Twelve

The Darkness Rips and Tears

"I lost my soul"

She sat outside, underneath one of the many trees nearby the cafe. Even though it was pitch-black under the tree, and fairly cool, Yuni didn't even seem to notice. Red eyes gleamed in the dark, staring at nothing. Whispered words, no...singing, was carried on the wind, echoing faintly around the area.

"Down the rabbit hole"

A soft scrrrtch-scrrrtching could be heard faintly, keeping time with the song of the damned. Moonlight filtered through the leaves, shining on silvery claws and white flower petals, petals tainted with red blood.

"Where the darkness rips and tears"

A single petal, half white, half crimson, completely shredded down the center, was caught on a sudden gust of wind. It floated away, unnoticed by the insane creature below the tree.

"The rabbit white"

The little gust of wind played with the flower petal, whirling and dashing it about, mixing it with the haunted song that it also carried. Both little burdens, both signs of a tainted innocence, were carried closer to the cafe.

"Died of fright"

The playful child of old West Wind suddenly lost its grip on the petal, sending it spiraling down like a falling star. It landed on the porch of the cafe, a tiny white drop of death coming to visit. Slashed by claws, then seemingly dipped in blood, it was as though the flower itself had bled when its petals were plucked.

"From the cat-claws that weren't there..."

The little wind reached for the petal once more, but, within the confines of the cafe's porch, could do no more than stir it around a bit.

In the meanwhile, the creature, who had once called herself Yuni, who had lost the petal to begin with was still ripping others like it to shreds, their scattered dead-white remains, stained with blood, littering the area around where she sat, in the absolute darkness of the tree's shadow.

"I lost my soul
Down the rabbit hole...."

*****

Bloody flower petals filled the night air, carried by the gentle, if somewhat chill, breezes. They flew in the air like tiny ballerinas, dancing their last dance. If not for the stain that marred their lily-whiteness, it would have been beautiful.

If not for that...and if not for the glowing red eyes that watched them from the shadows.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the tiny creature, once a Sin, once a girl, now nothing but a monster, emerged from the darkness, her clothing ripped and stained with her own blood. Long, freshly-made gashes marred her body, and dark blood dripped from her unsheathed claws. Wild silver hair fell in front of eyes lost to madness and hatred, the very Gates of hell visible in their soulless glance.

Yuni stepped into the moonlight, her keen sense of smell detecting that of the one she hated most in this life, or any other. The one she had sworn to kill, and follow to the very depths of hell itself, in order to torment him.

Envy.

A sadistic smile crept its way across her face, and she started towards the source of the scent, eyes staring straight ahead, never blinking. She swayed as she walked, her claws tapping against her legs, beating out a rhythem. She sang, her words carried ahead of her by the wind, now become her messenger.

"I lost my soul
Down the rabbit hole
Where the darkness rips and tears

The rabbit white
Died of fright
From the cat-claws that weren't there..."

Envy raised his head from where he had planted it on the table before him.  His violet eyes weren't veiled with his usual casual amusement, no matter how sadistic.  On the contrary, his eyes looked as if they could have been bloodshot, if the Sin was physically capable of such an affliction.  They were, however, ringed with dark circles and radiated the very clear message of, 'Don't FUCK with me right now; I am severely coffee-deprived.'

The intensity of the look was compounded by the fact that one hand clutched a naked katana, one that glimmered hungrily even under the dim lights of the Cafe.

Envy twitched an eye at Yuni as she set her demonic, murderous gaze on him.  He tilted his head at her, gave a bitter scowl with a hint of confusion, and then just scowled bitterly.

"You're not dead," he muttered.  Then louder, "And what do you want?"

Yuni's grin grew even larger, white fangs shining brightly. Her eyes widened beneath her hair as Envy spoke to her, chuckling as though his voice brought some sense of demonic glee.

She leaned over, an innocent look forming on her face. Yet somehow, it didn't look right on her. Not as she was now.

"I want your soul," she said, rather happily. "...Little green rabbit."

Her hands twitched spasmodically, as if they had a mind of their own, and couldn't wait to be around Envy's neck, choking his immortal life out of his body. Bloody claws dripped in silence.

Yuni giggled, beginning to walk closer to the caffeine-deprived Sin. Her eyes were dead-set on him, murderous joy clearly reflected in the crimson orbs, which were slowly becoming the black of eternal death; opening to a void where the soul of one eternally damned cried out in agony that never ceased.

"Little green rabbit, would you like to join the Dark Queen?" Yuni murmered, still grinning her Totoro grin. "She's been waiting for you...for such a very long, long time..."

Envy blinked hard as if he were trying to get rid of something in his eye rather than out of befuddlement.

A malicious grin psychotic enough to rival Yuni's own spread onto his face like poison from a wound. His cat-pupiled, violet eyes were voids of sadism and malice strong enough to rip a human's soul from his body just from the feeling alone. The utter agony of a four-hundred-year old existence that was nothing more than a fresh scab over a festering wound echoed within his eyes, bouncing around the cavity where a soul should have been.

He stood, hooked an ankle around the leg of his chair and gave a vicious kick, sending the chair flying into the wall and shattering into splinters.  He threw back his head and laughed.

The sound was the call of the damned to Hell, the pull of a thousand reaped souls into the void.

"That's a GOOD ONE!"  As he leveled his demonic smirk at the child, his voice grated with the effort of keeping his katana at his side; his grip around the hilt was white-knuckled.  "A soul.  HA!  Haha!"  Envy's voice suddenly dropped, rasping with seething malice out of that lopsided grin.  "This rabbit ain't got a soul to steal."

Yuni didn't blink as Envy's chair shattered. She continued to stare up at him, not even moving now. "Your immortality is your soul," she said quietly, voice in a sing-song. Though by what logic she had come up with that idea was beyond comprehension.

"Souls never die all the way. Envy never dies all the way. So Envy has a soul. The green rabbit has one, and She wants it. She won't stop until she gets it..."

Yuni brushed strands of silver hair away from her face, claws leaving fresh scratches in their wake. No crimson light graced her eyes now. Nothing but dark emptiness remained. Light itself seemed to shy away from her eyes, or was swallowed by them. They were the eyes of a skull, pitiless and doomed.

"Queen of Hearts
Mistress of dark arts
Invited the rabbit to dine..."

Yuni gave Envy a sweet smile, the first one she had ever given him that wasn't full of malice. "Do you know what comes next, Brother?"

Envy didn't know.  In fact, he didn't care.  He didn't care a pair of dingo's kidneys what the child before him had to say.

Those eyes, though, creeped him out quite a bit.

Envy's face twitched.  The grin vanished.

His katana whipped forward faster than a striking viper, biting into Yuni's shoulder and staying there.

"You know what?  I'll do you a favor."

His psychotic grin returned full-force, echoing with centuries of mental unbalance barely kept in check as well as all of Hell's hatred wrapped into one expression.  It was an grin so tainted that his lips, instead of forming some vestige of amusement, seemed merely pulled back against his skull, drawn out to give him a more demonic appearance.

"I'll give you a chance for last words.  You'd like that, wouldn't you?  There was another that visited me yesterday and started wailing on me 'cause I wouldn't let the bastard say a word before I gutted him.  Oh.  And also.  You're fuckin' crazy.  So you won't bother me when you come back, cause I know you're just rambling and insane..."  The high, unbalanced, squeaking laugh he let off was a perfect irony to punctuate the statement.

He didn't seem to care that the girl was promising to murder him, to suck out what un-life he had left.  He had clearly fallen off of his already-thin ledge of sanity and hit the cliff several times on the way down.

Yuni's ears twitched as the katana bit into her shoulder, slicing deep into the bone and snagging.  She felt it, but it seemed far away, unimportant. What was important now was Envy.

She looked at Envy in silence for a moment, then let her gaze slide down the blade of the katana, until she was looking at where metal met flesh, blood coursing down her arm, matting tawny and black fur together before falling off the tips of her fingers.

Yuni cocked her head to one side slightly, as though puzzled, before raising the arm that hadn't been struck by the katana. She ran a finger over the blunt edge of the blade that still stuck out of her shoulder, getting some of her own blood on the digit. Bringing it up to her mouth, her tongue flicked out, tasting the warm saltiness with an inquisitive look on her face. "Hmm..."

Only then did she look back up at Envy, grin still in place. "I assure you, Envy, killing me will not bring you satisfaction. In fact...well..." She chuckled malevolently, uninjured hand returning to the embedded katana, gripping the blade in a death-hold. Twin voids gazed deep into Envy's violet orbs. "I am not named Agony for nothing....dear green rabbit," she whispered.

"Smiled I did
And oh heaven forbid
That dead green rabbit was MINE."

Last verse whispered, last tie to sanity snapped. Yuni ripped the katana out of her shoulder, ignoring the fact that she nearly cut her hand in half as she did.

I must have read a thousand faces
Must have robbed them of their cause
Sickened thirst, sickened thirst
keeps it together
Soft white glow in the cranium
A bulls-eye made sedated

She pulled the katana from her shoulder.  She pulled the katana from her shoulder.  She looked up at him with eyes that echoed his own centuries of pain, eyes that were just as much of a void of hellish malice as his own.

It was impossible.

Must have read a thousand faces
And all these voices won't give up
Sickened thirst, sickened thirst
glues it together
A catatonic leisure
at 1000 miles an hour

Was she not afraid of dying?  That was impossible, too.  Every human was afraid of dying.  Every single one.  But she had called herself Agony...well, that didn't make a difference!  Homunculi were afraid of dying, too.  They just didn't have as much to fear, knowing they couldn't die like normal humans.  Knowing that only the most powerful could end their existences.

So who's in charge here
Barking out loud so clear
Cause I'd really like to meet him

It was all there.  All of it.  All of it.  The moment he had died.  The moment he had been born.  The agony of limbs twisted backwards as they groped for their creator, only to be turned on by golden eyes full of horror.  The taste of lives concentrated in crystals, sweetness flowing over his tongue and stinging his being, making it whole.  Every death he had ever witnessed, inflicted, enjoyed, savored.  Every drop of blood he had bathed in.  Every soul he had broken.  Every face he had stolen.  And all of it reflected back at him a thousand fold, every dead face accusing, every dead voice wailing in keening hatred.

The Taijitu branded onto his heart, the Punishment inflicted upon him by Fate, pulsed with the cries of uncounted souls.

Have you ever tasted skin?
Sink your, sink your teeth in

The Sin of Envy felt fear.

And saw nothing but red.

He dropped to one knee and ran his katana through a vicious horizontal slash.  His heart throbbed in his ears, but all he wanted to hear was the sound of two lumps of dead flesh hitting the ground.

There was a frozen look of sadism on Yuni's face as she was literally cut in two by Envy's razor-sharp blade. For an instant, it was as though time itself stopped, as the upper half of the child Sin's severed body twisted slowly in the air, dead eyes lingering on Envy's face.

In that instant, all hell broke loose.

The shrieks of tormented, damned souls filled the air around the two Sins, one living, one currently quite deceased, their unholy cries screaming of murder, torture, and agony beyond endurance. Spectres flooded from Yuni's eye sockets, countless ghosts, each one a familiar life taken...yet...each one bearing an uncanny resemblance to Envy. Each spirit crying out, begging for their eternal torment to stop...yet never being answered. Manical laughter mocked their pain, laughter that sounded remarkably like a little girl's.

I lost my soul
Down the rabbit hole
Where the damned are calling me...

Poor little rabbit...

It was only a matter of a few seconds before Agony, little Yuni, was once again whole. Shrouded by the spirits of torture and pain she carried within her, she stood in front of Envy. Blood still dripped from her midsection; a wound inflicted in hatred wouldn't heal, not for her. She walked on the spirits themselves, floating on the air until she was on eye-level with the much taller Sin.

The black void still filled her eyes, but now the flames of the gates of hell were very clear inside them, flickering with a malicious intent.

"I told you..." she said, childish voice sweet and clear. "Little rabbits just can't win over Dark Queens..."

Then she laughed. And as she laughed, she moved. Faster than any human, any animal on the face of the planet, she drove a stiff-fingered hand into Envy's chest, 2-inch-long claws extended. She channeled ever bit of pain she, and every tormented life she carried within her, into that one hand. After all, she was Agony, and she followed the others.

Had he been his normal self, he might have been able to resist it.

He hadn't been his normal self since the night he murdered Satzuni.  It had been such a simple thing, too; he had punctured a hole through her chest and removed his hand again, grinning at Will's expression as his fingers dripped with her gore.  But the blond boy had exploded, quite literally, launching a hellish battle in which Envy was forced to shift into his spiritual manifestation, the Ouroborus.

As a giant snake, a fell wurm, Envy fell into the danger of letting the mind adapt too much to the body.  That night, it had happened--he had lost his cognizance to the pure, feral rage of the beast.

And somehow, through the efforts of Punishment the Homunculus, and the hand of Fate herself, he had been punished.  His heart had been branded with the Taijitu, the ancient symbol of unity.

Ever since that night, he had been seeing people he knew were dead.  He knew because he had killed every single one of them.

Had Envy been his normal self, he might have been able to resist the Agony.  But he was gone.  Every fragile vestige of sanity and defense had been burned away within the Sin.

The shrieks of the damned didn't just enter his ears.  They exploded inside his head.  He let out shrieks of his own, clawing at his skull with one hand, the other still clutching the katana in a desperate attempt to keep some shard of reality.  Fortune wasn't kind enough to let him collapse; he remained on his feet as the spectres flooded from Agony's halved corpse, as they snaked up his legs, as the flew around and over and through him, imparting him with their horror and anguish.

There was screaming and screaming and pain, more pain, pain the likes of which he never thought he'd have to feel again, never, not since the day he was born and left broken and abandoned...

He was eye-to-eye with the gates of Hell.

And Hell's voice, high, childish, and sweet, seared the world in a haze of red.

Death was a welcome respite.

Envy succumbed to the darkness of death brought on by Agony's claws, chasing it down rather than stay to feel the anguish that Agony was still pouring into his lifeless form.

Yuni leaned over Envy's corpse, knowing that, even if he couldn't hear her now, he would...eventually. She'd see to that. The tiny, once-innocent child knelt in the sticky, warm blood, both hers and his, that was quickly congealing upon the floor. She put her mouth close to Envy's ear, sadistic grin still plastered on her face.

"Remember, Envy....I am not one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But I accompany you wherever you go. I am the end result of your work. I am multiplied when there are more than one of you together. Unlike you, my reach lasts for all time, spanning generations. I am the product of misery. I linger long after Death has come, torturing those who still live.  The sins of the father shall be visited on the son...for I am a monster worse than Death. I am Agony. I will follow you for eternity. Long after you are in Hell, I will torment you. There is no way to be rid of me.

She got up, gore dripping from her hands. She smiled sweetly, looking at the corpse of the older Sin with tainted innocence. "Goodnight, dear Brother..." she said, childish voice in a sing-song. "Sweet dreams..."

She began walking out of the cafe, body swaying, claws tapping out a rhythem as she sang.

I lost my soul
Down the rabbit hole
Where the damned are calling me

Oh rabbit dear
Didn't hide in fear
Instead he tried to flee

Queen of Hearts
Mistress of dark arts
Invited the rabbit to dine

Smiled I did
And oh heaven forbid
That dead green rabbit was...MINE!

La la la la
lala la lala
lala la la la lala..."