>> Justifiable Regicide

  The Left Hand roars with silent madness, and I rise. Suspended in Darkness. Wreathed in The Void. With rubble slicking off my back, like drops of rain from the wings of Oblivion. Ancient pillars of tek crashing to dust as I swipe them out of my way. Thundering bits across my visor. My mask.

  Tufty? What??

  I spin in the air. Roiling with crackling Power as I trace the flicker of feline glow. There, and-

  Gone.

  I stop. I snarl.

  What the Hell is he doing? Why the Hell is he here?

  "Mayhem." Garbles the thousand, eerie, voices in my skull as both of Tufty's clawed feet hammer into the side of it. His slight weight staggering me on limp legs. It's all I can do to throw him off as the shadow of a massive, metal, fist piledrives directly through ceiling and floor alike.

  Almost killing us both.

  I hammer through an archaic machine, but don't go down. Held in place by the Power of The Hand. My toes a full, damn, inch off the floor. A rolling snarl of absolute violence on my lips.

  I snatch at the cat's ankle, but he's gone. Blind eyes hunting laughter in the dark as I press my will against The Left Hand. Forcing my new senses to expand. To find him. To EVAPORATE-

  No. No. Not him!

  I sag, suddenly. Cocooned in whispers of memory, and loss.

  So tired. So... so tired. I could just.....

  No. One more thing. One more thing, and I can sleep forever.

  I rise in fury, and cancerous darkness spills from my touch - pouring out a well of utter desolation that BURNS the machines of aeons past. And their secrets. And everything they ever were.

  Forever.

  "Mayhem." I repeat. And the shadows of a long-gone memory stir from the dead of The Void. Rattling with echoes of rain, and wind, and madness. Of tinplate walls that shudder and shake. Tearing at the corners of my mind. Stirring up memories of might-have-beens and maybe-nevers.

  Of hopes, and dreams, and terrors, caught on the edge of annihilation.

  The skin of my toe skims dust from the floor, and I cut a winding line across ink-dark waters. Ancient computers rising from their gloss-black depths. Strange, and bulbous. Draping fine cables. In mouths, and wild eyes that whisper without words.

  Pulsating. Breathing.

  And then, from their midst, steps something that Is Not Kami. Turning to stare at me, across the black.

  "The [Psyhopomp]." I breathe. Every word wrought with fell harmony. "How does it kill a civilisation?"

  "Dreams." The thing responds. "Nightmares. Fictions."

  "How?"

  The Not Kami shudders. Spidery, twisted, and wrong.

  "It bends all things to breaking. It makes health a disease. Poison a cure."

  "How!?" I scream, and The Hand pulls mine. Hammering me through the ghost, and the machines. Shattering them all. Rending their ash to atoms. Their atoms to Oblivion.

  I spin, and tear at reality. Cutting a line through many of the other - which burst like great, cybernetic, slugs. Screaming with their tiny mouths, as black blood pours free. Rising to slamming the shadows of the tinplate wall.

  It roars across my feet, and I struggle to stand. Iron tables rising in the void, like terrible towers. Bringing with them a thousand copies of Kami and Zipper. Clothed, not as they really are, but as apocalyptic gods.

  "Civilisations aren't made of people." One says as I crash through her chest.

  "They're made of ideas." Another completes.

  "Ideas." I echo, and phantom shapes whirl around me.

  "Kill nearly everyone, and Civilisation will still exist. It will reform." One drifts behind me. "But kill their ideas..... Kill their history. Kill their reality, and it is Forever."

  "And ever."

  "And-"

  She explodes in a flame of green, and Tufty's burning claws snatch at The Left Hand. My leg twisting, through deep water, as instinct tries to roll me out of the way. Forcing my shoulder to connect with his as the cat latches my arm.

  He kicks off my chest, and is gone.

  What the Hell?? What's he doing?

  I told him to-

  Wait. What did I tell him?

  Echoes of bullets sing in the dark. A wail of hammering. A cascade of violence. I well The Void around me, as they strike off my dying suit. My hand swinging wide as I fight the urge to cut arcs through everything around me.

  What if I hit-

  It all stops. Abruptly. An illusion of Kami leaking blood from many holes. Blood that drips with galaxy-deep darkness as her skin slithers with THINGS THAT ARE NOT REAL. With terrible, unreal, EYES that-

  "What does it what? The [Psychopomp]?"

  "A war with no sides, and no winners." She whispers as she melts. "A festival of joyful bloodshed."

  "A party in the dark." Tease the whispers around me. "Isn't that Fun?"

  Anarchy. The [Psychopomp] is ANARCHY. And chaos cannot follow orders.

  Tufty has gone rogue. Just like Kami predicted.

  "Spook! Mate! You gotta stop!"

  I spin around. "Zipper? Stop what??"

  Attacking Princess? Fighting Tufty? Dawdling?

  No it's illusions and tricks. It has to be. The plan was to END Princess.

  "I will not stop."

  Kami shatters before me. But there she is again, and again. Her echoes swarm around me. Melting and reforming. Towering with eyes. And eyes. And EYES. "Think, Spook! What did that girl do to that Funfair? What did she really do? What is mayhem?"

  "Panic." I whisper. Fighting though mental fog. "Terror."

  "Fear is a mental contagion." Kami agrees as inky blood pours from her eyes. Her mouth. Her ears. "Fear is control. Anger is control. I should know. It controls me."

  She didn't say that.

  This isn't real.

  "Okay. Panic. It's all about Panic. So-"

  "SO TIME TO PANIC!" Princess screams in delight as Tufty crashes through imaginary Kami. A blur of sudden green sparks aimed right at my hand.

  I recoil, but he's everywhere. Untouchable. Gleeful. Mad. Wreathed in lifeglow and chaos as he yanks at my fingers. Forcing me to dance. To jump, and stagger. To rip them back in utter panic - ejecting a wall of pure Annihilation that goes screaming the other way.

  Tufty recoils. Skin flowing over light. And he isn't a fractal web of green and glow, anymore.

  He's a scared little catboy.

  "You- you wouldn't hurt me?" He whispers, eye widening so bright. "No!! You- No!!! You MEANT TO KILL ME!"

  Pain stabs, deep inside.

  "What-" I start, but he's gone twice as quick as he came. Weaving a violence of shapes around me. Of light, and memory. Myth, and terror. He flitters and darts, and I kick out too late. Too feeble and staggering.

  I can DESTROY HIM UTERLY, but I cannot shove him away.

  And he knows it. He absolutely knows.

  "Having trouble?" Princess giggles, tugging my ear. "Don't forget! MUMMY SAYS 'SHARING IS CARING'!"

  My Left Hand cleaves her droid in half, but all I hear is laughter. The world shattering as I hammer through rattling tinplate panels. Scoured by wind that doesn't exist. By rain that pelts through shivering cracks, like the spittle of a screaming titan.

  There, and gone, just as fast. Shattering into madness as my mind fractures apart.

  Megaxx is KILLING ME. BURNING ME ALIVE.

  It taints the storm pink. It paints hateful unicorns in the sky.

  I lick the phantom taste of burger off my teeth, and it burns with sweetest poison. It tastes like my flesh. It burns memories. Burns life. Stealing the distant shadow of The Night Tyrant, and the shapes of my friends.

  Will I even remember them? At the end?

  "I don't know." I whisper, to nobody. "BUT THEY'LL BLOODY REMEMBER ME!"

  I turn to the ghost of Kami, and her face melts into darkness. The memory stuttering. The reels coming loose. Jumbling and twisting together into one.

  But still she remains.

  Alone in the midst of the dark, as towering machines rise from the deep and endless waters around her. Strange. Nodular. Pulsating, and weird. Dripping with glitter. And teeth. And eyes. And tearing lips that chant terrible secrets.

  Weeping the blood of a demon Princess.

  I sag toward Kami, and my knees hit the floor.

  "So.... Tired....." I shudder. "Tell me a story. Send me to sleep."

  Then it won't matter. I won't have to care.

  "The Avians were peaceful, and good, and kind." Her iron hand touches my chin. Curling beneath it. "They built a dream."

  "Tell me."

  "A new idea." She weeps with black blood. "A new society."

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  "Tell me....."

  "A place just for freaks. For androids, mutants, GMOs, and anomalies galore. Where nobody is hunted. Where everybody is safe."

  "We could go there." I whisper. "We could be normal."

  Her skin burns sudden, shocking, blue. The metal hand becoming the claw of a Deadybear - clamping my neck.

  "They bound them all to broken Unity." Her voice bubbles with inhumanity and violence. "They covered up the DAMAGE."

  I choke as my neck-armour cracks. But I have The Hand, and I bring down my wrath upon everything around me.

  The rubble. The ancient machines. The air itself.

  Burning it all. Blasting it away. Ripping holes in the very universe.

  The Deadybear falls. And I match it.

  Bowed before its great, iron, corpse as True Darkness falls in to wipe it away. A Dark so deep even The Sight of The Hand cannot pierce it.

  My body trapped in a shrinking island of decaying Reality. Its edges bleeding off into The Abyss.

  Air is thin. Can't breathe. Can't find my way out. The bubble is shrinking. The-

  No. Not yet..... I CAN'T DIE YET!

  A pinhole of roaring air, blasting into my fingers. I reach for it, guided by The Hand. The Hand that knows the way. That sees the knots in reality itself, and-

  "-all was good in Highwing." False Kami gurgles. "Until SHE came."

  A whisper in the void. "Until I came."

  -I slam onto water, hard as tile, as the world distorts around me. Flickers of Tufty scattering in a blur of tail. Of chaos. Of madness. Of grinning teeth, and violence.

  But who is he fighting? Is it me?

  So confused. So lost. So-

  "What happened next?" I whisper, curling my body in the drifting dark as green light scars an orbit around me.

  "Terror. And Panic." Chant the terrible voices as I drift above the water.

  "Violence. And FUN!"

  "The [Psychopomp] is our cancer."

  "And our cure."

  "Spook! Please stop!"

  "No! I don't remember this! That ain't Kami!" I force myself forward. Tears burning the corners of my eyes. Teeth cracking deep into the bones of my hand.

  The breather long gone. Shadows of Tufty wheeling in the black.

  It's Megaxx. It's all MEGAXX.

  "I'm..... running.... out.... of TIME!"

  I will not fall. I cannot fail. But why am I here? I-

  I'm forgetting the mission. My brain turned to slop. Hunger and insanity tearing me apart.

  But here in the wild, mad, nightmare is Tufty - wilder, and madder than anything else. And I pull back my fury in a panic as his hand slips toward mine.

  Playful, and aching with glee.

  I try to take it, and claws rip from my palm. Vanishing back into the dark. Fleeting. Whispering. So quiet, and so fast.

  Stopping before me. Stepping back, just once.

  I step with him, and sharp teeth flicker in The Void. Another step. Another.

  The weight of a Deadybear behind him. Vast. Towering.

  He presses to its chest, and brings a finger to his lips. "Shhhhh....."

  And then they both come slamming towards me. One high, and thundering. One low, and slight, and ever so fast, with snatching claws that slip around my song of annihilation. Reaching. Grabbing. Pulling at my wrist.

  It almost kills him. Ends him. But I scream, and rip my hand up and away - wracking a terrible wheel of violence across the towering ranks of machines. Tearing them apart.

  And the bear.

  I hurl myself away, and Tufty lets me go. The tips of his claws burnt off into bloodied nothingness. Demented smiles, and eyes, and windows into Hell, crawling all up his body on teeny tiny legs.

  He steps toward me, and I step back. "Stop." He keeps coming. "Tufty!"

  Shit! I turn, and run from him. The mad boy chasing. Chasing.

  Or is this all just a dream? I can't see. I've got to remember that. I'm blind. I can only sense where-

  Sense!

  I can sense her!

  "PRINCESS."

  I turn my head, twenty degrees and the entire universe recoils. I sense her. In the Void. A cancer woven into the endless procession of monolithic machines, with wires and cables pumping her poison out into existence.

  I fly there in a roar of violence. Descending upon her spidery mass of tubes and and nodes and-

  A massive, squashy, fist erupts from nothingness. Closing around me. Crushing me.

  "NO!" I shove out my arm, and it evaporates like mist. Peeling away, and decaying into the dark.

  I clutch at my knees, and sob. "I felt that. I it took part of- of- of Me with it....." My head turns to the nothingness. To the broken arm, thicker than any Deadybear. "Zipper? Did? Did ya try to stop me?"

  There is no reply. Nothing.

  "It's too late anyways." I stare up into the gathering Nothing. "Y'can't save me now. Nobody can." I let my feet leave the floor. An avenging angel of darkness, upon wings of utter Null. "There is only one thing left."

  I turn to the slithering emptiness.

  "How does The Story End?" I whisper.

  "In blood." Say all the chanting things that never were my friends.

  "In violence."

  "In terror."

  "The Family of Sha was eaten by the birds. They tore up the children. They pecked out their eyes. They called it justice, as they slicked off their skins."

  "Or was that The [Psychopomp]?" Another goads. "Was that me?"

  "Who can know?"

  "Who can say?"

  "All is myth, in the end."

  "We know, only, that the war of the Avians tore Highwing apart."

  "It broke their Utopia, as blood flowed in the street."

  "As predator preyed upon predator, and The Killings only grew."

  "Factions. Splitting into factions."

  "Blood into blood."

  "Clan against clan."

  "Machine against man."

  "Bird against prey."

  "Cat against wolf."

  "Ruins into dust."

  "And so fell all."

  "Until....."

  My head lifts. "Until what?"

  "Oh. My child." The things whisper in the Black. "That really is another story."

  I laugh. I know I'll never survive to hear it.

  But I force myself up.

  One last push. One final rush of madness, and violence, as the dark closes in and my bones of ice freeze colder still.

  I shut my useless eyes, and hammer towards my target with terrible force. Smashing though towering, nodular, computers all the way through. Heedless, and heartless, and terrible, as I am.

  I stop, only, before the darkened nest.

  Its cables strung from pillar, to pillar. A web of tek, plugged into everything around me. A thousand lines, and shuddering gemstones. Mysterious junctions, and twists in the line.

  Adaptors, and systems, built over years.

  "But how did it end?" I beg them, one final time.

  The weeping statues in the dark turn to peer at me. Peeking between the machines. "That is for you to decide."

  "And you, all alone."

  "For all Truth is a Lie, and no Truth do we Speak."

  "But for one."

  I step forwards, into the chaotic jumble of cables. Pushing aside strange boxes, and fat bundles of wires.

  Arriving, at last, in the Heart Of Princess's little nightmare.

  "Yay! It's Spookie! You made it!" She whispers, with terrible venom, from every thrumming cable. "Now. Why aren't you dead? I really must know! And how did you find me? I know you can't see...."

  "Eyes in the Dark." I chant, ripping my way toward her. Raising my hand to sweep her away.

  Hungry, now, for her utter end.

  But I stop. Jerking, as I see Tufty huddled on the other side of the pod.

  Alone. and scared.

  "Spookie?" He whispers. Shaking. Shuddering. "What's going on? You're scaring me....."

  "GO!" I roar. Not daring to bring down my hand. "GO! I HAVE TO!"

  "I can't! She has me......" The cat whimpers, stumbling around the edge of the pod - in mirror of me.

  I trace my hand along the machines that circle it. Burning her connections. Her cables. Her web of wires, and eerie little gems.

  "Tufty! Run! Please!"

  "Eyes in the DARK....." Says a voice that isn't mine. "Eyes that Don't Exist!"

  "MATE! C'MON! WAIT!!!" Zipper echoes. "WAIT JUST-"

  "EYES! EYES! In the DARK! EYES that don't EXIST!"

  "YOU HAVE TO GO!" I plead.

  "MATE, LIKE, STOP! YOU GOTTA STOP! SHE WANTS YOU TO-"

  "EYES THAT-!"

  The Guardian Orb slams into the side of my helmet, and I stumble. I collapse. My Left Hand ripping into the nearest and strangest of the towering computers.

  Fingers clench.

  Claws tearing through the stuff of Reality. Biting through Time and Space, into The Void itself. Into a Nothingness deeper than the foundations of the world.

  Wrapping my skin in the stuff of Oblivion.

  There is no cold. No heat. No substance. No feeling at all.

  It is simply That Which Is Not.

  That which rests beyond the Outer Borders of Existence. Beyond all things that are Real.

  And Nothing can exist, there. NOTHING.

  No flesh, or bone. No thought. No mind. No space, no time.

  No me. Or you.

  And so the bonds that hold me together simply cease. The atoms of my skin unravelling in waves.

  Shattering. Dividing. Diminishing.

  Drifting away, as the very laws of time and space begin to BURN. And I know that it could spread. That it could eat me. And The City. And the very Cogs that tick in the heart of our universe. Grinding them to a stop.

  Burning away ALL THINGS, and making them.....

  NOTHING.

  Nothing at all.

  I never even feel it. How would I?

  How could you feel flesh that doesn't exist? How can you feel pain if pain isn't real? If it belongs to a world of Rules, and signals, and physics, and chemistry?

  There are no Rules out there. In the Nothing.

  And so, I do not pull back as the tips of my fingers evaporate. I do not react as they vanish, forever. Leaving only shadows of dark that crawl with terrible-

  -things that-

  -no names-

  -no-

  "I am The End." I whisper, flexing fingers of Nothing that curl from my half-gone hand. Blood spraying freely through their dull, numb, darkness. Splattering, hot and wet, across my other hand. My foot. My umasked face.

  Zipper is screaming. Somewhere. Polybius, is calling for me. Kami. The real Kami. Distant and strained.

  Yet all of them are as dust yet to be. I feel The Eye of The Unmaker fixated upon me, as it never has before. Burning my soul with its absolute un-nature. I feel-

  -others.

  My head turns. Sharply.

  Other eyes. Terrible. Vast. Primordial, and wrong. Eyes that are not in The Void, but here. Eyes that hunger for what I have in my hand. For the Power they think they can control, and make theirs.

  I dismiss them. And The Hand pulls me up. Blood splattering down the side of my leg.

  But Princess only has smiles for Tufty. Her fond hands teasing his hair.

  "Yes. There's a Good Kitty. You had a rotten time with Spookie, didn't you? That big meanie! But now I'm here for you, and you are mine again! And we'll be ever such good friends....."

  I try to move, but I can't. Everything is.... going. Just.... going.

  I don't have long. I never did.

  All I can do us unleash that vicious Nothingness. Let it devour Reality around me. Eradicating the hub, and the machines, and Princess.

  And me with her.

  And Tufty too.

  Leaving only Darkness, deeper than all Night.

  But I hesitate. Blinking at visions of past and future that blur around me - all painted images, smeared across time. Family. Friends. Days out at the park, chasing balls. Days at school, kicking claws against rough boards while the teacher talks.

  Dreams. Hopes. And things that only might have been.

  If I do this, I will lose it all. It will be gone. Never to feel, or think, or remember, or dream, or hope, or breathe, ever again.

  As if it never was.

  We won't even be us. We will be.....

  Nothing.

  Forever.

  I can do it. I can take it.

  But I cannot accept that for him. I cannot do that to him. My little brother. That little baby kitty I held in my arms. Who squirmed, and mewled, but never let go. Who would curl there, happy and sleepy, as you brushed his green hair. And doodled your crayons.

  "That's right. And when we get home, I'll cut it all off." Princess whispers, so tenderly. "And you will be mine."

  Very slowly, Tufty's fingers.... twitch. And I realise something.

  I was very, very, very vague about how he ought to kill Princess.

  And, you y'know what? He didn't try very hard to take The Hand. Did he? It's like he stopped when I was facing... the right way.

  Almost.... like he led me here. Like he was-

  "Now. Be a sweet kitty, and help your Bestie!" She thrills her voice up my neck. "Spookiekins is playing with matches, and needs to be punished!"

  Tufty's smile crawls with fangs as he sips toward me. Tilting his head to stare up at my face.

  "Take it." Princess thrills. "Your Bestie wants to Play with the Fun Toy....."

  But Tufty lets out a very big yawn, and licks his nose. "Nnnnh....."

  "What." She blinks.

  "I've had my fun, and now I'm All Tuckered Out!" Tufty announces in that same, dreamlike, voice from before.

  Oh. Oh Hell. That's what he's doing!

  Weakened, tired, it's all I can do to open my lips. "Mummy- Mummy says-"

  "No! No! Wait! What are you-" Princess screams.

  "-PLAYTIME IS OVER!" I roar. "Mummy says-" Shit. What 's the codephrase? "-TIME FOR BED!"

  A shock goes through Tufty. "Can I have a glass of milk?" He monotones. "And a cookie?"

  "Hell no." I choke out.

  "You said a Naughty Word." The boy whispers. And a brief flicker of violence shimmers behind him. A path, cut through time. One where he rips his throat out with his teeth.

  "Go To Bed. Sweetie." I grit through my own. "GO."

  "Yes, Mummy." He sways upright. "Good Children Go To Bed When They Are Told."

  And then, just like that, he curls up into a ball, on the pod containing Princess, and falls asleep.

  There is a terrible moment of drifting silence as my balance shivers.

  "Mummy says WAKEY WAKEY!!" Princess screeches. Her eyes so very wide. "WAKEY WAKEY!!

  Tufty sniffles. But is still.

  I grin. Dazedly. And she looks absolutely sick.

  "Where are- WHERE ARE MY TOYS!?"

  "Think he blew em all up." I let myself fall, landing beside him. "Ooopsie-daisy....."

  "My guns! My turrets!"

  "Yeah, how about that?" My blood smears his face.

  "You're breathing in MY GAS!" She weeps. "You ought'a be DEAD already!!! So PLAY DEAD!"

  "Nuh huh. Can't get me!" I grab at one of her cables, ripping it out of its adaptor.

  "NO! Why aren't you blowing up? Why isn't anything WORKING!???" She steams. Flapping and shaking and stomping her lil foot. "You can't do this!! You can't! I'm TELLING MUMMY! I'M TELLING HER RIGHT NOW!!!!"

  "Clever kitty." I jam my neural uplink cable into the slot. Turning toward Tufty. "Clever. Clever. Lil. KITTY!"

  "No! No! You Can't!!!!" Little Miss Crazypants shrieks and cries and stomps the air with a power of hate known only to absolute toddlers. My hand whipping aside Tufty's fringe. Plunging the jack directly into his missing eye. Triangles and cogs ripping the surface of the wire. Leaking a light that has no place in our world.

  "TOUGH TITS!!" I scream. "POLYBIUS!!!! BURN OUT HER BRAIN!! BURN HER ALIVE!!!!"

  “NO! NO! NO!” Princess stutters. Her crown of glitter shattering as cracks leak fell light through her skin. “NOO!" She turns to me. Staring. Mad. "THIS! IS! NOT! VERY! MAGICAL!!!”

  And then she is suddenly still. Like a frame of video, locked in time.

  No dying, digital, scream. No cursing me out.

  Just a frozen, glitching, image of evil - caught right at the moment of realisation.

  I slump, slowly, onto my side. My face against cool darkness. One hand reaching for Tufty, swaying in the air.

  I let it fall.

  "I really hope....." I whisper, gently. "I didn't just..... hallucinate all of that."

  Absolute silence answers. My hearing blew out a long time ago.

  My breath shivers. Vision dancing with made-up things. In the dark, around me, I see the twisted, tangled, bodies of her Guards. Their eyes and faces ripped open by clawing nails. Nails like the ones that itch at my own face. Peeling off strips, and putting them in my mouth.

  One ate his own freaking fingers. I can see one stuck in his throat.

  If any of this is real. Any of it at all.

  "So." I heave a breath. "So that's it then? That's all of it?"

  I stare into the dark. My body trapped at a strange, warped, angle.

  Splayed across the cables. Across her. Beside Tufty.

  But.... How could that be it? I've- I've come so far.

  I've not been around that long at all. Not really.

  I've got so much to see, and do, and think.

  I've got so much further to go.

  Not yet. I can't go.

  I won't. I cant.

  Please. No.

  Just....

  Not yet.

  I didn't

  even

  get

  to-

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