"...Dammit!! Dammit!! Dammit!! I’m going to destroy everything!! Sink this godforsaken island for this humiliation!!!" Nightmare complains, kicking the ground with tears in her eyes, her childish tantrum lashing out after she was obliterated by the former Top 1 among the Kairas.
It was the fastest defeat she had ever suffered, showing just how terrifying Astrid’s power is even while she’s limited now, and even though she had the advantage of already understanding how Nightmare’s body worked in general.
"That damn woman ruined everything!! I had Nadir in my hands!! I was winning!! Two against one is so unfair, and she attacked me like a coward!!" She complains in frustration while a hooded girl looks at her with disgust.
"You came here just to complain, Mimic?"
"DON’T CALL ME MIMIC!! I’m Nightmare!! I hate being called Mimic by you! The contempt in your voice when you use that term frustrates me!!! I don’t even know what the hell a Mimic is!!"
"You are a Mimic, it’s something that changes shape, disguises itself as other things and attacks others, though it was usually used for objects," the hooded girl speaks without any fear of Nightmare.
"Why didn’t you help!? I’m doing this for you—"
"Don’t exaggerate, Mimic. You’re not doing this for me, you’re doing it to get more flesh and to kill that man," she cuts Nightmare off, something almost no one would have the courage to do.
"..." But unlike the explosive reaction Nightmare would normally have, she doesn’t have the courage to attack the hooded girl.
"That wasn’t the deal!! So at least give me something bigger!! Something strong!! Some monster that puts this entire island at risk!! That stupid wolf you created died easily to that damn metal woman!! And now not even all the flesh you gave me did a thing against that other damn woman who obliterated my body!!!"
"This isn’t fair!! You should have been there!! If you had been there that woman wouldn’t have even gotten close to hitting me!! Because you’re strong and would have managed to deal with her," the hooded girl grows thoughtful at what Nightmare says.
"You’re right, I’ve been very busy lately, things have been getting interesting. You want something big, right? I can’t give you anything like what you want."
"But I have a project I want to test, a monster so dangerous it will take some very powerful Kairas to defeat, a monster I can unleash on the same day Director Astrid is scheduled to be far away from any normal part of the city."
"And when most of the Kairas will be out. The perfect opportunity for chaos to unfold to the extreme... at most we’ll only have the academy students and a few teachers to deal with the problem, since other teams won’t have the strength for it," she speaks confidently about what she’s creating.
"Of course, I can’t promise this, it all depends on the success of my tests, but does it sound satisfactory to you? It will be a good moment to obtain more bodies and increase the population’s fear."
"My studies on fear extraction are also going well. If everything continues at this pace I’ll discover how to extract fear as a liquid to inject into monsters and strengthen them."
"Sounds fun, right?" The hooded girl’s words cheer Nightmare up a little, the chance to cause chaos and get more bodies is something she approves of.
"It sounds—" Before she can agree the hooded girl smashes Nightmare’s head against the wall of the place where they are. Nightmare’s body contracts and contorts before falling to the ground, spilling blood.
"Don’t shout anymore. Don’t bring your complaints to this place. And don’t blame me for your failures. I’m not doing this for you. Don’t forget who’s in charge here. Your rebelliousness has been growing lately."
"If you don’t want me to kill you myself, behave. I hate children, and you act like one, it’s unbearable. The next time you do this I’ll do far worse than just crush your head."
"I know you’re listening, so be ready in case I decide to release my experiment on the city. I might have some use for you if I actually follow through with this plan."
"But I don’t want to be pressured. I don’t guarantee I’ll release this on the city if it doesn’t give me advantages. I won’t stupidly start attacks just because you feel offended over losing to others."
"The blame is entirely yours for always playing with your food. You’re a monster with so much potential, and you waste it foolishly. You use your powers in a shallow way and hold back to watch the suffering of prey that aren’t even wounded."
"..." Nightmare, frustrated, attempts a surprise attack. It’s been years that she’s been obeying this hooded girl, she’s become a little more skilled at controlling her powers subtly, so she tries her luck. But before her flesh can mold itself, a red beam like a laser completely erases half of her body.
"You don’t even know how to hide your hostility. It’s truly frustrating how an incredible power like yours fell into the hands of someone who doesn’t even have a real brain."
"Whatever... I’m leaving. I suggest you get out of here. I’m going to blow up the place to bury the evidence. And you can be sure, it’s not an explosion you’ll want to experience." The hooded girl starts to leave while Nightmare has extreme difficulty regenerating from the laser that was fired.
"I-It burns..." The deformed flesh clusters together into a tiny mound, dragging itself in suffering, unable to regenerate because of what the laser did to it, a concentration of heat that spread like a current through every cell of its body.
Like a "tumor" corrupting her cells and destroying the connections between the different parts. While the small mass of flesh drags itself across the floor and through cracks and pipes, the rest of the flesh was left completely incapacitated inside the hideout.
"U-Unfair..." is all she can complain, her voice echoing through the pipes. Despite Nightmare’s high classification, she is a "weak" monster, not for lack of power, but for never having used her powers to their maximum potential.
Monster classification is given based on several criteria, and whether or not the monster knows how to use their powers doesn’t change that, so Nightmare has a higher class than she is actually capable of without carrying the threat level of that class because she doesn’t know how to use what she has.
"..." She drags herself to the surface, emerging on the ground and crawling into an alley. She devours rats and insects to get more flesh. This limitation is her main problem.
’Why... why do I have so much to use so little...’ Either she chooses to store flesh to survive in an emergency, or she uses everything in attacks, a management game she always loses.
If she doesn’t use flesh she has no powers, if she doesn’t store it she could end up dead in emergencies where she needs to flee. This fact frustrates her, because she understands the hooded girl.
But the hooded girl makes not the slightest effort to understand the difficulties and complexities of her power.
"I-If I had enough flesh I would never lose to anyone!!" Her body begins to take shape as she eats hundreds of rats, even though her perception of time is a mess and it took her hours to do so.
"If I could have as much flesh as I wanted I could use my powers however I needed!! This is so unfair to me!! It’s not my fault when I don’t have enough flesh!!" With her body returning to form she scratches her cheeks with stress, drops of blood trickling down as her cells reorganize themselves very slowly from the lack of extra flesh.
In her current state most Kairas, even someone without experience, could kill her. Such a terrifying power having such a huge limitation is almost "comical."
"Isn’t there some way for me to evolve my power!? I’ve seen so many monsters inferior to me managing to get variants of their powers!! Why don’t I have a variant too!!? Why can’t I just generate flesh from nothing!!?" Without understanding basic physics or biology she criticizes something unreal.
Flesh doesn’t come from nothing, no matter if it’s her power. As she complains, the hooded girl observes her from buildings away with frustration.
"Nightmare... when are you going to grow up... so much potential, in such a stupid monster. It’s been years and she’s still practically the same as in the past, even having already had enough opportunities..." The girl looks at her imagining a future where she "evolves," something common among monsters as they age.
"Maybe I’d better not have so much hope. I waited for 12 years, but she’s completely stagnated... or maybe her evolution depends on her having excess flesh and using that excess..." She picks up a cell phone, looking at the names.
"Astrid... Cecilia... Zenith... Nadir... Alice... they’re from the old generation and they’ve all faced Nightmare at some point..." She looks at their phone numbers that she has to contact them.
"...I think I’m exposing myself too much, and Nightmare leaves too many traces. I won’t take her to my bases or present my projects anymore. She’s no longer as useful." She stands up, crushing the phone and tossing it into the trash below.
The phone falls like a fireball, activating its self-destruct as she decides to return to the academy, more interested in observing the talents of this generation.
"Maybe I can infect humans with liquid fear? What happens if I inject the same fear that generates monsters into a Kaira’s body?" She murmurs with a malicious smile, taking advantage of a privileged infiltrated position to cause trouble.
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