pain. It was always with her now, every hour, every minute. Thrax only came in once a day, to ask if she would serve him. And every time she said no, he hurt her in some way. Dragging his claw along her arm, throwing her against the wall, suffocating her with his bare hands, whatever he thought was appropriate. The marks on her body increased. She could never sleep for long, and her appetite was mostly gone. Thrax was the only person she had contact with. Whenever someone brought her meals, she only saw someone’s hand placed the tray down before the door closed again. But, she had a plan. And it was time she put it into effect.
Almost as if he had known she was thinking about him, Thrax entered the room. Weiss had just enough time to reach under her pillow, close her fingers around a small object, and then hide both hands inside the sweatshirt she was wearing. It was a perfectly normal gesture that Thrax wouldn’t suspect.
“Don’t know what’s going on up there, with all that noise,” the demon muttered to himself. “If those earth users can’t stop challenging each other to rock throwing contests for one minute, I’ll-”
“Thrax, I want to do it.”
Weiss said the words calmly, but she could see the effect they had on Thrax. The demon froze, as if the words had hit him with the force of a truck. Then, he slowly turned around and looked at her.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Weiss replied. “I want to do it. I want to make the unbreakable bond. I don’t want to stay here in this room anymore.”
Weiss felt like the words sounded hollow, but Thrax was still overjoyed to hear them. It looked like he was ready to believe anything if it meant his plan would work.
“I know you’d come around,” he said, grinning. “Well, no sense in wasting time. Let’s get going.”
He pulled up Weiss by the arm, whose hands stayed in her sweatshirt pocket. Her heart beat nervously as Thrax led her out of the room and into a long hallway. Weiss looked up when she heard the sounds of crashing and shouting from upstairs.
“What’s going on up there?” she asked.
“No idea,” Thrax replied. “Proably some of the earth users acting stupid. They like throwing rocks at each other for fun.”
Weiss said no more on the subject. Thrax led her to a large square room made of regular concrete. It was empty, save for the door in the center of the wall.
“Alright, this should be enough space to do it,” Thrax said, who was grinning so much, he looked more like the Cheshire Cat than anything else. “Finally, I’m getting what I want. I finally get to be in control.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Thrax’s smile instantly vanished at those words. He turned to look at Weiss, who had a devilish grin on her face. In the next instant, her right hand suddenly swung out, her fist clutched around something tightly. Thrax didn’t even see what it was, for as soon as she had moved her hand, he had been thrown violently to the right, smacking into the wall before crashing to the floor below. He coughed as he struggled to stand up.
“Wha…how…”
Still grinning, Weiss quickly raised her hand up. Thrax flew towards the ceiling and hit it hard, before falling to the floor again. He uttered a cry of pain this time. What was going on?
“Maybe when you spending all that time constructing my special little prison, you should have considered this.”
Thrax looked up at Weiss’s biting words, and he gasped. In her right hand was a doll, made entirely from bread. And it sculpted into a perfect likeness of Thrax.
“You know, voodoo dolls don’t have to be made from cloth,” Weiss said conversationally. “They can be made from lots of things: clay, wax, anything that can be sculpted and changed so it looks like somebody else. And hey, I’ve heard of some prisoners who have made swans from bread. So, why couldn’t I do the same with a voodoo doll?”
Thrax’s eyes widened in horror, and Weiss laughed.
“Oh, you have no idea how close I was to breaking,” she said. “This was the only thing that kept me going. I knew that as soon as I completed it, I could make you take me outside that god-forsaken prison by agreeing to serve you. And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!”
Weiss gave another laugh. Thrax tried to stand up, but one movement from the voodoo doll, and he had slammed into the floor, his face hitting it hard enough to make his nose bleed. He managed to raise his head, her teeth locked in a snarl.
“You bitch,” he growled. “I’ll destroy you for this. I’ll-”
Thrax’s words suddenly turned into screams as several breaking, snapping sounds filled the air. Weiss had squeezed the doll in her hand, breaking several of Thrax’s bones at once.
“You’re not in control of this situation anymore, Thrax,” Weiss sneered. “I am. And I’m going to make you suffer for every bit of pain you’ve caused.”
Thrax couldn’t even reply. He just looked up at Weiss, and he felt fear coursing through him. Pitch was no longer the only person he was scared of. Weiss was too, and Thrax felt like she was more frightening than Pitch had ever been.
Yang went with the flow, moving from one gang member to the next fluidly. She had gotten into a rhythm and she didn’t want her concentration broken. Pitch, Aqua, and Riku were also taking down anyone who dared attack them, and the Nightmares offered back-up as needed. The four of them made a pretty deadly force, and the gang members were starting to get scared. However, there was one more obstacle for them to overcome.
As Yang sent a woman head first into a wall, knocking her out cold, a fireball flew over her head. She whirled around, ready to take on whoever had shot it. But, to her surprise, it wasn’t just another random thug. It was Cinder herself, standing in front of a door at the end of the hallway. And she looked livid.
“This is as far as you go,” she growled, her hands already filling with flames. “Nobody gets through here.”
Yang glanced at the door behind the gang leader. If Cinder herself was guarding this door, it could only mean one thing: it had to lead to Weiss. Grinding her teeth, Yang charged forward.
Her flames met Cinder’s, fire exploding out in all directions. Scorch marks covered the walls and ceiling, but the women took no notice. They were only concerned with each other. They continually blasted fire at each other, trying to gain the upper hand. Yang struck where she could, moved when she had to, and tried to keep her mind calm. She felt herself getting into a zone, where everything else was tuned out except for the fight in front of her. Nothing else mattered but this. She had to win.
Slowly, Yang started to gain the upper hand. Cinder was no match for her determination and strong will. And finally, Yang saw an opening. As Cinder swung her foot around, trying to aim a fiery blast at Yang’s head, the blonde ducked down and swiped at her other leg. Cinder fell to the ground, and before she knew it, Yang was standing over her, her fiery fist aimed at her head.
“I won’t let you beat me,” Cinder snarled. “I am the leader of the Elemental Gang. I have to keep this family alive! I-”
Yang cut her off by swiftly kicking her in the head. The blow was hard enough to knock the gang leader out cold.
“Looks like I just did,” she said with satisfaction. She’d taken down one of the people that had scared her for the longest time. Cinder wasn’t so frightening when she didn’t have cronies at her side to make the match uneven. She glanced back to see Pitch, Riku, and Aqua looking at her. Before Yang could ask how much they saw, she was suddenly knocked down by a splash of water. More reinforcements had arrived, determined to make a final stand.
“Weiss is down here!” Yang said loudly as she let out a fire blast in their direction, knocking them back. “We have to get her!”
That caught Riku’s attention. However, he knew the last of the Elemental Gang had to be dealt with. Plus, there was still the issue of Thrax, who hadn’t been seen yet. Aqua decided to make a decision.
“Riku, you and Yang go down there and get Weiss. Pitch and I will handle these guys. The rest of the team should be finishing everyone off upstairs.”
Riku nodded, and without another word, he and Yang went through the door. They found themselves at the top of a set of winding stairs. To their surprise, it wasn’t quiet. They could hear crashing and banging downstairs, as well as cries of pain. Riku and Yang only looked at each other before running down the stairs. The cries didn’t sound like a girl’s, so they couldn’t belong to Weiss. But that just made them wonder what the hell was going on down there.
Thrax cried out as Weiss slammed him into the ceiling. He cried out again as he was hurled into the wall. Weiss kept it up, throwing him in whatever direction she pleased. He hit the ceiling, the wall, the other wall, the ceiling again, the floor, the wall again. He bounced around like a pinball, his body slowly being bashed and broken until it was falling apart. Weiss didn’t see any need to stop. Why should she? Thrax deserved this. He’d hurt so many people. He’d hurt her. And she was going to make him pay.
After what seemed like an eternity, Thrax starting slamming into the concrete more slowly. Weiss’s anger was starting to fade, although she wasn’t done yet. With one final movement. she made Thrax crash onto the floor one last time. The voodoo doll fell from her hands. She breathed heavily, as if she had just run several miles. She walked over to Thrax, then rolled him over with her foot. He gave a soft grunt of pain as she did so. He was bleeding here and there, and some of his limbs were bent in odd places. Almost every bone in his body was broken. And it made Weiss happy.
“God, look at you. You’re pathetic,” she sneered. “A demon that’s terrorized this city for months, reduced to a pile of broken bones by a teenage girl.” She gave a hollow laugh. “And now, I’m going to finish you off for good.”
She raised her foot and slowly pressed down on Thrax’s neck, cutting off his airflow. He started gasping for breath and his eyes widened. His arms trembled in an attempt to move them, but he couldn’t even raise them off the ground. He was too broken and battered. Weiss looked at him with maliciousness and madness in her eyes. Losing her shadow spirits, getting caged, being beaten and choked and attacked, it had pushed her over the edge. At least, she felt that she had. But then Thrax looked at her, and she saw desperation, fear, and pleading in his eyes. She felt her stomach lurch, a nauseous feeling spreading. She felt her hands begin to tremble.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she yelled. “You deserve to die! I have to do this!”
Do you though?
Weiss looked up. That voice had come from inside her head, but it wasn’t her shadow spirits. She realized it was her own conscious, trying to talk some sense into her.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she muttered, not caring in the slightest that she was talking to herself and that Thrax was only witnessing one side of the conversation.
Do you really have to kill him? Why are you doing this?
“It’s to protect everyone!” she argued. “He’s hurt people ever since he came here. I have to kill him, so he won’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Are you sure you’re not doing it because you want revenge? Because you’re finally in control?
Those words hit Weiss hard. Was that why she was really doing this? All her life, she’d been trying to be in control of herself. It was why she’d wanted to become the voodoo queen so bad. It would finally let her be in charge of herself, instead of letting her parents tell her what to do. Was that why she had enjoyed tossing Thrax around like a rag doll, because she’d finally been in control for once in her life?
“Who cares why I’m doing it?” she asked. “It has to be done. I have to do it.”
You don’t have to. You can let the police arrest him and put him in prison. You’ve hurt him enough. You’re not a killer. Look at yourself.
Weiss saw the pitiful look in Thrax’s eyes again, and her stomach hurt even worse. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking and she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes. Was her body reacting this way because it knew this was wrong, that this wasn’t who she was?
“It’s what my shadow spirits would want,” she said, mentioning them as a last resort. “They’ve been teaching me how to protect myself from him, how to fight him off better if we ever met again. Now look at me. I’ve finally beaten him. I’ve got him at my mercy. I can finish him off and end this, right now.”
That’s what your shadow spirits want, but is it what you want? What do you want, Weiss?
“Shut up!” Weiss shouted, clawing at her head with her fingers. Tears filled her eyes and she struggled to keep standing. “I’m not listening to you! Go away!”
You don’t want to do this, Weiss. You’re not a killer. Leave him be. You’ve done enough.
“Stop it!” Weiss screamed. She started crying, her shoulders trembling. In her heart, she knew her conscious was right. She wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. She was only doing this because she felt like she had to, not because she wanted to. She just wanted revenge and to have control for once. Slowly, she pulled her foot back. Thrax sucked in a breath, his chest thinly moving in and out. Weiss fell to her knees, sobbing. All the fear and anger and sadness she’d felt over the past two weeks came flooding out, and she cried harder than she’d ever had in her life.
The door burst open, and Yang and Riku rushed into the room, ready to fight any gang members who happened to be down here. What they didn’t expect to find, however, was Thrax laying on the ground, with nearly every bone in his body broken. And Weiss was sitting beside him, sobbing and wailing.
“Weiss!” Riku instantly ran over to his sister, not paying attention to Thrax. “Are you okay? Are you alright? What happened?”
Weiss couldn’t reply. She just cried and cried, barely breathing in between her sobs. Riku hugged her close, trying to calm her, but it didn’t seem to do any good. Yang looked from her back to Thrax. She felt like Riku had asked a good question. What in the world had happened?
Now that the fighting was over, time seemed to pass by slowly. A lot of Cinder’s gang had been arrested, including Cinder herself. And she’d been angry. She was cursing and condemning Thrax all the way to the police car, where she was shoved into the backseat with hand-cuffs around her wrists. Like the concrete, they impenetrable to any magic or powers. She couldn’t melt them off even if she tried.
Thrax, on the other hand, would receive no such treatment. He would be transferred to a prison hospital, where he would be healed before standing on trial for what he’d done. Yang hadn’t left the basement since she and Riku had first found him and Weiss there, and after some looking around, finding out what had happened hadn’t been too hard. The voodoo doll made of bread was the answer to everything. Only that could allow Weiss to hurt Thrax in such a way. Her hysterical crying had been attributed to shock and just unraveling of everything that had happened. She’d calmed down after a while, staying silent and not talking unless she had to. Riku never left her side. Yang knew he was still furious over what Thrax had done, but was still happy to have his sister back.
Yang glanced up as she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Shadow, along with some paramedics.
"Are they for him?” Yang asked, jerking her head towards Thrax.
Shadow nodded, then addressed the paramedics. “Okay guys, he’s got nearly bone in his body broken. He’s no threat now, but try to stay cautious nevertheless. Anything else getting broken might kill him.”
The paramedics nodded in understanding, then headed over to Thrax and started getting to work. Strangely enough, the demon hadn’t said a word since Yang and Riku had come down here. Yang wasn’t sure if it was because he knew he was beaten, or he was just humiliated that he’d been outsmarted by a teenage girl. Even now, he said nothing to the paramedics as they laid out a stretcher and tried to figure out the best way to move him. He just stared blankly at the ceiling.
“You okay?”
Yang turned at the sound of Shadow’s voice. She knew what he meant by that question.
“Yeah. I guess…I’ve wanted to get back at him for a while, show him I wasn’t scared of him anymore. Kind of wanted to beat him to a pulp, to be honest. But now…” She gestured to where Thrax laid on the ground. “He just seems pitiful. It’s almost sad.”
“Well, it just goes to show that anybody can have a breaking point,” Shadow said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “He’d been going downhill for a while. Looks like this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Yang just nodded in response. She was quiet as she watched the paramedics gingerly lift Thrax onto the stretcher, then start walking. As they passed by, she and Thrax made eye contact, just for a moment. Yang expected to feel anger, or fear. Instead, all she felt was pity. Thrax had been someone she’d hated and feared for so long. Now, he resembled a pile of broken sticks more than a fearsome demon. Every bad thing he’d ever done had come back to get him. In a way, it was the worst fate he could have received. All of this ran through Yang’s mind in a second. Then, just like that, the paramedics headed up the stairs, and Thrax was taken out of sight.
((I'm so excited to publish this part. This has been sitting around in my head for months. XD It's not over yet though! I'll be posting the last part of this next week!))
