!WARNING!
!CONTAINS AU MATERIAL THAT MAY RING FOUL TO SOME READERS!
You strode ahead, across ancient stones that seemed to be floating across the salty sapphire waves. Just in front of you was a tree, as majestic and magnificent as you last saw it. Ascending the rough, yet somehow soothing bark, you clambered into the weblike branches and looked around. Strangely, Genesis, the story-centric witch you saw yesterday, wasn't here. Didn't she call this place home? Regardless, you waited patiently. You two had a deal, and as flimsy it may have been, she wouldn't have left her home without any notice.
Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes stretched on until they felt like hours. Where was she? Eventually, you couldn't take it anymore and began to poke around. The branches wove in and out of each other like fabric strings, terminating in bush-like mounds of emerald leaves glistening in the sunlight, which still somehow made its way into the tree through little cracks and openings in the many leaves. Hopping around from branch to branch, you couldn't help but feel like a small child again. Then, you found something. A small fissure, a gap in the leaves. It wasn't big, but it was still large enough for you to fit through if you squeezed. And you did. Coming out the other side, you saw some things you expected. The dazzling sunlight, the jade-coloured leaves, the shimmering sea below, its waves crashing against rocks every so often in a satisfying manner. But you also saw something you didn't expect to see.
A story, half-baked and missing its beginning and end. Quite an odd story, removed from those that you knew. Curiosity got the better of you. You had to see it.
Bang.
The shadowguy dropped to the well-patterned floor, dark stuff spilling out onto the otherwise-stainless array of dazzling lights that made up the floor. It sickened her. Not the dead shadowguy, of course. Not the small crowd of screaming Pippinses and TV workers. It was the wealth of it all, the TV world in itself, with its gleaming sequins and shining screens. Tenna complained about not being watched. To her, that wasn't pitiful misery. It was just selfishness. Back where she was born, they didn't have people watch them like hawks, mindlessly staring. Back where she was born, thorns and vines and clawed insects roamed around, swiping and stealing the attention of their lightner guardian, Asgore. Tenna had a whole family. After the divorce, he got Toriel and Kris and Asriel and Dess and Noelle and everyone else. Asgore got nothing. Nothing but the other flowers, and her.
She aimed another shot, taking out a watercooler. The opal fluid within came bursting out, and the Mizzle trapped within fled the scene. Good for her. At least she got freedom from that Cathode's glorified enslavement.
Another shot. This one was aimed at a weird green Pippins, but a shadowguy dived in front, dying on the floor. It had an oversized grey coat, like some kind of wannabe detective. She couldn't blame it — she also had an oversized steel-coloured overcoat and hat. After leaving her dark world for ??????????????????????????????, she'd taken up hunting to stop herself from turning to stone. Right now, she was pursuing what was going to be her greatest catch yet — the roaring KNIGHT itself. But for now, she needed sustenance for the undertaking.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
A few bodies fell. Once upon a time, she would've cared. Unfortunately for these former darkners, she found out the truth a long time ago.
In fact, she still had the shadow crystal in her pocket.
The night she received it, she made some rash decisions she wasn't proud of. Accusing Flowery of being a fraud. Breaking into Pink's home. Stealing Yellow's gun.
Well, fine. She wasn't so upset about that last one. She still had the weapon now, and although it was certainly grimier than when Yellow owned it, it was used a lot more.
Like now.
Bang.
The last darkners overcame the barriers and fled the room. She didn't see what happened to that old Plugboy. Some part of her hoped it was still alive. It wasn't native here, after all.
Stepping out into the carnage, she swept among the bodies, harvesting the darkness out of each of them. When the dark fountain closed up, their light world forms would all be restored, and they'd revive. But for now, they crumbled into nothingness. Moving from corpse to corpse, she made light work of each one, with her wide array of tools and trinkets. Eventually, she came to that weird Pippins. She figured it was probably from a different set to the others. An outcast. Walking over, she bent down to preform the procedure, when it feebly opened an eye, staring into her soul as if begging to live.
Unfortunately for it, she was a darkner, and she didn't have a soul. She held the gun up to its head.
BANG.
She couldn't hear.
She couldn't see.
She couldn't cry out in horror.
Eventually, she opened her eyes. Still fuzzy, the room seemed to be roughly the same, but the Pippins wasn't lying on the ground anymore. An odd shadowy figure held it over its shoulder, staring into a window of wild light and colour. It turned its head, glancing back at her in a lopsided way. It left, and the portal closed behind it and the green Pippins.
She knew that look the shadowy creature gave her. She knew what it meant — she'd seen it before. It didn't want her to keep on going how she was. It didn't even want her to die, or even suffer.
It wanted her to go follow it. To seek it.
Silently, she crossed the KNIGHT off her to-do list. She had a bigger prize to take.
Somewhere, a shadowy creature was living. And by its side was a weird miscoloured Pippins, living with it.
4qua smiled. This was going to be her biggest hunt yet.
