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backstory for the Raccoon Girl known as Z, the good doctor/maid/thirty year old hardened combat veteran/genetically modified slightly insane super assassin.\n\nThis is horrible! Nightmarish even! Don't read it if you have a weak stomach, okay? People die, and traumatizing shit happens, it's generally a fuckfest of unhappiness. But, it's also a good story and important stuff happens, and it's super interesting - so I'm told.\n\nCredit to Zilkas and Tim, also Cobalt and Ballantine and Mila, cause I'd go insane and have no one to run my ideas by.\n\nFull size version of the thumbnail is here: http://imgur.com/J72phb2 DEAR GOD, IS THIS BACKSTORY!?

Yes, strange capslock voice, it actually is.

Welcome to the backstory for the Raccoon Girl known as Z, the good doctor/maid/thirty year old hardened combat veteran/genetically modified slightly insane super assassin.

This is horrible! Nightmarish even! Don't read it if you have a weak stomach, okay? People die, and traumatizing shit happens, it's generally a fuckfest of unhappiness. But, it's also a good story and important stuff happens, and it's super interesting - so I'm told.

Credit to Zilkas and Tim, also Cobalt and Ballantine and Mila, cause I'd go insane and have no one to run my ideas by.

Full size version of the thumbnail is here: http://imgur.com/J72phb2 <Copyright me or something. Look, you can make wallpapers out of it, have a party. But don't go claiming it's yours and making cash off it, that's just not cool. ", "writing": "\tThe time is late afternoon. The place, Angola. Fifteen years in the future, a brother will be seeing his sister's true self for the first time. He will realize they are both of the color red, and she is Queen, and he is King.\n\n\tBut for now, there is a car on a rough road. It is an expensive car. The car in front of it is a jeep full of mercenaries. The car in front of that, and those beyond, are civilian. This car, this expensive car, is being escorted. Behind this car, an unassuming vehicle with very important people inside. However, the focus is the expensive car in particular.\n\n\tInside, an American raccoon is driving with his wife and kids. They are moving through a region that is largely a dangerous place to be, hence the mercenary escort. While it isn't what anyone would call safe, however there hasn't been any action in this particular small region lately. Specifically speaking, this area is on the edge of the conflict.\n\n\t\"Are you really sure we're going to be safe…?\" his wife asks, pushing up her glasses and looking out the window. She's not exactly comfortable with this place that they have come to, working for this company. A diamond mine is the destination, a place the company wants her husband to work in a startlingly high paid position.\n\n\t\"Yes, of course. The company hired these guards. Paid them quite a lot of money, just for this short trip. Don't worry. We'll be in a more secure region in about twenty minutes and everything will be just fine,\" he says, giving an easy smile to her. She nods and gives a nervous smile back.\n\n\tThe woman's name is Lia. \n\n\tShe looks back between the seats at her children, a daughter and a son. Her son, she's not so worried about. Her daughter is another story. She's small, so very small. The doctors say there's nothing wrong with her, she's just tiny.\n\n\t\"You kids doing alright? Zilkas? Rilas?\"\n\n\t\"Fine mom,\" Rilas says, glancing up from his book. \"Cramped, pissed of that we're in friggin' Africa, but other than that, fine.\"\n\n\t\"Watch your language young man,\" she scolds, frowning. He rolls his eyes and raises his book, covering his face. Sighing heavily, she looks to her daughter. \"Zilkas, honey?\"\n\n\tThe little raccoon looks up from her laptop, blinking. She is seventeen, eighteen in a month, and she's too damn old in her head for her own good. She's got the eyes of a much older woman, calculating and oddly cold.\n\n\t\"What?\"\n\n\t\"I asked how you're doing sweetie. And what are you up to?\" her mother asks softly, her smile a little calmer when she looks to her daughter. She hides her nervousness better just for the kids. \"You're not doing anything er... illegal, on that computer, are you?\"\n\n\t\"I'm great, mom. Writing a program to try and track weather patterns for the area and organize it all in one place, in an easy to read format. Should be able to provide a full region map in real time. Dad might be able to use it while managing the mine,\" she says, fingers never stopping flying across the keyboard. Her mother stares. \"What? Why are you looking at me like that?\"\n\n\t\"She's just always so surprised that you're a genius, dear. A cute little genius,\" her father says, smiling happily. Zilkas frowns and stops typing.\n\n\t\"Don't… don't do that please. You know I don't like that,\" she mutters, reaching up to tug at her long reddish brown hair. Her bright, bright blue eyes flick down, and she stares at her keyboard. \"Don't call me that.\"\n\n\t\"Oh come on, little sister. We all know you are adorable,\" her brother says, smirking at her.\n\n\t\"Tiny and cute, indeed,\" her mother adds. \n\n\tThose big blue eyes narrow. They glare at her brother.\n\n\t\"I will seriously punch you. Them I won't punch, but you I'll totally punch,\" she mutters. He reaches out and pinches her cheek and she hisses and bites at his paw as he pulls it away. \"Awww, her cheeks are all hot! She's blushing!\"\n\n\tThey all start laughing, except for her. She just glares out the window, pouting. For a moment, everything is just fine. Everything is happy and sweet and bright and then, as is often the way of the world in places where war is always happening…\n\n\tGunfire shatters the calm.\n\n\tOn instinct, with quick reflexes, her brother snatches her laptop from her and tosses it to the floor. Gunfire shatters the front windshield of the car and then the car of important people behind accelerates, manages to get excellent traction. It slams into the back of their car. Whereas their car is a small sedan, the car behind is an SUV. It's much larger. As soon as they're to a stop, her brother shoves her down onto the floor.\n\n\tThe windows of the car shatter.\n\n\tThe gunfire is coming from closer now, from right behind them. Bullets seem to be zipping about everywhere. The air almost immediately stinks of blood and gun smoke and hot metal. She screams and instinctively makes herself as small as possible, shaking from head to toe.\n\n\tHer father looks back then, gasping for breath. He's dazed, confused. His seat belt comes off and he twists in his seat, looking at his children, he looks as terrified as they are.\n\n\t\"Are you two okay? Rilas get do-\" he starts to say. Unfortunately, there's a fast moving lead interruption that makes his head jerk forward. Zilkas flinches as hot wetness hits her face, squeezing her eyes shut. She can smell the iron in his blood.\n\n\tFor a time, all she can do is stay there, curled up, trembling. She's too afraid to scream. Her mind has locked up. Over and over in her head she repeats to herself.\n\n\tNot real. Not real. Has to be a nightmare. Not real. Can't be real. Not real. Nightmare.\n\n\tThe mercs and the car that ran into them, plus the car behind that, are the only ones of the ten in the caravan that are fighting back. Machine gun fire sends bullets ripping through the vehicles. Fierce shouts and roars rip through the air only to be drowned out by the thunderclap of a grenade exploding followed by the deafening boom of an actual black powder cannon firing, filling the air with acrid smoke.\n\n\tThe explosion sends the car careening forward. Zilkas cries out as her head hits a sharp piece of metal on the under side of her mother's seat.\n\n\tMoments later, silence.\n\n\tThe pain in her head and the hot blood soaking into her fur from the cut on it are enough to give her focus. Trembling, she rises a little to see what there is to see. Her father is slumped over still, the better part of his forehead missing with blood oozing out and dripping onto the center console.\n\n\tShe stares at it for several long moments and lies to herself. He's not dead, she says. No, not dead. Not his forehead, not his exposed skull, not his splattered brain, none of it is real. His thinking tissue isn't speckled on her fur with flecks of bone.\n\n\tIt feels like pieces are breaking off inside of her head. Like she's cracking. Like her sanity itself is aching, strained to the point it doesn't seem like it'll hold much longer.\n\t\n\tShe hears a wet sort of gurgle and looks to the side to see her brother clutching at his throat, blood all but squirting between his fingers. She has no idea what to do. Her mind freezes up again.\n\n\tAnd then his eyes roll back and he goes still, his paws falling. His throat and upper chest are shredded, blood sluggishly seeping through the holes in his shirt and soaking the material, dampening his dark fur.\n\n\tShe kneels and vomits, nothing but bile and acid filling her mouth. Gritting her teeth, she half stands and looks to her mother. \n\n\tA bullet caught her in the temple at some point. She died instantly.\n\t\n\tShe looks away, feeling dizzy. Outside the car, she sees people on the road, moving through the smoke, poking their guns in one of the cars. There are screams, gunshots, and then silence.\n\n\tHer self preservation takes over.\n\n\tOperating on instinct with most of her mind refusing to function, she tugs at her brother's seat belt until she gets the buckle open and pulls it off of him, and then she drags his body down on top of her.\n\t\n\tHis blood is all she can smell. She lays there, face down, shaking. Foosteps. Voices. The roaring of fire. There's a disgusting burnt hair smell in the air. She hears more screams, and then more gunshots.\n\n\tHer eyes are squeezed shut.\n\n\tZilkas is, point of fact, a genius. She's registered with several organizations. Her patents on a few things already make her a bit of money - money that goes into a college fund. Her mind is mature for her age, beyond what most would ever expect (according to a trio of psychologists her parents hired to try to explain why she had literally no friends in highschool).\n\n\tRight now, that beautiful mind is being torn to shreds. Deep down inside, there's something spreading out. Sprawling in the fertile neurons. Something far beyond the natural that can taste the iron in the blood in her mouth. The taste is doing something to her. Something powerful waketh. Something cold and dark and older than she by what could be centuries.\n\n\tThis new dark force won't let her break.\n\n\tIt can't.\n\n\tNot yet.\n\n\tSo, like someone stitching together a dress from pieces of cloth, it picks up the fragments and it forces them to be something new. \n\n\tOn the surface, she hears them pass the car. One of them says something in a language she narrowly understands, from reading a few books and taking an online class before moving across the ocean. The dialect is different, but she's able to pick out some of the words in Bantu.\n\n\t\"Throw the corpses in the pit. Frisk them first. Then get the bodies from inside the cars, do the same. We burn the vehicles after.\"\n\n\tHer heart skips a beat.\n\t\n\t[i]You. Need. To. Move.[/i]\n\n\tThe voice is in her head. It's low and growling and predatory and sounds like hers except darker and uglier and full of rage. She doesn't disagree with the voice. What little of her is still functioning knows she needs to go. \n\n\tA shaking paw reaches for the door and gives it a light push, finds it stuck. The handle has been shot off, so she slowly shifts out from under her brother, peeking out of the broken windows. She sees the men walking towards her and ducks down again, shaking so hard she's worried they might notice her just from the sound of the damn car rattling with her shaking.\n\n\tThey nearly pass her by, then stop. She shrinks back down, pulling her brother back on top. This time she's face up, staring into his lifeless eyes. \n\n\t\"The fuck are you doing?\" one of them asks, this time speaking Portuguese, a language she's much more familiar with.\n\n\t\"Thought I saw something move in this car. Guess not.\"\n\n\t\"Come on, we got shit to do. Nothing left alive in this car.\"\n\n\tThey're gone, but she's frozen in place again, her mind locked up. Her brother's eyes are all wrong. As she stares into them she realizes he's not there. Whatever he was is gone. They're just balls of useless jelly, no spark. No personality. Just a void. An emptiness that she stares into and in turn is stared into by, the creeping blackness crawling into her soul.\n\n[i]\tYou CANNOT stay here. Move.\n\n\tMove!\n\n\tMove![/i]\n\n She jerks in shock and then shoves her brother off of her, pops up. The raccoon girl feels like a puppet. Like her entire body is not functioning under her own control but is being tugged awkwardly along. She's become detached, withdrawn, numb. As if she is some kind of... control layer. Integration software and nothing more. It's as if she's just temp drivers while the real ones install.\n\n\tShe watches the men move away then drags herself through the window. Her shirt catches and rips on some metal, cutting the flesh below it shallowly. It's like she can't even feel it. Everything is so quiet but she knows there must be noise. She's just… losing her grip. \n\n\tHitting the ground knocks the air out of her but she doesn't care. She moves fast, running away from where the men are as she gasps, hoping the two men walking back towards the line of stopped, bullet riddled cars don't notice her. Her eyes are locked on them, head turned. When she pitches forward, she turns her face, trying to see what she is falling in to.\n\n\tHer head hits something hard and darkness swallows her.\n\n\t[i]Wake up.\n\n\tFor fuck's sake.\n\n\tWAKE UP.\n\n\tTHEY BURIED ME.\n\n\tGET MY ASS UP, PLACEHOLDER!\n[/i]\n\tShe jerks awake and realizes dully that it's hard to breathe. There's a stink, a horrific stink, and things pressing against her. Things she isn't sure how to identify.\n\n\t[i]Dead. Naked. Bodies. We're in a mass fucking grave. It's shallow. Scavenging ferals will be coming for dinner. HURRY! GET UP. CLIMB OUT. NOW![/i]\n\n\tShe jerks at the shouting of the voice in her head, and starts to crawl, gripping at the flesh and fur. The bodies, for the most part, are still warm, piled together in the hot humid dark. Nightmare. \n\nThis must be a nightmare. Please, she begs, let this be a nightmare. Even if she wakes, she feels this will break her for years and years to come.\n\t\n\t[i]Stop whining. Your internal monologue is pissing me off, placeholder. You're not going to wake up. As soon as we have a moment, I'm destroying you. Split personalities are clichéd and stupid and I want the body. Aside that, ending you will be... it will be a piece of mercy[/i], the voice says.\n\n\tShe doesn't really understand.\n\n\t[i]You can't understand. The parts of your brain that would help you understand the situation are currently under my control.[/i]\n\n\tShe does a spit test, to clear her disorientation up. The spit drips down, giving her a clear idea of what is precisely up. Worming and squirming and wiggling, she manages to progress upwards. They can't have buried her long ago, or very deep. It looks like the air is largely kept in place by the tarp she runs into near the surface. \n\n\tGagging on the stench, she squirms along the top of the grave, not wanting in any capacity to know precisely what it is she's grabbing onto to pull herself along until finally…\n\n\tDirt. Dirt ahead. She pushes up, finds the edge of the tarp, and scrambles with her tiny claws on tiny paws. She makes quick progress, digging her way through about a foot of dirt until her face hits air.\n\n\tDon’t you god damn rest. Turn around, placeholder. See if any remain.\n\n\tShe hacks up mouthful of dirt and blood and gasps for just a second before forcing herself to rise, to turn and face flickering light. There's no one to be seen, no one at all. Every one of the line of cars is burning, clearly doused in gasoline or kerosene.\n\n\tShe reaches up, trying to brush the dirt from her eyes. Some of it is caught in the matted blood on her face. She ignores it and walks to the road.\n\n\t\"What now, head voice?\" she asks quietly, shaking.\n\n\t[i]Enjoy the water.[/i]\n\n\tShe's going to ask what it's talking about but then she's on a raft in the middle of clear blue water. She knows this place, the Caribbean. It was all just a dream. A horrible dream.\n\n\t[i]Yes exactly.\n\n\tA dream.\n\n\tNow, enjoy yourself for a few minutes. It's the last time we likely ever will… enjoy anything but killing. But you like swimming. That's all you have to worry about.[/i]\n\n\tShe looks to the sky to see a pair of bright blue eyes in the clouds, watching her. She's not bothered by them. Not at all. For a few minutes, she paddles around, laughing brightly as fish swarm around her paws and brush against her wet fur. The air is salty with the scent of the ocean.\n\n\tThen she sits cross legged on the raft and looks up.\n\n\t\"You're the head voice, not god. There is no god. That means it wasn't a dream.\"\n\n\t[i]I'm not sure your logic is sound there, but I suppose on some level you'd have to know this is the dream and that was the real world. I… are you having fun? You had a dream once where you... where you came back here.[/i]\n\n\t\"Yeah… I guess. I'm just kind of curious. What are you, head voice?\" she asks, tilting her head. \n\n\tIf the voice could frown, it would be frowning right now.\n\n\t[i]I am the instinct and rage and magic boiling in your soul, personified by pieces of you - plus a thing... an old thing, a powerful thing. We're one now, and this is… not supposed to be happening. Not yet, at least. There's going to be a game in a long time.[/i]\n\n\t\"A… game? What kind of game?\"\n\n\t[i]Like chess, sort of. But… worse. Lots of people will get killed, I think. Many of them by me. I am… the Knight. I don't know more than that. People like me and like you… like us, We're not supposed to have contact. We're not supposed to be awake yet. I'm not supposed to be… a conscious thing. I'm just supposed to be a part of you.[/i]\n\n\tShe frowns then, frowns at the sky.\n\n\t\"Why didn't you wake up sooner? Would it have saved them? And… why am I not sad?\" she asks. \n\t \n\t[i]I… cannibalized your emotions already. All those that you feel now is emulation, run through me. I'm... muting your sadness.. I… I needed you as a placeholder while I uh… constructed a new personality from the pieces of your shattered mind. That's why you were so… puppet like, out there. Big chunks of you were missing. [/i] \n\n\t\"What… what happens now, head voice?\"\n\n\t[i]…[/i]\n\n\t[i]Soon you die. Or… rather, cease to exist. Essentially. I'm sorry.[/i]\n\n\tShe nods.\n\n\t\"I understand. To be honest, I think if I could feel the sadness, I wouldn't want to wake up. I'd feel… wrong. I'd never be okay and I know it. I guess you can be the leader now and… let me sleep?\"\n\n\t[i]I will... it will feel like... Like you can swim forever. Can you… play some more? For just a few minutes while I work?[/i]\n\n\tShe gives it a tragically hollow smile.\n\n\t\"Sure. I'd like to swim with the fish. I like the bright colors.\"\n\n\tThe head voice watches her from the sky as she slips off the raft into the water. She swims around, laughing when she breaches the surface. The colorful fish swarm about her by the thousands, darting and flitting about and catching the light, glinting.\n\n\tAfter a few minutes, she feels an urgency and climbs back onto the raft, flopping on the sun warmed wood and looking to the eyes in the sky.\n\n\t\"This is the end, isn't it? I have a question. Why would you give me this…?\"\n\t\n\t[i]Suicide should never be taken lightly. I just wanted myself to smile before I effectively killed myself.[/i]\n\n\tShe gives head voice what it wants. A smile, simple and clean, honest.\n\n\t\"I guess I'll still have some sweetness in me when I'm gone. Goodbye, head voice. Sorry for falling apart on you. I... Will I still be me, after? Or will I be all you?\"\n\t\n\t[i]You will be you, sort of. Or, rather... you and I will be a very different person, a different core, with your modified reconstructed personality wrapped around it. The core will be... it will be me. Our hungers will be more intense. We will be blood thirsty and violent... horny...angry. But you don't worry, not anymore. You bore more than anyone could. Gave me time. Goodbye, Zilkas.[/i]\n\n\tThe wind stops. The motion of the water stops. The raccoon girl sits up, peers around at the palm trees on the nearby beach. They're stopped completely right in the middle of being blown.\n\n\tAnd then they are gone.\n\n\tThe beach vanishes, and the water, the sky, the raft. She lays back in the blackness, eyes closed, feeling nothing but warmth like she's still bathed in sunlight.\n\n\t[i]Sleep well, forever. For what it's worth coming from a powerful old monster, I am so, so sorry.[/i]\n\n\tAnd so she goes, softly, sweetly.\n\n\tZ stands on the road, next to the burning cars in the real world. She looks down that road, and sighs, then grabs a piece of bent metal off the ground.\n\n\t\"Guess it's time to start walking.\"\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "\tThe time is late afternoon. The place, Angola. Fifteen years in the future, a brother will be seeing his sister's true self for the first time. He will realize they are both of the color red, and she is Queen, and he is King.

\tBut for now, there is a car on a rough road. It is an expensive car. The car in front of it is a jeep full of mercenaries. The car in front of that, and those beyond, are civilian. This car, this expensive car, is being escorted. Behind this car, an unassuming vehicle with very important people inside. However, the focus is the expensive car in particular.

\tInside, an American raccoon is driving with his wife and kids. They are moving through a region that is largely a dangerous place to be, hence the mercenary escort. While it isn't what anyone would call safe, however there hasn't been any action in this particular small region lately. Specifically speaking, this area is on the edge of the conflict.

\t"Are you really sure we're going to be safe…?" his wife asks, pushing up her glasses and looking out the window. She's not exactly comfortable with this place that they have come to, working for this company. A diamond mine is the destination, a place the company wants her husband to work in a startlingly high paid position.

\t"Yes, of course. The company hired these guards. Paid them quite a lot of money, just for this short trip. Don't worry. We'll be in a more secure region in about twenty minutes and everything will be just fine," he says, giving an easy smile to her. She nods and gives a nervous smile back.

\tThe woman's name is Lia.

\tShe looks back between the seats at her children, a daughter and a son. Her son, she's not so worried about. Her daughter is another story. She's small, so very small. The doctors say there's nothing wrong with her, she's just tiny.

\t"You kids doing alright? Zilkas? Rilas?"

\t"Fine mom," Rilas says, glancing up from his book. "Cramped, pissed of that we're in friggin' Africa, but other than that, fine."

\t"Watch your language young man," she scolds, frowning. He rolls his eyes and raises his book, covering his face. Sighing heavily, she looks to her daughter. "Zilkas, honey?"

\tThe little raccoon looks up from her laptop, blinking. She is seventeen, eighteen in a month, and she's too damn old in her head for her own good. She's got the eyes of a much older woman, calculating and oddly cold.

\t"What?"

\t"I asked how you're doing sweetie. And what are you up to?" her mother asks softly, her smile a little calmer when she looks to her daughter. She hides her nervousness better just for the kids. "You're not doing anything er... illegal, on that computer, are you?"

\t"I'm great, mom. Writing a program to try and track weather patterns for the area and organize it all in one place, in an easy to read format. Should be able to provide a full region map in real time. Dad might be able to use it while managing the mine," she says, fingers never stopping flying across the keyboard. Her mother stares. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

\t"She's just always so surprised that you're a genius, dear. A cute little genius," her father says, smiling happily. Zilkas frowns and stops typing.

\t"Don't… don't do that please. You know I don't like that," she mutters, reaching up to tug at her long reddish brown hair. Her bright, bright blue eyes flick down, and she stares at her keyboard. "Don't call me that."

\t"Oh come on, little sister. We all know you are adorable," her brother says, smirking at her.

\t"Tiny and cute, indeed," her mother adds.

\tThose big blue eyes narrow. They glare at her brother.

\t"I will seriously punch you. Them I won't punch, but you I'll totally punch," she mutters. He reaches out and pinches her cheek and she hisses and bites at his paw as he pulls it away. "Awww, her cheeks are all hot! She's blushing!"

\tThey all start laughing, except for her. She just glares out the window, pouting. For a moment, everything is just fine. Everything is happy and sweet and bright and then, as is often the way of the world in places where war is always happening…

\tGunfire shatters the calm.

\tOn instinct, with quick reflexes, her brother snatches her laptop from her and tosses it to the floor. Gunfire shatters the front windshield of the car and then the car of important people behind accelerates, manages to get excellent traction. It slams into the back of their car. Whereas their car is a small sedan, the car behind is an SUV. It's much larger. As soon as they're to a stop, her brother shoves her down onto the floor.

\tThe windows of the car shatter.

\tThe gunfire is coming from closer now, from right behind them. Bullets seem to be zipping about everywhere. The air almost immediately stinks of blood and gun smoke and hot metal. She screams and instinctively makes herself as small as possible, shaking from head to toe.

\tHer father looks back then, gasping for breath. He's dazed, confused. His seat belt comes off and he twists in his seat, looking at his children, he looks as terrified as they are.

\t"Are you two okay? Rilas get do-" he starts to say. Unfortunately, there's a fast moving lead interruption that makes his head jerk forward. Zilkas flinches as hot wetness hits her face, squeezing her eyes shut. She can smell the iron in his blood.

\tFor a time, all she can do is stay there, curled up, trembling. She's too afraid to scream. Her mind has locked up. Over and over in her head she repeats to herself.

\tNot real. Not real. Has to be a nightmare. Not real. Can't be real. Not real. Nightmare.

\tThe mercs and the car that ran into them, plus the car behind that, are the only ones of the ten in the caravan that are fighting back. Machine gun fire sends bullets ripping through the vehicles. Fierce shouts and roars rip through the air only to be drowned out by the thunderclap of a grenade exploding followed by the deafening boom of an actual black powder cannon firing, filling the air with acrid smoke.

\tThe explosion sends the car careening forward. Zilkas cries out as her head hits a sharp piece of metal on the under side of her mother's seat.

\tMoments later, silence.

\tThe pain in her head and the hot blood soaking into her fur from the cut on it are enough to give her focus. Trembling, she rises a little to see what there is to see. Her father is slumped over still, the better part of his forehead missing with blood oozing out and dripping onto the center console.

\tShe stares at it for several long moments and lies to herself. He's not dead, she says. No, not dead. Not his forehead, not his exposed skull, not his splattered brain, none of it is real. His thinking tissue isn't speckled on her fur with flecks of bone.

\tIt feels like pieces are breaking off inside of her head. Like she's cracking. Like her sanity itself is aching, strained to the point it doesn't seem like it'll hold much longer.
\t
\tShe hears a wet sort of gurgle and looks to the side to see her brother clutching at his throat, blood all but squirting between his fingers. She has no idea what to do. Her mind freezes up again.

\tAnd then his eyes roll back and he goes still, his paws falling. His throat and upper chest are shredded, blood sluggishly seeping through the holes in his shirt and soaking the material, dampening his dark fur.

\tShe kneels and vomits, nothing but bile and acid filling her mouth. Gritting her teeth, she half stands and looks to her mother.

\tA bullet caught her in the temple at some point. She died instantly.
\t
\tShe looks away, feeling dizzy. Outside the car, she sees people on the road, moving through the smoke, poking their guns in one of the cars. There are screams, gunshots, and then silence.

\tHer self preservation takes over.

\tOperating on instinct with most of her mind refusing to function, she tugs at her brother's seat belt until she gets the buckle open and pulls it off of him, and then she drags his body down on top of her.
\t
\tHis blood is all she can smell. She lays there, face down, shaking. Foosteps. Voices. The roaring of fire. There's a disgusting burnt hair smell in the air. She hears more screams, and then more gunshots.

\tHer eyes are squeezed shut.

\tZilkas is, point of fact, a genius. She's registered with several organizations. Her patents on a few things already make her a bit of money - money that goes into a college fund. Her mind is mature for her age, beyond what most would ever expect (according to a trio of psychologists her parents hired to try to explain why she had literally no friends in highschool).

\tRight now, that beautiful mind is being torn to shreds. Deep down inside, there's something spreading out. Sprawling in the fertile neurons. Something far beyond the natural that can taste the iron in the blood in her mouth. The taste is doing something to her. Something powerful waketh. Something cold and dark and older than she by what could be centuries.

\tThis new dark force won't let her break.

\tIt can't.

\tNot yet.

\tSo, like someone stitching together a dress from pieces of cloth, it picks up the fragments and it forces them to be something new.

\tOn the surface, she hears them pass the car. One of them says something in a language she narrowly understands, from reading a few books and taking an online class before moving across the ocean. The dialect is different, but she's able to pick out some of the words in Bantu.

\t"Throw the corpses in the pit. Frisk them first. Then get the bodies from inside the cars, do the same. We burn the vehicles after."

\tHer heart skips a beat.
\t
\tYou. Need. To. Move.

\tThe voice is in her head. It's low and growling and predatory and sounds like hers except darker and uglier and full of rage. She doesn't disagree with the voice. What little of her is still functioning knows she needs to go.

\tA shaking paw reaches for the door and gives it a light push, finds it stuck. The handle has been shot off, so she slowly shifts out from under her brother, peeking out of the broken windows. She sees the men walking towards her and ducks down again, shaking so hard she's worried they might notice her just from the sound of the damn car rattling with her shaking.

\tThey nearly pass her by, then stop. She shrinks back down, pulling her brother back on top. This time she's face up, staring into his lifeless eyes.

\t"The fuck are you doing?" one of them asks, this time speaking Portuguese, a language she's much more familiar with.

\t"Thought I saw something move in this car. Guess not."

\t"Come on, we got shit to do. Nothing left alive in this car."

\tThey're gone, but she's frozen in place again, her mind locked up. Her brother's eyes are all wrong. As she stares into them she realizes he's not there. Whatever he was is gone. They're just balls of useless jelly, no spark. No personality. Just a void. An emptiness that she stares into and in turn is stared into by, the creeping blackness crawling into her soul.

\tYou CANNOT stay here. Move.

\tMove!

\tMove!

    She jerks in shock and then shoves her brother off of her, pops up. The raccoon girl feels like a puppet. Like her entire body is not functioning under her own control but is being tugged awkwardly along. She's become detached, withdrawn, numb. As if she is some kind of... control layer. Integration software and nothing more. It's as if she's just temp drivers while the real  ones install.

\tShe watches the men move away then drags herself through the window. Her shirt catches and rips on some metal, cutting the flesh below it shallowly. It's like she can't even feel it. Everything is so quiet but she knows there must be noise. She's just… losing her grip.

\tHitting the ground knocks the air out of her but she doesn't care. She moves fast, running away from where the men are as she gasps, hoping the two men walking back towards the line of stopped, bullet riddled cars don't notice her. Her eyes are locked on them, head turned. When she pitches forward, she turns her face, trying to see what she is falling in to.

\tHer head hits something hard and darkness swallows her.

\tWake up.

\tFor fuck's sake.

\tWAKE UP.

\tTHEY BURIED ME.

\tGET MY ASS UP, PLACEHOLDER!

\tShe jerks awake and realizes dully that it's hard to breathe. There's a stink, a horrific stink, and things pressing against her. Things she isn't sure how to identify.

\tDead. Naked. Bodies. We're in a mass fucking grave. It's shallow. Scavenging ferals will be coming for dinner. HURRY! GET UP. CLIMB OUT. NOW!

\tShe jerks at the shouting of the voice in her head, and starts to crawl, gripping at the flesh and fur. The bodies, for the most part, are still warm, piled together in the hot humid dark. Nightmare.

This must be a nightmare. Please, she begs, let this be a nightmare. Even if she wakes, she feels this will break her for years and years to come.
\t
\tStop whining. Your internal monologue is pissing me off, placeholder. You're not going to wake up. As soon as we have a moment, I'm destroying you. Split personalities are clichéd and stupid and I want the body. Aside that, ending you will be... it will be a piece of mercy, the voice says.

\tShe doesn't really understand.

\tYou can't understand. The parts of your brain that would help you understand the situation are currently under my control.

\tShe does a spit test, to clear her disorientation up. The spit drips down, giving her a clear idea of what is precisely up. Worming and squirming and wiggling, she manages to progress upwards. They can't have buried her long ago, or very deep. It looks like the air is largely kept in place by the tarp she runs into near the surface.

\tGagging on the stench, she squirms along the top of the grave, not wanting in any capacity to know precisely what it is she's grabbing onto to pull herself along until finally…

\tDirt. Dirt ahead. She pushes up, finds the edge of the tarp, and scrambles with her tiny claws on tiny paws. She makes quick progress, digging her way through about a foot of dirt until her face hits air.

\tDon’t you god damn rest. Turn around, placeholder. See if any remain.

\tShe hacks up mouthful of dirt and blood and gasps for just a second before forcing herself to rise, to turn and face flickering light. There's no one to be seen, no one at all. Every one of the line of cars is burning, clearly doused in gasoline or kerosene.

\tShe reaches up, trying to brush the dirt from her eyes. Some of it is caught in the matted blood on her face. She ignores it and walks to the road.

\t"What now, head voice?" she asks quietly, shaking.

\tEnjoy the water.

\tShe's going to ask what it's talking about but then she's on a raft in the middle of clear blue water. She knows this place, the Caribbean. It was all just a dream. A horrible dream.

\tYes exactly.

\tA dream.

\tNow, enjoy yourself for a few minutes. It's the last time we likely ever will… enjoy anything but killing. But you like swimming. That's all you have to worry about.

\tShe looks to the sky to see a pair of bright blue eyes in the clouds, watching her. She's not bothered by them. Not at all. For a few minutes, she paddles around, laughing brightly as fish swarm around her paws and brush against her wet fur. The air is salty with the scent of the ocean.

\tThen she sits cross legged on the raft and looks up.

\t"You're the head voice, not god. There is no god. That means it wasn't a dream."

\tI'm not sure your logic is sound there, but I suppose on some level you'd have to know this is the dream and that was the real world. I… are you having fun? You had a dream once where you... where you came back here.

\t"Yeah… I guess. I'm just kind of curious. What are you, head voice?" she asks, tilting her head.

\tIf the voice could frown, it would be frowning right now.

\tI am the instinct and rage and magic boiling in your soul, personified by pieces of you - plus a thing... an old thing, a powerful thing. We're one now, and this is… not supposed to be happening. Not yet, at least. There's going to be a game in a long time.

\t"A… game? What kind of game?"

\tLike chess, sort of. But… worse. Lots of people will get killed, I think. Many of them by me. I am… the Knight. I don't know more than that. People like me and like you… like us, We're not supposed to have contact. We're not supposed to be awake yet. I'm not supposed to be… a conscious thing. I'm just supposed to be a part of you.

\tShe frowns then, frowns at the sky.

\t"Why didn't you wake up sooner? Would it have saved them? And… why am I not sad?" she asks.
\t
\tI… cannibalized your emotions already. All those that you feel now is emulation, run through me. I'm... muting your sadness.. I… I needed you as a placeholder while I uh… constructed a new personality from the pieces of your shattered mind. That's why you were so… puppet like, out there. Big chunks of you were missing.

\t"What… what happens now, head voice?"

\t…

\tSoon you die. Or… rather, cease to exist. Essentially. I'm sorry.

\tShe nods.

\t"I understand. To be honest, I think if I could feel the sadness, I wouldn't want to wake up. I'd feel… wrong. I'd never be okay and I know it. I guess you can be the leader now and… let me sleep?"

\tI will... it will feel like... Like you can swim forever. Can you… play some more? For just a few minutes while I work?

\tShe gives it a tragically hollow smile.

\t"Sure. I'd like to swim with the fish. I like the bright colors."

\tThe head voice watches her from the sky as she slips off the raft into the water. She swims around, laughing when she breaches the surface. The colorful fish swarm about her by the thousands, darting and flitting about and catching the light, glinting.

\tAfter a few minutes, she feels an urgency and climbs back onto the raft, flopping on the sun warmed wood and looking to the eyes in the sky.

\t"This is the end, isn't it? I have a question. Why would you give me this…?"
\t
\tSuicide should never be taken lightly. I just wanted myself to smile before I effectively killed myself.

\tShe gives head voice what it wants. A smile, simple and clean, honest.

\t"I guess I'll still have some sweetness in me when I'm gone. Goodbye, head voice. Sorry for falling apart on you. I... Will I still be me, after? Or will I be all you?"
\t
\tYou will be you, sort of. Or, rather... you and I will be a very different person, a different core, with your modified reconstructed personality wrapped around it. The core will be... it will be me. Our hungers will be more intense. We will be blood thirsty and violent... horny...angry. But you don't worry, not anymore. You bore more than anyone could. Gave me time. Goodbye, Zilkas.

\tThe wind stops. The motion of the water stops. The raccoon girl sits up, peers around at the palm trees on the nearby beach. They're stopped completely right in the middle of being blown.

\tAnd then they are gone.

\tThe beach vanishes, and the water, the sky, the raft. She lays back in the blackness, eyes closed, feeling nothing but warmth like she's still bathed in sunlight.

\tSleep well, forever. For what it's worth coming from a powerful old monster, I am so, so sorry.

\tAnd so she goes, softly, sweetly.

\tZ stands on the road, next to the burning cars in the real world. She looks down that road, and sighs, then grabs a piece of bent metal off the ground.

\t"Guess it's time to start walking."
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