John stared at the body on the ground. The man's head was gone, reduced to a red smear across the pavement. What remained of the neck ended in a ragged stump, white bone visible amid the pulped tissue.

And all he could think was: you got what you deserved, fucker.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking. They'd been farming Sam. Hurting him over and over, letting him burn through his levels to heal, then hurting him again. Like it was a fucking game. Like he was livestock.

Watford. The death game. Waves of monsters herding people into kill zones, forcing them to fight each other or die. The ninja who'd gotten away, who'd come back and killed Jade. Curtis and his hundreds of victims, all sacrificed to bring back one girl. And now these five treating a human being like a resource to be harvested.

John's teeth ground together so hard his jaw ached. His mind kept cycling back, to Luke Farnell and to cruel grins. To fists finding every soft place on his body while the others laughed.

Here it was again, the same dynamic, the same cruelty dressed up in different clothes. People who hurt others because they thought it was fun.

The rage carried him forward.

John was barely aware of his own body as he moved. It was like watching himself from a distance, a passenger in his own skull as his legs ate up the ground between him and the four remaining psychos. They were scattered across the street in various states of broken, but they were stirring, trying to rise despite their injuries.

The man with the club wound and shattered face was closest. He'd pushed himself to her knees, one hand pressed against the car John had slammed him into, the other groping blindly for his weapon. His face was a ruin, nose flattened, cheekbone caved in, one eye swollen completely shut. Blood sheeted down his chin and neck, soaking into his leather armour.

He was still grinning. Still making that keening sound, the childish laughter of a demon.

John's boot caught him in the chest. The impact lifted him off his knees and sent him crashing back into the car with enough force to spider-web the remaining windows. Something in his torso gave way with a series of rapid pops. He slumped to the ground, wheezing, and immediately tried to crawl forward, fingers scrabbling against the pavement. Even then, he was trying to laugh.

"Stay down," John heard himself say.

He didn't stay down. None of them would.

The man who'd wielded two knives was dragging himself forward on his stomach, his shattered knee trailing uselessly behind him. His face was a mask of blood and road rash where John had slammed him into the pavement, but his bloodshot, dilated eyes were fixed on John with manic intensity.

"Come on," the man slurred through broken teeth. "Come on. Make it hurt. Make it good."

John stepped on his outstretched hand. Felt the bones crunch beneath his heel. The man's back arched, and he laughed with such pure ecstasy that it made John's stomach turn.

The chain-wielder was on her feet again somehow, swaying like a drunk. Her nose was gone, just a hole in the centre of her face that whistled with every breath. The spot where John had elbowed her had already swollen to the size of a tennis ball, purple and grotesque. She should have been unconscious. Should have been dead from the brain swelling alone.

But she was standing. And she was reaching for her chain where it lay coiled on the ground.

John didn't give her the chance. He crossed the distance in three strides and hit her with a palm strike to the sternum that he felt all the way up to his shoulder. The sound of her chest collapsing was like stepping on a packet of crisps. She went airborne, sailed backwards, hit the ground hard enough to bounce once, then lay still.

For exactly two seconds.

Then she started moving again. Slower now, more damaged, but still moving. Still trying to rise.

What the fuck is wrong with them?

The woman with the broken arm who'd used a machete was the last one standing. She'd lost her weapon at some point, but that didn't seem to matter to her. She charged at John with her good arm outstretched like she was going to strangle him barehanded, her broken arm flopping uselessly at her side.

John caught her by the throat mid-charge and slammed her into the ground. The pavement cracked beneath her. He felt her windpipe compress under his fingers, felt cartilage give way.

She tried to laugh even as she choked. The sound came out as a wet gurgle, blood bubbling between her lips.

He let go and stepped back, breathing hard.

All four of them were down now. All four of them broken in ways that should have ended the fight. Shattered ribs, punctured lungs, fractured skulls, crushed windpipes. Between their previous injuries and what John had just done, they should all be dying.

But they were still moving. Still trying to crawl toward him, toward Sam, toward anything they could hurt.

What the hell is this?

For a moment, he couldn't help wondering about their systems, about what it was making them do. Somehow, he didn't get the impression they were a bunch of pacifists hating every moment of this. He'd seen what that looked like.

The man who'd used the club was pushing himself up again, one arm cradled against his caved-in chest, the other reaching, always reaching. The knife-man was moving towards Sam now, inch by inch, his ruined hand still stretching forward despite the mangled fingers. The chain-woman had rolled onto her side and was dragging herself along with her elbows, her legs not working properly anymore. The machete-woman was gasping through her crushed throat, and somehow there was still that manic light in her eyes.

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They were laughing. All of them. That same high, broken sound.

"Fuck this," John muttered.

His scythe materialized in his hands, the blade catching the light of the burning sky. Lifting it ready, he approached the guy who'd used the knives.

+1000 Aura

"John."

The voice cut through his rage. John spun, scythe still raised, and found Doug descending from the sky. Jade and Lily flanked him, with Chester bringing up the rear. Jade, Lily, and Chester were pale with shock as they took in the scene. Jade immediately rushed to Sam's side, though her hands only hovered around him, unsure what she should do.

The birds were circling just a little bit higher than the rooftops, making not a sound.

Doug's eyes went from the corpse with the crushed skull to the four broken bodies still crawling forward to John standing over them with death in his hands.

"Take a moment to think about this, lad," Doug said. His voice was quiet, but there was something in it that made John pause. "Make sure you're absolutely certain that's what you want to do."

"They were farming Sam," John said. His voice sounded distant to his own ears. "Torturing him and making him use his levels. Over and over until he had nothing left to heal himself."

"I'm sure they were, and I'm sure they deserve what's coming," Doug said. He took a step forward, hands raised. "But I'm not intervening for them, John. I'm intervening for you."

John stared at him.

"I said it before, kid. Killing grows something nasty inside you, and it gets worse the more you do it. Gets heavier. You carry that weight, and it never leaves you. Every face. Every moment. It's always there."

"They're still trying to hurt him." John gestured at the knife-man, who'd managed to drag himself another few inches closer to Sam's prone form. "Look at them. They won't stop."

"I see them," Doug said. "But I also see you. And I don't want you going down that road. Not like this. Killing one guy with intent is hard enough, but doing four, one after the other? That'll be heavy, John. That'll be very heavy."

John had nothing to say to that, his lips pressed in a thin line. Before Doug could continue, movement drew both of their attention. The chain-woman had changed direction. Instead of crawling toward John or Sam, she was dragging herself toward the corpse. The man with the crushed skull, his blood still spreading on the pavement.

They all watched as she reached the body and pulled herself alongside it. Her movements were jerky, uncoordinated, but there was something almost gentle in the way she curled herself against the dead man's side. Her ruined face pressed against his chest. Her arms wrapped around his torso.

Her laughter had a hollow quality to it now, though her eyes were still wide and mad. If not for that look on her face, he'd be sure she was sobbing.

John lowered his scythe slightly, staring at her. At all of them.

Now that the immediate violence had passed, now that he wasn't moving on pure instinct and rage, he could actually look at them. Really look.

Their eyes weren't right. He'd noticed it before, but now that they weren't in mad combat, it was even more stark to him that they were too dilated, the pupils swallowing nearly all the colour. And the whites were shot through with red, like every blood vessel had burst. Their skin had a greyish cast beneath the blood and bruising, almost jaundiced. When they moved, it was too fast or too slow, never quite matching what a human body should do. Muscles firing in the wrong sequence. Reflexes that were either lightning-quick or completely absent.

The chain-woman was still making that sound, half-laugh half-sob, her body shaking. One of her hands was stroking the dead man's arm, the movement compulsive, repetitive.

"What... what's wrong with them?" Chester asked. His voice was shaky.

John crouched down next to the knife-man, who immediately tried to bite him. John jerked back, but not before getting a good look at the man's face up close. His pupils were so dilated, there was almost no iris visible at all. His breathing was rapid and shallow. When he tried to speak, the words came out as nonsense, a jumble of syllables that might have been threats or pleas or just noise.

"They're drugged," Doug rumbled. "Or something like it. Look at their eyes. Their behaviour. They're manic. Completely dissociated from reality."

"They're insane," Lily said quietly. She'd moved closer, her expression troubled. "I mean, properly insane. Not just violent."

John stood up, looking down at the four of them. The club-woman had given up trying to stand and was just laughing now, staring at the sky with her one good eye. The knife-man was still trying to drag himself forward, oblivious to his broken body. The machete-woman was clutching at her crushed throat, making strangled sounds that might have been speech once.

And the chain-woman was crying while she laughed, holding the corpse like it was the most precious thing in the world.

"So what do we do with them?" Chester asked. "We can't just let them go. But..."

"But what?" John turned to face him. "Lock them up? For how long? Until they starve? Until they hurt themselves badly enough that they finally die? Look at them. They're already dead. Their minds are just gone."

"It feels wrong," Chester said. He was very pale. "They're people. They were people."

"They were people," John agreed. "Now they're... I don't know what they are. But they're not people anymore."

"Drugs," Lily said. "Or a Spell. Or a Skill. Something that burned out their minds but left their bodies functional. They're like..." She struggled for words.

"So we put them down," John said. He raised his scythe again. "It's a mercy at this point."

+400 Aura

"Wait." Chester's voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Wait. We can't... you can't do this alone. That's not fair."

Everyone turned to look at him. Chester was shaking, his hands white-knuckled, his wings curling around him like a comforting embrace, but his jaw was set.

"If we're going to do this," he said, "then we should all share it. We can't put it all on you, John."

"Chester…" Doug started.

"No, he's right," Lily interrupted. She stepped forward to stand beside Chester. "Four of them left. Four of us if we leave Jade out. We should split this. If it has to be done, then we share the burden. We share the choice." Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white on her crossbow. "It's becoming increasingly obvious that there's going to be a lot of douchebags out there. It's fucked up as all hell, but we gotta get used to the idea of killing people."

All eyes turned to Jade. She'd been crouching over Sam, silent this whole time, her face ashen. She looked at the four broken bodies still moving, still trying, and something in her expression crumbled.

"I can't," she whispered. "I'm sorry, I just. I can't."

"No one was going to ask that of you, kid. Just help Sam," Doug said quietly. "He needs healing more than he needs witnesses."

Jade nodded jerkily and turned back toward Sam's prone form, putting her back to the rest of the scene. Her hands were shaking as she gently touched his head. His good eye fluttered open, looking tiredly up at her.

Doug looked at the three of them, and then back at the four psychos.

"Christ," Doug muttered. He closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, something had hardened in his expression. "Alright. Alright. We do this together. Quick and clean. No suffering."

"No suffering," Chester echoed. His voice was barely audible.

John felt something in his chest. He couldn't tell if it was a feeling of relief or horror. Relief that he didn't have to do this alone; horror that his comrades were having to share in this sick burden.

But outwardly, he knew what face he had to wear. Like this was a calculated decision and not a descent into necessary butchery.

"I was going to kill them anyway, no matter what you said," he managed to say calmly. "Might as well split the points. No point letting it go to waste."

+1000 Aura

No one reacted.

Together, the four of them moved to complete the grim task.

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