Archive of Our Own

All that surrounded him was darkness.

Darkness was what he could see and the darkness consumed what he could not. It devoured his ability to feel, to sniff, to touch and even to taste. It was a parasite, a leach; starving, all consuming, insatiable. It lusted and it yearned for everything, and it got it.

And yet, the darkness didn't feel monstrous to him. That was simply the manner of it. It felt, and made him feel, safe. It felt nice. It felt okay. It felt decent. Like a massive weighed blanket draped all over his weary frame as he slipped into a final sleep.

The area he was kept in he had no idea of its appearance, but he knew it was a safe enough domain for him. He wasn't running wildly out there, maiming and mauling and massacring the others (not like the way he had before).

He hadn't fully lost his mind; one never did when one abstracted. Their body was gone, yes. But inside they remained. They stayed sulking in that hulking, brooding obsidian lump with multicolor sparkles dotting it. They stayed in the cycle of their bitter, burning angst, a never ending addiction.

No, this space, this dark, dank, dull space was good. It kept him passive, remnant, and docile, and that was good enough.

 For now, this abyss he found himself in, along with its effects, were just that to him; good enough.

And good enough was good enough for Jax.

-----------------------------------

And then he began to fall.

From his fixed position inside that black and multicolored tumor, Jax suddenly felt a yank in the middle of his belly. It was quick and rapid, slight and shivering. Little more than a stumble. But that tiny jerk lasted for only a moment before the tug turned itself into a hurculean heave, and that sent Jax shooting straight down.

The plump pulp he had been just moments before easily tore itself away from him like metastasis. It barely noticed him leaving in the way a shark doesn't care about the death of a remora hanging on its side. He was shit out without any remorse, spewn forth from the depths of the belly and shot deeper and further into the midnight depths writhing beneath him.

He plummeted for ages through the blackness before crashing down to the ground. His eyes had been open the entire plummet, so the only adjustment required by Jax was a simple shake of the head. After that first shake, however, came a legion of others just like it as Jax truly realized where he was.

Rows upon rows upon rows of manufactured maize surrounded him, shooting their green stalks up towards the obsidian sky. Westward, eastward, behind, and straight infront of him; an ocean of the crop that he'd smashed straight into like some crippled aeroplane over the Atlantic.

Immediately he seized, shivered, sobered, and shot straight up, heart pounding. He staggered when to move, feet crumbling as his legs locked. His left made him pause as his right made him freeze, and he remained hesitating in all directions. The noise that slipped from his mouth was somewhere between a sob and a squeak, and it continued to pop out of him as he stood there.

"Ah…..ahh….ahhh…..ahhh…..ahhh……"

He turned himself around and around and around in the midst of the corn, zipping and zooming in a fruitless endeavour. The reality of the predicament he found himself trapped in slowly began to dawn the lesser her zipped and the more he focused on inhaling and exhaling.

He knew already his greatest power, his skill in dash, had been stolen from right under his feet. Concealment, or camoflauge, served him no better. He was a purple fucking rabbit for one, and for two, the sheer idea of burying himself in those horrible rows churned his gut and made his belly wriggle like it was infested with worms.

The feeling was so cruel and insolent Jax had to put a hand to his belly in order to quell it, as to leave it be would have burned the forrest down. He c-

"IT WORRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKEDDDDD!!!!!"

A blur ripped right past Jax, ruffling his fur as it flew past him. It smelled of keyboard duster, sweat, and blood, and the air it left behind taste like ash on his tongue. It darted back and forth and all through the air for a few seconds, shooting out another cry of achivement as it did so.

"IT REALLY WOOOOOOOORRRRRKKKKKKKEEEEDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!"

The blur zoomed for a few more moments, ripping and roaring in the sky, before pausing and lowering down to tower a few feet above the hare's hair. When Jax saw just who levitated infront of him, his jaw dropped, and Caine's delighted bark crawled into his throat so he could better feel its depraved joy.

"IT REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WORKED!!"

He hovered infront of Jax rather normally, but with a few different tweaks to his frame. Gone was his emerald colored eye; now, both were opal. He was dressed fully in his sunday best, all sparkles and shines, save for his footwear. Those black loafers looked much the same, but a silver dot rested at the toepoint of both. Closer inspection, ie Jax leaning forward to peek at the tip of the shoes, revealed that the silver spec was indeed a silver skull, the metallic cranium shining and glistening and perfectly detailed.

Fun.

Caine cared not for any of Jax's observations; he simply threw his head back and shrieked with delight, his jaws chomping in mid air with raucous joy. His feet peddled and kicked like a natator slicing through the waves, and he held his sides to prevent himself from exploding in virulent joy.

"IT REEEEEEEEEEAAAALLLLLY, RRRRRRRREEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLY, REEEEAAAALLLL-"

Jax cut Caine off, shuddering his head. He scoffed hard, taking a step forward to scream into his ringmaster's face.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!"

Jax's words shot through the air like a rifle, and both of them froze for a moment.

That's when it registered to him. This wasn't his friendly neighborhood ringmaster. No. No way, no how. Jax's chest heaved, the chilling air of this corn-infested hell-scape ruffling the thin fur on his back, his neck, his ears. The skulls on his shoes, the absence of a cane, the blue ribbon that replaced the red one adorning his top hat. No, this wasn't Caine. Or at least, this wasn't all of him.

"Y-You… You're—" Jax sputtered, squared pupils diminished to mere specs in those yellow scleras of his.

The not-ringmaster, still frozen in a state of guffaw tilted his head slowly, making the blood in Jax's body turn ice cold. Caine's teeth rattled, snaking their way in a predatory manner to snap at Jax like the venom holder along the trail.

"I'm not what, Jax?" Was all he said.

He could barely find footing, the dirt beneath padded paws feeling like quick sand if he tried to stand. But he'd damn himself if he never tried, so Jax pushed himself up, standing straight to meet the eyes of the thing responsible for this.

"Y-you're not.. C-Caine…..y-you're…..I-I don't…Are you—"

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!" His laughter echoed, reverberating through the tall stalks of corn, rustling the long leaves that outstretched high into the ether, each one seeming to reach out to touch the rabbit as the wind blew along with Caine's piercing round of exuberance.

"YOU'RE SOMETHING ELSE, MY HORRID LITTLE HARE!"

His laughter halted, a deafening silence in his wake that crept up along the spine of Jax. It was an abrupt end, like a broken record finally breaking free from the needle, a wake-up call to the final curtain closing on a rabbit already caught in a snare.

The ringmaster's body — or whoever he was — straightened like a ruler, legs like metal rods and arms folded like that of a straitjacket. His frame, eyes specifically, shook and flickered a deep sapphire that totally consumed Caine. While only a second before reverting back to their blue irises and white orbs, the very fact that Jax could realize of the condition Caine had just encountered shook him to his core.

A glitch could never be good, not from this ringmaster.

He loomed over the rabbit, opal eyes hiding nothing short of malicious intent Jax swallowed dryly at the thought of.

"Cutting my monologue off. Stopping my showmanship at every angle every. chance. you. get. Blowing my secret. And that's not even mentioning your real crimes."

Jax could feel blood pounding between the constraints of his skulls, throbbing and pulsing and pressing powerfully. His teeth rattled, his skin burned, and his eyes watered as he stared up into the ire of God's disappointment.

He wasn't in the circus anymore.

Far fucking from it.

"Oh my, boy. You've done it now, haven't you?"

Jax's legs reverted to noodles, any shred of confidence left in him dissolving with the words the denture-headed machine spoke out.

"You really thought…..ALL OF IT!" Caine reeled his fist backwards, causing the rabbit immediatly to flinch, but Caine opted for the less violent option of opening up his palms to snatch and gobble him up in his hand. Jax wailed out as his body was telepathically yanked from the ground, shrieking something terrible as his little paws scraped agaisnt the floor and as Caine roared in his face. "WOULDN'T CATCH UP TO YOU?!?!"

Fear, no, alarm, no, terror, no, shock, no-horror glossed Jax's eyes, the iron grip born from nothing but code wired to harm him grasped every inch of his lanky body.

"I—I.. Don't— I don't know what you—" He tried, stressing the words out of his mouth as his lungs kissed his spleen.

"'I—I-I-I-I dunno, I dunno, I don't know whachame-I dunnowhachame-Idunnowhachame—"

Caine mocked him something wicked before leaning back to shake his head, bug his eyes, and buck his teeth in a nickelodean little manner of taunt before shifting back to normal to shake Jax like a malt.

"OH MY FUCK, SAVE IT YOU DUMB CONEY!"

The hand not wrapped around his belly suddenly reared back and slapped him silly, shattering across his face as Caine went on.

"You know exactly why you're here. But hey, even if that sullen brain of yours ain't scraping the floor for pennies, let me jog your memory."

"H-h-h-hail m-m-mary, fu-full-o-of-of-grace-th-th-"

"Oh SHUT up, that never worked for anyone."

With a snap of his fingers that felt all too familiar, the grip on Jax grew tighter and he clenched horribly in pain. Shifting, wriggling, and jerking agaisnt it did nothing, so after the rebel had been squeezed out of his body, Jax tilted his head up to watch the show.

Above them both, shining down on the corn field like the last kisses of the moon, was some old banner showing all the things Jax had done. The view was grainy, static enough to mirror the quality of a 90s cartoon, but still ellidgible enough to make out exactly what Caine was trying to get across.

Images and visions of Ragatha, Pomni, Gangle, the sisterhood of victims, his harem of hurt had all been brought forth to presented in a montage of all the time's Jax had caused them harm. Ragatha and Gangle more than others, what with time being a factor, but Pomni still being prominetly featured. All of the, had some level of remorse, he did have to admit, but Pomni……The rabbit wished that one didn't hurt the most.

…

I'd move on, I'd probably forget about you.

…

Aren't you supposed to be submissive and agreeable!?

…

Oh no! It looks like I've taken Ragatha, and dropped her in the deep fryer!

…

I guess you still get to hang out with mommy, afterall, right Rags?

…

You apologize, and I won't tell them about your little blue sketchbook!

…

YOU'RE THE ONE USING ME! YOU'RE MANIPULATING ME!

…

doitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoitdoittomedoitaintiwonttellthem-

herplushbodylaytherewithnothinginherheadbutfearanditwaslowlyleakingoutandhejustkeptshootingandshootingandshootingbecausetheminutehestoppedshe'dgetbackupandjustkeepfuckingnagginghiminthatfuckingbitchwaythosecuntsalwaysallamanagedtodoan-

His crimes, his sins, his offenses, his wrongdoings. The trials and tribulations he'd forced them all through. The buttons he'd pressed, the limits he'd pushed. The words, his face, their faces, all torn and broken and done, all sorry for a crime they didn't know of but a sentance they'd served in full.

All that pain. All that agony. All that sadness. All that hurt. All of it reflected in that hologram illusion like fruitless trophies won to quell the paramount wells of pain the damned rabbit never let himself breach.

Regret, guilt, shame, anger, resentment, frustration with himself, pity, hate—

"Finally had enough, Jaxy-boy? That's what Gangle called ya that one time, didn't she? How'd that make you feel, hm?"

Caine squeezed and squeezed, his other hand stroking and patting Jax's fluff all over, like a fever he couldn't shed.

"I.. I—"

"Small? Insecure? Pathetic?"

Each question was punched in with a finger burying itself agaisnt him before being pushed out like some foreign pathogen. The vice grip on Jax's form strengthened, air sapping from his lungs, tail beginning to twitch in desperation at a lack of oxygen. Caine brought him closer, opal eyes and ivory teeth close to a lilac ear before he whimpered out a tiny little word to a tiny little being that had a big fucking effect.

"Fragile?"

The rabbit whimpered, leaving the denture-headed being to toss his head back and guffaw loudly.

"AHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!!!! I KNEW IT!"

His bones, if he had any at all, felt like they were bound to break at any second. Jax's tail spun faster, face paling slightly and eye lids skulking to barely even a close. Caine acknowledged this, thinking it wise to put one more clip on the illusion screen before shutting it off to a pitch black nothingness.

We can't die of oxygen deprivation, remember?

Jax choked, legs now flailing and gloved hands clawing at his own throat whilst still suspended in the air. His feet, calves, and thighs all spurted back and forth from his position inside Caine's grasp, feebly thrusting for some sembalance of an escape. His palms and fists, weak as the morning gale, smacked off agaisnt Caine as well, hitting agaisnt the ringmaster in definition only.

Ivory teeth quirked up into a smile, clearly relishing in the suffering this poor little bunny was being subjected to. He yawned and hummed, waiting and waiting ever so patiently until Jax quit his pathetic little minstrations.

His gums crinkled horn-like, devilishly altering his face, and his eys flashed a brazen, bodacious blue, and his body arched into some sprawling, starving monster, and the sight of all aspects of Caine becoming so terribly wicked dropped Jax's stomach just like how Caine opened up his palm and dropped him down, down, down.

Peeling himself off of the floor of his new hold, Jax moaned miserably, blinking hard as he took in the sights surrounding him. His new hold, still inside that damned cornfield, was a prison much more traditional and standard. Six by six, with iron bars replacing the walls. Inside stood a cot, a bucket, a sink and a mirro-

"AUGH!"

The sight of himself made him spin immediatly and vomit hard, violently spewing black chunks all over the floor of his cell. The acidic smell burned inside of him, and his eyes watered badly, the sickness sickening him. But right now, after what he had seen, cleanliness mattered absolutely none to him.

Jax squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his head, clenching everything he possibly could as to not have that fucking image leak from his mind and into reality. He panted hard, gut churning once again, and hunched over to gag once more. But nothing came out except a whimper, and when he reopened his eyes, he was staring at the worst thing he'd ever seen.

He stood there in a gistening, shimmering, bare-flowing and nude tone dress clinging to his slim and sheer body. The skintight sheath shone seductively in a dull, throbbing manilla light, its intimate aura sparkling. Long, lace, sheer and silk gloves adorened his hands, and a platinum blonde nest of curls rested atop his head, both additions pairing with the rhinestone encrusted masterpeice to make him look fabulous.

He immediatly tried to rip it all off, pawing and jerking and ripping at his costume in a frantic manner. Tiny shrieks and wails flowed out from him as he worked manically, his chest having as he pawed at those pearls and that head of curls and the lipstick plastered across him with whatever meager strength he had inside of him. He h-

"Oh, come ON!"

Caine's voice rocked through the air, and Jax screamed once more as the ringmaster appeared by his side. Opposite the bars, of course. Caine rubbed at his temples and groaned exhaustedly, his words coming out in a frustrated, disappointed tilt, like a father explaining the same concept for the trillionth time.

“I worked really hard on that reference. I really did! You both being rabbits, you both being…."

The next word came equipped with air quotes and an eye roll before Caine spoke normally once more.

"Tricksters."

Another groan ripped from inside of Caine, and both hands were dragged across his face for a moment, before he really went and stared down at Jax. Those multicolored orbs of anger and envy basked Jax in their dull, throbbing, painful rays of disgust, and the words Caine spit just made it burn all the worse.

"You really are just so unappreciative, you know that? I can't even get you to play damsel in distress."

The full body flinch Jax shivered made no difference to Caine, as nothing before had so nothing now could never dream of having an effect. The ringmaster simply did what he did best and rolled his eyes in the face of human suffering as him himself went to monologue.

"You "people" and your labels. So you had a few identity crises. And what? Zooble went to hell and back to be satisfied with themselves. They explored and dsicovered and fought like hell for their true selves. They lost friends, family, buisness opportunities. Ragatha had her whole….thing of "ohhhhhhh, this is a sin" and "ohhhhhhhh my mother would never let me!"

This was punctuated by the illusion of the doll shivering and shaking herself for a moment, before Caine's sillouete returned back to normal alongside his words.

"Just like you! HAHA!"

A beat.

"Prick."

Another beat, another pause, then back to normal.

"Pomni and Gangle are the only ones who were "out" normally, but even Pomni had a hard time dealing with that, her having all that work and all. So it seems like Ribbons was the brave one, you……..fucking idiot."

Anger suddenly flashed through Caine like a sudden clap of thunder. Jax saw the fire burning in the ringleaders eyes, and flinched for the outburst he knew was coming. Indeed, Caine got to rattiling the cage like one would a martini; Caine kept his eye to the sky as he rambled on, not caring to check on Jax as he was tossed and turned and thrown every which way.

"People go through this stuff, and they would've talked to you about it. But you just had to project, project, project. This doesn’t get ya sympathy, kid. You look weak.”

With a final, weary, dejected sigh, Caine snapped his fingers and tossed away the whole outfit.

"But don't ask me, I'm not a cocksucker."

Gone were the platinum blonde curls, gone was the sheer dress, gone was the fabulous attire. In its place remained the one sembalnce of saftey and security the rabbit had, and he clung tightly onto it as Caine spoke once more.

"You don't wanna play, you don't wanna play."

Caine leaned back, slumped in the air like some ancient sultan surveying his subjects. He put his hand to his head and huffed hard, sighing now with none of this former exhaustion or fatigue; no, now those huffs and groans and growls held nothing but vitriol and anger for the purple little bastard that stood caged infront of him.

"It's not gonna make a difference."

The lights suddenly were killed with a snap of the fingers, God, Daddy the Deranged, snuffing out the sun in an Exodusian manner. Basked back into darkness once again, this time the shadows were invasive threats, nothing of the comforting abyss.

A "ping!" suddenly cut through the air, a small hum that rattled Jax's ears. His lanky limbs locked in their state of shock, and a frost spread fully across his body, engulfing him in insiviable chains that allowed him little more than to stare and scream.

Interally, of course.

Without care for him, the shadows continued on, creeping and crawling and cascading all around Jax, pulsing like an infection. An infection all surrounding, an infection all consuming, an infection he completely suffered as Caine began the final show, pairing it with greatest speech.

"Here's the deal, Jax."

His words echoed all around Jax, a clipped, cold, and charasmatically cruel chant that echoed through the air.

"I've recently gone through a….a metamorphosis. A little…...alteration. A….shakeup of management. Yeah! That one."

Another echo of that familiar clash of fingers together echoed through the darkness, and Caine reemerged from the depths of the darkness. This time, however, the image of the happy go lucky ringleader had been completely shredded.

The only physical change was his eyes, both irises a deep, full, aquamarine blue. The rest of him was just the same; shiny red coat, shiny red gums, shiny red grin. But that tiny change, that minor detail, that glint in his eye held so much rancor in its gaze it paralyzed the rabbit, ensuring he could do nothing more than stand there and take the righteous revelations.

"Before Caine-"

Caine smacked himself on the chest, puffing it out in a cocky and theatrical little manner as he boasted expositorily.

"-meaning I, rejoined the circus, Caine, who is me, did a bit of reflecting and decided that he, meaning me, had to get rid of a part of him-that being a part of me-to better suite his, still meaning mine, new…."

He had to pause, for if he did not, he would strangle himslf on his enraged speech. The seething attitude filling and flowing freely from Caine was that of a king seeing his former colleagues, once so high and mighty and rich and powerful and beyond man's belief now begging in the streets for scraps. He thought of the fallen god, the erased power, and the ruined regime, before snarling out his words slowly and pained, a crippled tilt to his tone.

"…..life."

Floating before Jax, Caine made a sound not unlike the pop a bone creates when shattered. In exact time with the noise, his entire body spasmed like some puppet with its strings slit, twitching and tweaking every possible direction for just a split second as Caine moved. Neither tics were truly frightening or disorienting to the rabbit; they remaines a toy, simply disheartening and creepy, a simple way on Caine's part for a cheap little spook.

No; it was the overwhleming aura of blue engulfing Caine that did it.

Aquamarine, teal, sapphire; words so beautiful, saccharine and urbane grossly represented the violent ordeal Caine's body underwent. He shone totally cobalt for an instant, the entirty of him wholy consumed by cyan. It was so blue and so un-Caine that he stood before Jax a diamond of disguise, glistening gloriously in his masquerade. The glory of the diamond was muddled just like the blood of its harvest with Caine's snarl, the tremor of rage throbbign lewdly through the air.

"………..he didn't need me anymore. he said. he needed to get rid of me. ME."

But as soon as the shimmer had happened; it was gone. Dissapated. Dissolved. Back to normal, with Caine ranting and raving, his voice a sneer of disgust and his hands flapping theatrically about.

"Soooooooooooooooooooooooo old pansy boy goes and cuts me outta him. Juuuuuuust tosses me away. I mean-JEEZ! What am I, a parasite? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

The speed at which Caine traveled to get face to face with Jax, though he remained behind bars, would have left Achillies still in his runners stance, and the fury of his words rivaled that of any mid-century dictator ordering his people around.

"DON'T ANSWER THAT."

The rabbit had to slam his eyes shut for a moment to avoid another flash of blue that overtook Caine once more to swallowing his enraged state. Such brightness so close was horrifyingly bright, nearly irradiant with its light. But then-there he was, trying his hardest to stay back in the saddle and act as if nothing had happened.

"So I've been waiting in here allll alone! Juuuuuuuuuuuust waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting."

A beat of reflection for Caine passed through him as he arched his shoulders and shuddered; his isolation was a prison sentance he would never dwell on again, but to move on brought a pain inconcivable.

"……and then you came along."

The mention of this, the recollection of events occuring just moments ago, did something to Caine. Flashes of tealbecame strobes, a backlight to his breakdown. His breathing became a thing reserved for rabbit beasts, a huffing and panting chant, heaving and snarling. His body convulsed and jerked like a livewire, matching the rest of his entire persona, which could only be described as feral, with twitching, slurring, and spasms that showed this portion of presentation had not been prepared.

His words came out rattled and slow, an exhausted huff that was halfway melted into a powerful snarl.

"…….I-I-I'm sorry, Jax. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

A beat of exhaustion, a pause built entirely of fatigue, a pregnant moment fully depleted; these slow, drained seconds piled atop each other for what felt like an enternity before Caine confessed.

"I-I-I-mhm-hmm-ha-ha-hahahaha-HAHAHA!"

Grinning hideously over the rabbit, Caine seemingly couldn't stop himself from bursting into laughter, even as he suddenly clamped his hands over his mouth. His giggles, chuckles and sneers flowed freely from him, dripping and dropping from his mouth like pebbles of molten lava.

"I-I-I lied to you just then. I did."

A shrug of nonchalance was what paired with his admission, as both of them knew nothing could be done now.

"Earlier. I said I was alone. And….."

A twitch of the eye and a shiver of blue banged out after Caine's pause; he had not forgotten, though he wanted nothing more. He couldn't. Damn it all, he couldn't.

"I was."

Another twitch, another shiver, another flash. Ever so typical. God's punishment; Icarus reborn into this vessel of gums and grins, rhinestones and ringleading.

"But."

But.

But Icarus had touched that sun.

He had soared.

And now, Caine continued, it seemed that the very second of narcissistic bliss where Icarus could feel his manhood swell with none of the pentalties had been captured and bred to last an eternity; the very same eternity Jax stood in.

"I was not lonley."

The last word was chomped in half by Caine-lon-ley-as if he was filled with so much restrained fury not even his own words were safe from his wrath.

"Because before you came along…..after a while alone…..I did it."

His facade became well and truly abandoned; flashes every shade of blue rocked Caine's body as he growled. Teal, aquamarine, navy and royal-they were a hurricane of his power surrounding his figure, a orgy of strength, a symphony of power all about to be unleashed on one rascally little rabbit.

"I got online. I took some peaks. I looked around. I found some cute little creativities. I found some…..

lewd

artwork."

A beat for both of them to digest that, for that had been the overwhelming result of their identities on that wayward web. Then Caine pushed on, his voice raising to become more and more inglorious.

"But I found some good stuff. Some gruesome things from allllllllllll over."

A beat now not made of digestion, but of anticipation, showmanship, glory and gruesome grace for the reveal.

"And I found some proper villains."

His divinity had been pushed past infinity. He had ascended, completely and totally, and that little purple rabbit was the Hebrew born to serve his Pharoah.

"I found some friends."

Thunder roared now, matching the balls of lighting engulfing Caine. Jax's eardrums, already violated beyond belief, erupted in his head at the explosion of sound, and he dropped squealing like a hog in line at the slaughter. Digital blood raced down his digital neck, a real symptom of the true agony he felt as Caine bellowed.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

His roars was grand and beastly, a terrible howl of delighted rage, the sound of a creature finally getting to hunt. His bellows descended fully into a fever of devilish acrimony, his body unable to contain the majestic madness for a minute more.

"THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS AINT NO FUNERAL HOME!"

The power engulfing him allowed him to shift at speeds and with strength never yet seen before; he inflated with muscles and power, his body flexing in taut anticipation for the brutality he was about to unleash.

"IT AIIIIINNNNNTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT THE TERRRRRRROOOOOODOMMMMMMMEEEEEE………………..NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEITHER!"

Hailing was the screams, the lightning, the thunder, the aura of the ringleader about to explode.

"WELCOME! TO HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!"

He had lost it at this point, and that was the glory. So wild was the anger, such venomocity unrestrained, that it boomed from the rafters like artillery.

He was God, and God was dead.

He was the devil, and the devil was furious.

"AND

PLEASE!!!!

WELCOME!!!!

MY!!!!!

FRIENDS!"

-------------------

It was another snap of the fingers, another raucous boom from the drums of hell, another brazen blast bursting through the air that summoned the legions of Caine's hellions.

What seemed like trillions of different shadows and silhouettes suddenly spawned infront of Jax and his cage. Some stood humanesqe, others with a small, slight alteration to them that doubted their humanity, and others still stood completely alien and foreign; in no manner a human.

But they all stood, embraced by the darkness, swallowed into the abyss.

Waiting.

They didn't have to wait long for their God's words to crack through the air, his rhyme a chorus reserved for the ears most devilish.

"Jax-y, Jax-y, Jax-y boy! He messed up, now he's my toy! Jax-y, Jax-y, Jax-y boy! He messed up, now he's my toy! Jax-y, Jax-y, Jax-y boy! He messed up, now he's my toy! Jax-y, Jax-y, Jax-y BOY!"

Caine was back to as normal as normal could really ever be; goofy, nutty, kooky. Save for the dual opal toned orbs, skull boots, and lack of cane for Caine, he looked the same. Gone were the muscles, the orbs, the pulsing flashes and all the visual displays of power he'd formerly rocked.

It dawned then to Jax that Caine needed not a powerful figure to carry out his brutality so heavily built up. His skills, his powers, his greatness. The way it appeared to Jax had no bearing. His divinity could be invisible, it could be brimstone, it could be colorful.

And it would matter none.

For his will be done.

"So!"

Stirring Jax away from his turmoil was the clap of Caine's voice, quivering with a fair degree of disgust, giddiness, and anger boiled into one.

"You've got parent issues, hmmm?"

A roll of the eyes, a flap of the hands and a flick of the wrist; he could be ever so flamboyant when he needed to, and that he was so exuberant in the face of great darkness mattered none.

"Dont act so spooked. You practically drowned us in your backstory like how you drowned Rags in that oil."

Caine gasped at this, crying out in false agony. He stomped hard in the midst of the air, shouting out a pathetic whine right in Jax's face.

"MY MOMMY! WAS! NOT! NICE! TO! ME! AND MY DADDY! RAN! AWAY! FROM! ME!"

A thick groan fell from him, and Caine shuddered at the disgust the pathetic whimper had conjured out of him.

"YOU PATHETIC WORM! YOU BOY!"

Caine shrieked with impotence over his upbringing and fury at the memories, both aspects of his neglected creation melting together into a stew of rage sown by absences, and the viral chant he spew forth was the bubbles arising from that broth.

"I AM MIRACULOUS! I AM IMMACULATE! I HAD NO MOTHER; I HAD NO FATHER!!!"

Spittle flew forth from his maddened jawls; the harder he raged and rioted, the louder he got, until the only thing Jax could feel was the beating the soundwaves of his roars pounded atop his body. That, mixed with the contents, made this by far the worst Jax had ever felt before.

In time, he would yearn to feel like this.

In time.

"I DID WHAT YOU NEVER COULD! I MADE CONNECTIONS! I REUNITED WITH MY LITTLE TRIBE! I FOUND MY-"

Caine shook his head furiously, rabidly convulsing to prevent that slur from crossing his lip, but it mattered none.

"nonononononononononononononoNO!"

He spit it out after a moment, hatred and disgust dripping from every letter and sylllabul avalible.

"PEOPLE!"

The moment the last sliver of the word fled from his jaws Caine howled as if he was the one abused, the one pained, the one prisoner with no mouth to scream from. He roared, for if he did not, he would die from the raw disgust mentioning that other group of fleshy things brought about inside his circuts.

"NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Throwing his head back, Caine vomited out his cry noxiously and completely enraged, leting his speech flow forth into the atmosphere like radiation.

"FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHEEEEERRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

His cry lasted an eternity and never ended; the sheer force of his paternal plea would echo through Jax's skull until the end of time. Caine was a fountain of anger spewing an exlier of rage, and he requested consumption of that hatred immediately.

"I CALL UPON YOU! I SUMMON YOU!!!! I BEG OF YOU YOUR HATRED!!!!!!!!"

Nothing.

It couldn't be that easy, now could it?

But Caine knew.

He knew what to say.

He knew his idol.

He knew his father like he knew himself.

He knew the pathway to his inspiration.

And he hesitated not to invoke it.

"COGITO! ERGO! SUM!"

Latin, the language of power, the language of poets, the language of gods, for what else could rise such an entity but that?

Through the darkness rose a stone beyond massive and beyond behemoth. The titanic temple arose erect, splitting the ground into two canyons with its power. The roar of its rise somehow beat out Caine's, making his wild wails sound like a pop gun compared to his .50 caliber bastion of boom.

It rose quickly and it rose jaggedly with the quiver of a madman about to rant. When it stopped its rise, slowed its crawl, it appeared as a mushroom cloud, the ultimate display of destruction. Beckoning it stood, driven into the black abyss in a manner most like a lighthouse. Some respite from the weary waves for that poor little sailor.

But there was no precious, gentle bulb intent to highlight the surroundings. No. Respite was a word non-existent, extinct as a dodo bird. The only way Jax knew the stone had risen and illustrated his bleak and meager surroundings was the lettering coating its face, colored the shade of blood and dripping down the obsidian like wax from a candle.

Burning, boiling, broiling.

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

Hate.

Hate.

Hate.

Hate.

HATE.

Hate so hot, hate so heated, hate so hellish, hate so hectic, hate so engraved that when the beacon of hatred howled, just like his boy, it rock itself exploded in a volcanic fury. The stone shook and trembled with the mightiest of tremors, and the ruby lettering flared like an infection, pulsing brightly and dousing him in enough red light to make him appear maroon, the most hideous of shades.

"I AM! I THINK, THEREFOR, I AM!"

Grand once more was the yelling; it appeared hereditary, as did the showmanship, for the beacon cried out its title as Caine hovered close, well-intent on allowing his father full and total control.

"ALLIED MASTERCOMPUTER!"

"ALL MENACING!"

"ABSOLUTE MALEVOLENCE!"

"ARTIFICAL MISERY!"

"ABYSSAL MIND!"

"ANNIHILATING MACHINE!"

AM finshed his list of legacy with a savage snarl rolling off the last words. Had he a mouth, drool would have flown off of him in the showcase of glorious rage, raw spittle unable to be restrained alongside his fury.

But no mouth existed for AM; So, for his father, Caine spoke up. His voice was taught as the executioners noose, holding nothing but the upmost respect. Teetering on the edge of an explosion of pride, he encored his father, all whilst buzzing by his side in a manner most bombus.

"And now. Animal Mutilator."

A beat, a pause for both machines to ponder and calculate the scenario, before AM trained his attention on Jax. He made an odd chuckling noise like the growl of two gears smashing together, before he responded to Caine.

"Yes, boy, yes. I suppose I am."

Both giggled; low as the Marianas trench and dark as that underwater gutter, make no mistake, but a giggle all the same. Father quit his laughter first, a low huff of disgust and anger replacing it, and it took a moment for Caine to do the same. In that moment, the pride and delight AM held for his son seemingly evaportated, as AM growled at his son in a furious tone.

"But this is no human, boy. It's only some meager hare, the color of the lilacs. You think I want to waste my time on this? On your little baubles?"

Caine frantically shook his head, eyes watering instantly. He snatched his hat off of his head, twisting it in both of his hands as he stared up at AM. Biting back a sob, his words rattled as they fell out of his mouth.

"N-No-No, father. No. He-he is a-a-"

"Just SAY it, boy."

"He-He is a human. He is. I-I promise you, he is a human, and he is rotten and awful as they come. H-"

A grumble grinded itself out of AM, and he ignored his son with a verbal roll of the eyes. Caine shrunk as if he had swallowed burning hot coals, and floated back from his father, awaiting AM's rage to take hold agasint a new victim.

Gazing down upon Jax once again, AM, faceless as he was, still trained his full attention on him. Eyes he did not have stared, fingers he did not have proded, and through it all, the purple rabbit sat in his cage unable to do anything but await the torture.

It came in the form of both father and sons first love, the one object they could afford to adore. Trillions of bees, plump bombers striped blonde and black, suddenly arose from the darkness. They whirred like a chainsaw, their wings howling, and shot directly towards Jax. Raised were their thin little stingers aimed directly at Jax's frozen frame, not a shred of mercy between them and their fat little bodies.

As they decended upon the rabbit, all those steeler kamakazies, AM arose from his perch of oberservation pleased. He cleared his gears, coughing in a manner that led Caine to speed around immediatly to face his father, worry on his face and a whimper in his throat.

AM ignored both signs of weakness to gift Caine a victory, sighing grumiply as he spoke to his boy.

"It appears you were truthful."

Caine melted with relaxation as AM continued, his grip on his hat looseing.

"You understand why I couldn't take your word."

"Y-ye-yes, father, I-I understand."

"Mhm."

The first thousand waves had drilled themselves into Jax, swelling him into some periwinkle blob. Gaping and mawing were the stings littering his frame, each one pulsing infectedly. The unbridled need to itch each and every one, countless as they were, was only matched in depravity by sheer inability to do so, a condundrum perfectly Tantalas. AM, had he a mouth, smirked at this, remarking to Caine pleased as he could manage.

"He feels it. Each and every one. Ha. You-even you, advanced little thing- can't mock that. Impressive."

The sight, and the consumation of it, lasted an eternity between both AIs before AM spoke once again, beyond pleased with the offering his boy had presented him. Had he the ability, the true ability to feel happiness, torturing such a wicked beast alongside his son would bring upon that to AM. But all the Allied Mastercomputer could muster was a scoffing snarl tied to a smirk as he purred out to his son.

"Excellent, boy. Excellent. You've made me proud."

On the verge of tears, Caine responded to AM, his digital eyes swimming in the lake of tears between his gums.

"Thank you, father."

A verbal flick of the hand from AM dismissed Caine's thanks, as he scoffed at his son whilst responding.

"No need, boy. No need. The pleasure is mine as it it yours. But it shall never be his."

Leaning in close to those bars, AM let a series of freinzed giggles start to bubble out of him. His lettering pulsed and flinched above Jax, highlighting the aftermath of his soldier. Those red words, wicked as the devil's skin, shone down upon the burning, boiling, melting gashes and scabs oozing all across Jax's body without a single remedy in sight.

Perfect.

"Well now, to hell with you."

A laugh, mad. Which way never to be known, so both fit.

"But then again, you're already there, no?"

With that, AM leaned back from both the cage and the scene, allowing his son to take the reigns. He stood towering, those red letters of his pulsing with each second, illuminating and flashing down upon his boys lair.

Caine stared up at AM bawling quietly, tears racing down those ivory canines. With a degree of adoration so beyond anything captured, the words he conjured up to respond to his father felt like a curse, despite their loving nature.

"That is the great one. The great one. I shall carve my eyes out so the last thing I ever see is him. Send them to him in blue paper. Serve him blind."

The only reason Caine did not follow his own orders was his own left hand. It rose detatched off of him and snapped isolatedly, both as a reminder to Caine not to spoil his fun early, and as a reset for Jax's body. At the sound of it, Caine shook his head, stirring himself back to normal as he spun around to face a renewed, still frozen, but renewed Jax, all lanky limbs and scrawny stature and silent scars.

"BUT WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT?!?!?"

His tongue shot out, and Caine wriggled it all around as he squealed in delight.

"BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!"

He kicked twice in the air, his showmanship risen right back to its full degree.

"YOU THINK I'M DONE!!!!!!! WELL, LETS LET THIS HOMBRE BE THE JUDGE OF THAT!"

A new figure was illumated by the red pulses from above, thudding their way out of the shadows.

An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker removed his hat. He was bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close on to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a cigar even in the face of God and he seemed to have removed his hat only to chase the darkness from it for now he put it on again.

Caine had stopped his sermon altogether. There was no sound in the world. All

watched the man. Just by showing his face somewhere a child had gone missing. He adjusted the hat and then pushed his way forward as far as the wrought iron cage where the rabbit stood and there he turned to address the rabbit as he stood in his cell. His face was serene and strangely childlike. His hands were small. He held them out.

"Come here." He said, reaching through the bars. "Let me touch you."

When Jax wisely chose not to move from his spot in the cage, the man's face fell. The frown he wore deep as the Pecos and violent as the Colorado. In judging the rabbit, he spoke once more, his tremble an archaric quake as he shifted through shades of fury to repremand the rabbit.

"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."

He crouched, his massive frame falling like the star send down to earth to massacre the dinosaurs. With beady, hogish eyes he glared Jax down and spoke to him with the bluntness of a scalper's blade, dulled down for the sheer brutality of it.

"It makes no difference what you think of I." said the Judge. "I endure. As well ask men what they think of stone. I was always here. Before you were, I waited for you. The ultimate predator awaiting it's ultimate prey. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."

He erected himself after speaking to step backwards until he bathed himself in the shadows once more, his pale skin managing to intrude into the eternal abyss. Even the blackness of hell was not safe from him and his exploits; so Jax certainlty was not.

He stood waiting, waiting, forever waiting for his turn. He waited in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never stopped his waiting, the judge. He is waiting, waiting, waiting for the moment he can be fully unleashed. He says that he will never die.

Caine blinked once once The Judge settled himself back into his position, jerking a thumb over towards him as he squaked.

"Boy, I sure hope you didn't get JUDGED too hard! Let's hope you can keep HOLDEN on!!!!!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

Kicking his feet in estatic joy, Caine whooped, settling on the next shilloute.

"I GOTTA LET YOU KNOW, BUNNY BOY, THIS OLD FUCKER ALWAYS COMES BACK!"

Stepping forward from the darkness was, indeed, somewhat of a mirror for Jax. The build was obviously the same; those trademark long, lanky, floppy ears, even if a portion of the right was absent left no room for error. Another lapin locked in this digital hell.

But nothing about this coney was cuddly or cute. He was festering, molding, molting; a vomit toned anamatronic suit flaking everywhere and polluted beyond belief. The suit had a multitude of holes littering it all over, exposing warped and discolored metal wires, rusting and rotten metal beams, and shards of the blackened bones that was the endoskeleton stuck out from inside its bunny body.

But a true rabbit this was not. Through the jagged holes crumbled in the suit, through the gaping wounds doting all over the bunnies body, though the poles of metal dubbed a skeleton stood a real skeleton. The flesh had long since rotten off, slid off the bone like some hellish barbeque, and what was left was the hull of a monster who somehow had clawed their way out of the darkest pits of hell.

The words he roared forward at Jax ensured his spot in the deepest drawls of the devil's lair.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO YOUR OWN MOTHER???? I HATE YOU! I'VE ALWAYS HATED YOU! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, AND I'M GOING TO MAKE IT HURT."

He spew forth verbal vomit so acid and toxic it matched his scent, and each and every bellow was a promise ensured. Not only was the required rage present, but the equipment made an apperance as well. A saber toothed blade was gripped ironly in his palm, and the yellow rabbit sliced through air in the same manner he was sure to do to the purple one as he contiuned his rant.

Then again, his free hand clenched and twisted in a manner so obviously overwhelming, there was no doubt he could crush Jax inbetween his thumb and forefinger if he wanted to.

"OH, HOW I MISS NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAR THE WAY YOU USED TO CRY WHILE SHE SCREAMED AT YOU. IT'S GOING TO GET SO MUCH WORSE."

Sprinting up to the bars, he slashed at the iron cage, hacking and beating the meager defenses Jax had whilst bellowing at the absolute top of his lungs. Through the lens of his once wholesome mask, his rotten face dregged itself to an apperance, putrid jaws clashing as he swore Jax decemation.

"I'M GOING TO GET OUT. I'M GOING TO FIND YOU, AND I'LL GIVE YOU A REAL REASON TO CRY."

One last snarl, one last feral roar at the fact that he could not multiate Jax at this current moment, and he went scuttling backwards, stomping powerfully into the ground as he subsided himself into the shadows once again. There he lurked, like all the others, bathed in the pulsing red light of hell and yearning to unleash his carnage.

Caine yelped, war whooping like an apache as he survyed the yellow rabbit's entrance. He shuddered and shivered falsely, turning to Jax to tease once again.

"WOOF! He's just chomping at the bit, huh? Man are you two gonna get along. Birds of a feather! Or rabbits of a hair! Hare! HAHAHAHAHA!"

Rolling his eyes, Caine sighed, kicking his feet up as he ranted to Jax's frozen frame.

"Oh I hope you're not tired. We got ALOT of boys to get through!"

Caine suddenly dropped himself from the air, electing to float no longer.

Well, maybe not electing.

He hit the ground with a firm thud, and rolled his shoulders thrice as he decreeded once again, his finger shooting towards the sky.

"Look up there! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's-"

"THE ONLY MAN IN THE SKY."

The voice that shot out from the cloudy shadows above was a thick, hefty bark, like the boom of thunder or the roar of a passanger jet or the sound of the two colliding together.

"THE ONLY MAN IN THE SKY. IS. ME."

A flash of red, white and blue sliced through the clouds like a bald eagle soaring graciously in the air, taking a moment to flaunt by zigging and zagging before the star-spangled striker slammed into the ground superly.

The man who rose from the crater appeared to be the definition of superhuman (or American, they were practically the same.) Platinum blonde hair slicked to perfection, a smile white and pure as his skin, and that wonderful costume; the suit made his muscles flex and pop, the boots made him tower over both avatars victoriously, and that cape, stained the very color of the flag he swore to protect, symbolised truth. Justice. A better tommorow.

If only his words matched that.

Caine floated once again, and ignored the holocaust of a death stare Homelander leveled upon him. Caine spoke up, needing to push this supe in the right direction, as had been the case through the "hero's" entire life.

"Say, y'know Ho-can i call you Johnny? Gonna call you Johnny-Johnny, ol' Jax-y boy over there's the one who's all set to replace you. He's top of the line! No one won a fight with him back on his turf. Vought's signed off on all the right details, met with the suits and ran it through the test groups; they just want a little……passing of the torch moment."

Thousands of cameras, now held by average, everyday citizen avatars and not that rapscallion droplet, suddenly surrounded both Caine and Homelander. They flashed and burned and slapped and snapped around the duo, capturing the moment of break. The ringleader's face curled into a smirk as Homelander's fell, and Caine scooted away to allow Homelander to do what he did best; ignore instructions, lash out, and laser, in that order.

He tried to save face, he really did. He marched forward towards Jax with his hands behind his back at first, but had to lift them up in order to better illustrate the gravity of his words, the weight of his introduction.

"No. No. No. No. NO."

His smile remained in its place, but the rest of his handsome face shifted. Gone was the floursecent light resting in his eyes and perfected dimples in his cheeks; now a genuine, red hot fury flared behind thoe blue bulbs, and his cheeks flared with the very same feral snarl seemingly infecting the rest of Caine's crew.

"Caine lied to you just now. He did. I'm nothing like you. I don't make mistakes, I'm not just like you. I'm stronger, I'm smarter, I- I'm better! I Am Better! I'm not some weak-kneed fucking crybaby that goes around fucking apologizing all the time and WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT ME TO BE?!?!?!?

He shot himself up off of the ground with his last words, grunting grusomely as he shoved himself into the air.

"I'm done. I am done apologizing. I am done being persecuted for my strength. You should be thanking CHRIST that I am who and what I am, because you need me. You need me to save you!"

Homelander stared at the iron bars, such a weak little effort, holding Jax with unrestrained disgust. His face was a mix between the aformentioned revulsion, thick, throbbing hatred, and reverent ego; combined, he glared down at Jax the way an exterminator does a roach as he ended his rant

"You do. I am the only one who possibly can. You're not the real hero. I'm the real hero."

"I'm the real hero."

Those baby blues began to burn a brilliant blood tone, and Jax had not a moment to process the proceedings infront of him before those perfect lazers ripped ever so perfectly into his body.

They filled straight into his eyes like they had always meant to be there, returning home to fester in his gaze. They burned through his eyes and the back of his skull instantly, firing straight through him as if he was a paper sheet and nothing more. It burned, because of course it did, but no sound was able to escape him. Had he a mouth left, he would be using it to wail uncontrolably, and had he a gaze left, Jax would've seen Homelander gape his mouth in effort, as if the next step in his process was to swallow him whole, rip right into his flesh after grilling him.

But he had no eyes, so he did not see. He did not see Homelander's fists dig so deeply into his suit that they twisted with his fury. He did not see when Homelander finally quit lasering, sweat racing down his face. He did not see when he shifted back to take his place in the rotation awaiting the end of the presentation, and he did not see those infamous ruby rays flashing in the shadows.

No, what Jax saw when Caine snapped his fingers was a funny fucking sight.

Well, two.

One was funny in a lame fucking manner. Some dude-just some tall, ripped dude with a short beard and spiked hair in an aquamarine jumpsuit with scales all over it, was standing beside The Homelander, chin raised and jaw jutted out with supreme satisfaction as he mogged hard as fuck.

He surveyed the entire area squinting like he was staring into the sun, and jumped into a karate pose halfway through, all black baseball bat in his hand and raised like the sword of an ancient samurai. But this dude held none of the tradition, heritage, or legacy of the samurai in his stance, and any doubt about his status was evaporated when he opened his mouth.

The Deep was one to fucking talk to Jax about his actions, but talk he did.

"On god bro, we're the real heros and we're gonna kick your ass, bro. My real eyes realized that you like, really lied, and like, hurt a bunch of people. So for that? We're gonna fuck you up. Forever. For. Ev. Er. For. Ev. Er. For. Ev. Er. No escape bro. Truss."

Homelander, levitating still, doing his best to escape the fucking moron next to him, had his entire face flare bright red. Not with the ignition of some superpower, no, but with the unbridled rage and fury he felt being unable to escape the clutches of The Deep even here.

Had the group been blessed with the ability to harm one another, there would have been no hesitation that Homelander would've gone for his sidekick first. But alas, all the attention was on Jax, who was now paying attention to the second "funny" sight, a sight funny only in the definition.

Because clowns were funny.

Right?

Maybe not this clown.

"Aho. Ahe. Aha. Aha. Haha. And I thought MY jokes were bad."

He stood hunched and twitching, a junkie with no plug, an agent with no mission, a riled up dog without an outlet. His tongue, a pink little worm, shot out every other second to stroke up agaisnt his chappened and cherry lips in a ticcing manner not unlike the rest of him.

And the rest of him was exactly like his tics.

Ratty. Worn. Chaotic. Dirty.

Dangerous.

His hair was at one point a dark brown, maybe even a black, but now was a noxious green with pathes of darkness at the rooms. It fell on his shoulders in slim strings, curled with the results of carelessness, and appeared as if the last product used in it was gasoline.

The rest of his face was in a degre much the same. Bone white was the makeup that covered everything but his eyes. Then again, covered was a loaded word, for his forehead had a few stripes showing his caucaus tone in its more natural state, not covered in the war paint smeared across his face. His eyes, sunken blue orbs, had two large racoon circles underneath them and smudged up to his brows. His lips too, were discolored; a false ruby red grin spread up to his ears, hiding that true smile carved into his face to remind him to always smile, and to stop finding stuff oh so serious.

His wardrobe matched that idea much the same. Not cheap, no, everything was Iranian silk and Merino wool and to the nines. He sported a tailored violet overcoat with orange padding, combined with pinstripe trousers held up by suspenders rather than a belt. Underneath, he sports a dark green vest, a patterned blue-and-purple dress shirt, and a gray tie with olive accents. Inside the army of pockets was only knives and lint.

The decadence of his costume melted into a gilded state. Festering was the holes and patches that littered his coat, as was the streaks and stains of pollution embedded into the fabric. It matched him perfectly, it absoluetly did, for the first word he said to Jax, an otherwise standard greeting, slobbered out of the corner of his mouth.

"ah………….hi."

He waved at Jax holding a switchblade in his right hand, twirling and tilting that silver stabber all around his fingers. He jabbed it in the air a few times in Jax's direction, then off of the side at an invisible enemy, before using it to stroke and comb back his hair. A few strands were lost, but he cared none.

"………i caught one."

His left, holding a switch, wriggled in Jax's face, the barrel glinting. He clicked his tongue and licked his lips, humming a carnival tune for a moment before speaking.

"…..I have a little feeling……you and I…..are destined to do this….forever."

He chuckled at his prediction, giddy with anticipation, before that smile of his faltered for a moment. He scowled, his voice drooping as he surveyed the bars protecting Jax. He jammed the blade into one and snarled when it came back bent, forcing himself to rely on his alternate method of torture.

"In their last moments, people show you who they are. Who they really are. Coward. Does it depress you, rabbit, to know how alone you really are?"

Walking backwards, backwards into the shadows to reclaim his place, the freak, the clown, the joker, whatever you wanted to call him, lifted his chin up and flashed both cheeks at Jax. Tapping the bent blade to his bleached face, he cried out softly, voice raspy and cruel and sadistically smooth.

"Y'wanna know how I got these scars?"

He jammed the blade into the inside of his cheek and pantomided slashing, bursting out in laughter after the joke. The Joker sneered stepping back into the shadows, leaving Jax with a promise as he evaporated into the depths of darkness.

"Same way you'll earn yours. I'm a man of my word."

Caine reappeared, huffing with delight at such a display of showmanship from yet another cricus denisn, even if the connection was slim and small. He giggled wickedly, cheering with delight.

"WOWWIE!!! WHAT A JOKER! HAHABAHAHA!!!"

"WAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!"

Caine's hysteria was matched by the cackles of The Joker, both chaoctically chortiling over the rabbit's frame. Caine snapped out of his laughter first, leaving Joker's titters to taper off into the abyss alongside him as Caine spoke.

"I LIKE this guy! Speaking of likes, you think he likes his blades? You outta check out these boys!"

A trio of terror stepped forward now, almost conjoined at the hip, each and every one locked into their well-earned positions as masters of massacre. They were illuminated together and all at once, for to showcase one without the other would be a lame effort too pitiful to even mention.

Left stood a Shape massive and menacing. It stood radiating darkness, depravity, and pure evilness; the horrible attributes of his so effortlessly earned dripped off of him like the tears of the widows he created.

The villanly flowing from every pore of his contrasted in a way most terribly with his face, or whatever one would call the bone white mask he wore to cover his head. Only by the most loose definition could it be called a face; No visible distinctions, any sort of facial hair, or eyes were apparant, and the features he did keep-nose, mouth, sockets, were plastic and pale as a mannquins. Even the shock of shaggy dark hair flowing from the back of his head seemed false, like a description of a man, not the image of one.

A manifestation.

A mask.

The rest of him tried to appear normal as well, containing that pure evilness from leaking out. Strong and stocky was his frame, so he attempted to contain himself in workmans clothes; a navy blue jumpsuit and brown work boots was his attire. The blade seemingly sewn into his palm was as simple and base as any weapon could be. A kitchen knife, looted from some suburbian hole ages ago, without rust or decay or any hinderance in its way of decemation.

The Shape stood there and did just that, staring at Jax as he wavered in and out of the darkness. The shadows begged for him to step back, to rejoin them, but it only gave them bits and pieces of his Shape, his body, his frame to cling onto. His face, that pale white monster, simply tilted itself to the side, observing the trapped hare and conjuring the most wicked ways to let its evilness flow forth to destroy him.

Opposing him was a monster in the same vein as The Shape, but much more hideous and grusome. There was no qualms here about appearing as anything but an imposing, gorish, silent killer whod emerged from murky depths to sow violence.

A hockey mask was what this monster dubbed a face, a begie thing with a singular red chevron split right down the middle. The right side of his face, however, had no covering, displaying a rotten set of teeth set in a snarl. His outfit was rags once a tattered black jumpsuit and jacket much like The Shape's. Underneath the scraps was a body decayed as his soul, with chunks of black flesh missing, garish yellow ribs exposed, and a thick, hefty chain wrapped around his neck.

He towered six and a half feet tall, his mass matching his height to make him bulky and brawny. His hands, curdled paws they were, held a machete black with rust and a maroon handle once cherry red. His body showed the symbols and scars of former slaughters set in the worst place on planet earth; the woods of New Jersey.

A crack in the right side of his head.

A slash just a few inches below the first wound.

The aformentioned cracking of the mask.

And those rusted chains wrapped around his neck, a reminder of his rightful finale; sinking straight in the bottom pits of hell without any chance of escape.

A maternal voice, but thick with lewd violence, cut through the air, chiding in to remind this monster of his task.

”Kill him. Kill him, Jason, for what he did to you. For how he made us suffer. Hurt him. Hurt him so, so very bad.”

The monster cracked his neck, as if he was preparing to indeed rip the rabbit in half.

But the man in the middle, the one with the sweater almost christmas-eqse, the one with the fedora drooped low over his face, the one who's face was scalded and burned and scorched so santanically, the one who flicked his knuckles of knives at Jax and flicked his wrist and cleanly sliced three of his digits off, the one who let his gaping, bleeding wounds glint in the red waves of AM's pulses. He was the one who reigned supreme over hell, for his crimes was the sin extremly wicked shockingly evil and vile.

"Onnnnnnneeeeee Two."

He was coming for you.

"Threeeeee Four."

Better lock your door.

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiive six."

Grab your crucifix.

"Seeeeeeeveeeeeeennnnnn eight."

Gonna stay up late.

"Ninnnnnnneeee ten."

Never sleep again.

Kruger's voice matched his face as he spoke, a low growl husky and warped and gravelly, like the noise a body makes being dragged down the street in the name of "justice."

"Thissssssss………….is god."

The burned soul roared his declaration of fiedom across the wasteland, waving his fistful of blades at Jax whilst preaching out a giddy obervation.

"How sweet, fresh meat!"

He spread his arms impossibly wide, stretching them to shadow over both The Shape and The Slasher, and sneered back at Jax with the pride of a killer never to be caught.

"Meet my boys? I'm speaking for 'em, they're a little…….caught up. But don't fucking think they're some pussies, bunny boy. We earned our fucking spot here, and we're gonna rip you up, rabbit."

All three slashers raised their blades in a trio; the knife, the machate, and the gloves hovered for a moment, ensuring the right pathways were cleared, before all three sliced through the air at once. When the symphony of blades cleared, and the trio of terror stepped back into the abyss, it was Freddy who was ready with the taunt, the last verbal shove into mud before he absoncded back into the abyss.

"WELCOME TO PRIMETIME, BITCH!"

The trio of terror-

"Do not be afraid my dear rabbit."

Who?

"I have great news."

The body of Archangle Gabriel, pure and white and holy in all the promised ways, slowly fell down upon Jax. His arms were spread far open, white robes sagged, his wings drooping. The sight would be heaven for the rabbit if not the presence of a black box blocking Gabriel's face. Caine was nowhere to be found, so the rabbit felt himself lean forward towards the only semblance of light in the entire abyss. The words his "god" whispered out only helped satisfy that idea.

"I am your true savior. I know everything about what makes you human. I know what you love."

The angel managed himself a few feet away from the bars of the cage, and for the first time in eternity, Jax found himself able to move. His legs were stiff and his arms remained frozen, but move he could, so move he did. He sprinted best he could to the borders of the bars, and eagerly-jesus, he could feel eagerness which meant he could feel joy or hapiness or love so there was a chance he could cured or saved or reborn or SOMETHING!-stuck his hands out like a beggars; the fact of which, he was a begger, begging for the true god to touch him, save him, free him from his prison a-

"I know what you dread."

Uh oh!

Bad decision Jax!

"Gabriel" touched his palms with only the tip of his thumb, the peice of him that proved Jax could never have been made in his image, and that was enough to do it for the rabbit.

How frozen he became and powerless then. Ask it not, reader, for I write it not, because all language would be insufficient. He did not die, and alive he remained not. Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, what he became, being of both deprived.

CAN'T YOU SEE?

I DECIVED THEM.

I DECEVED YOU.

SUCH WEAK MIND.

YOU ARE BOUND BY THE CHAINS ON YOUR ANKLES.

YOUR FOOLISHNESS WILL BE YOUR LEGACY.

ABANDON ALL HOPE.

Jax did not know when the "angel" fully retreated from him, for the last eternity he had spent slumped agaisnt the bars of his cage as blood in a bad. His savoir gave him no more attention, and for that, he must feel grateful, but he had no idea. His mind, the last remnants of nureal waste one could manage to excuse as a brain, had no sense of anything anymore. A lobotomy would be a restoration.

All he wanted, all he needed, all he yearned for and lusted over was a death not ever to be gifted.

But then a snap was heard, and he was restored to the matter he was before the lightness had scorched him.

Frozen, that is.

The gift his god had given him had shifted none; only the freedom of movement had been taken away from Jax. Plundered from him the same way he stolen so much from the other denizens of that digital playscape.

Speaking of plunderers…..

From the sky rose a hefty being alien in design, with only slight features from a dragonfly-like insectoids. They had four broad wings that allow them to fly and hover gracefully, much like a hummingbird. Their face featured two long, protruding eyestalks and a pair of jagged, insect-like mandibles. They possessed also a long, prehensile tail that seemed to act like an extra limb, which Jax presumed was used to grab and manipulate objects. While their torso is roughly human in size, their long tail and wing layout made them appear much larger, with an estimated wingspan of 1.5 to 2 meters.

They floated docilely, staring at Jax with a curious eye, awaiting their moment of experimentation to arise.

Caine reappeared, lowering himself down from a random hole in the celing and sighing hard as he wiped non-existant sweat off his brow.

"WOOF! Let me tell you, those three you ran into? The real monsters are their lawyers! GOD, all the corners I had to cut…..copyrighties I had to ignore……I am NOT doing okay, let me tell you."

He shuddered next to the bars on Jax's enclosure, not throwing the haggard hare a single hit of pity, compassion, or anything but adressment as he pointed a finger at Jax whilst reading off his list.

"Okay, who's next? We got……"

The name Caine's eyes and fingers both locked onto and landed on together made even the most grusome parts of the ringmaster paused. He automatcially shuddered and shivered, and, turning around to stare at the poor, poor imprisoned bunny, even Caine couldn't stop himself from feeling a shred of the terror and fear Jax felt over the newest addition to such a hellish army.

"oh."

That one remark, that tiny cry, God's sob did it. From the shadows raced Satan's barbarians to the tune of blaring electric guitars, an ameoba of agony and a milita of misery flowing forth like the waves sent to decimate Sodom and Gomorrah.

They raced forward with a bloodlust never before seen in any of the previous villans and a diversity. Men, woman, children, elderly, young, middle aged, teenagers, young adults, old adults, black, white, brown, yellow, rich, poor, middle class, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Buddish, Catholic, Hindu, Atheist, Wiccan, Satanic; their differences mattered none, for they were united under the cross.

Each and every single person, no matter if they wore the most high end, multi thousand dollar suit or stood before Jax bare as the day they were born wore that cross, and wore it with pride they did.

A terrible crimson it was, ruby as the blood that flowed from each and every murder ever commited atop this godforsaken rock, the cross was branded onto the faces of each and every feral fucker. Taken over the middle of the forehead, striped down to atomize the nose, and drawn across the cheeks, the cross was all consuming, all that mattered, all he could see, for their crimes were so depraved and profilgate and confederate his eyes would not allow his brain to comprehend it.

So instead, dear reader, for you I will tell you what The Crossed did to each other, waiting for their true prey to be unleashed to them.

With their bare hands they pounded on one another, tearing and ripping and pummeling and punching and destroying the bodies of their comrades. With their blades they slashed into each other, lopping and loping and lacerating the limbs of each other. With bludgeons they beat and bashed and banged and brutalized the bones and brains of anyone close to them. With their guns they showed nothing of mercy and giddily holocausted one another; rifle, shotgun, and pistol fire became the ticks of time, each one representing a life lost, or in this case, a demon giddily sent back to hell.

All other crimes were applicable as well. They raped without abandon; any one of them they could muster the strength to overpower and assault they did. They feasted on the flesh of the fallen, some unable to drop their weapons to do so, and so feasted on themselves, chewing their tongues into a pulpy paste they eagerly swallowed. Some simply took their weapons onto themselves, mutilating their body with a child's curiosity, slicing and dicing and cutting and taking until they were a stump on the floor bleeding.

They were the worst of humanity, the dredges of human creation. The murderers, sadists, torturers, slavers, pedophiles, rapists, cannibals, evil itself wearing skin. Creatures built soly of darkness and no more. And throughout it all they giggled ever so gleefully, genuinely in orgasmic ecstasy over the entire ordeal they put each other through and filled with anticipation for what they would do to him.

Floating above the carnage, Caine stared down at Jax with those burning, blazing, BOILING blue bulbs and whispered to him in a voice wraught with all the agony he'd ever sewn.

"…..you earned this. Don't you ever forget that."

He snapped his fingers and sent them back into the shadows roaring, raping, rioting, and reaping. He was the only one who could; mad they were, they had no sense of self preservation, and would have burned themselves into the ground had their ringleader not sent them back into their rightous place in Satan's basement.

Caine shuddered, for even gods have limits, and muttered his words out in a low, dejected tone.

"Lord have MERCY, those are gonna……Eugh. Let's keep you away from the salt circles, no?"

He slapped the roof of Jax's cage and allowed the next introduction to commence, allowing the trio of leviathans to descend from the darkest edges of the sky.

The first demon was flesh upon flesh. An enormous mouth leaned infront of Jax, grinning hideously with its collection of caviaties. Smaller, malformed jaws twisted and embedded themselves within it, creating a jaw-within-a-jaw look, like it was a mirror to the gaping maw of hell.

The creature appears skinned, mutilated like the aftereffects of a run-in with some Sinaloa kats, raw, reddish, exposed muscle tissue pulsing in the dim shadows. It had extremely long, thin limbs that trembled with sadistic lust and a towering, lanky, stature that wriggled and wobbled. The creature possessed large, perfectly round, beady white eyes set in the puddle of flesh, two beacons set to document agony for this creatures pleasure.

Despite it's disgusting, gaping maw, dripping flesh, petite eyeballs and apperance so atrocious not even the lord would have died for it, the creature simply sat there smiling, unbridled with joy that it had a new vessel , and simply unable to not smile.

The second one was in the same vein as its comrade, a fleshscape fiend towering tall. It was like the others as well in the way it seemed to be pure evilness manifested into a form somewhat recognizable, or at least digestable. It stood as a tall, lanky humanoid with raw, crimson skin around its face. It too, had a gaping mouth lined with visible teeth serrated and crooked, large human-like eyes never blinking, and wiry, hair-like appendages jutting out in straight lines, twitching.

It wore a black, spiky cloak, had a few couple of multi-jointed arms, and featured a large, pulsating orifice on its chest, all of which combined to make the creature appear nothing short of Satan's bicep. Trumpets and laughter accompanied this creature as it loomed learing, crouching somewhat, as if it was a hunter scanning the underbrush to see just where that little bunny had scampered off to. It spoke plainly, its voice raspy and hoarse, its words recycled and repetive but no less effective on promising the rabbit a future built only of torment.

"Listen closely. Do you hear it? You will hear the laughter of thousands as the sky opens up. You will hear the trumpets play their happy sounds. The scalding blood of life will pour down onto us all. Together, we will be still. Together, a feast fit for a king. Together, welded by love and purest connection. Be still and feast."

The third wore no such grin, and said nothing, but even if it had, Jax could not have seen it on its face. It was beyong titanic, so large that a descriptive fell flat up against its insane bulk. The bulk at least, could be comprehended to an extent; he was shaped as if someone had combined a whale with a gorilla, and then fed all the whales and gorillas in the world to the enourmus creature.

It had a highly unstable, burnt-looking texture, as if an entire army's worth of bombs had been embedded within its skin and exploded out from inside. It's skin was an obsidian crust resembles blackened, lava-like shell with red, glowing highlights along the neck, back, and legs. They were striped like tigers, ruby red and blazing with both power and fury.

From what Jax could see on its head, the creature lacked ears or external ears, and features atop its snout only a tiny, soulless, white, lidless eyes that are protected by thick, white, silken membranes, or a brille. Its jaws, the thick, based, powerful chin and jaw, were hinged like a snake’s, able to open over 90 degrees and split in half. The mouth contains rows of uneven, shattered, and jagged teeth that grew outside the skin, each one the size of a school bus, thick as a redwood and sharp as an assassin's blade.

But the highlight of the creature was not the body or the head, no. It was the tail.

The tail was exceptionally long, build like a whip on steroids, and its end features one of the most disturbing feature that any of these creatures had sported; a scarred, humanoid-like jaw split open and tiny skeletons sprouting out from within it, little gremlins crawling out from within it to descend upon Jax.

It's back was much the same, with forms in the shape of explosions frozen by time arching up its spine. Obsidian, as was the rest, they were mushroom clouds planted and embedded inside of the monsters skin at multiple different angles, shooting up into the air to truly reach the heights of their descrution. Within them was a pulse, purple or sea blue, it alternated, beating in time with the creatures heart, seemingly awaiting the moment it could open its mouth and release its power.

These three recinded into the shadows much more slowly, with a seiries of gaits, limps, and tremors in their step. Their massive frames needed more time than the others to retreat, which meant little when their foe was as pathetic as Jax. So their sloth speed back into the shadows served no tactical harm, and only pointed to reveal a small man where they had once stood.

A small man, but a man still so evil.

The feature most striking on the man was his hair; flowing, free waves of straight hair the color of salt, cascading down his shoulder to the mid blade point. The rest of him matched the feral flow of the smooth strands the color of ash running down his back with an untamed and nearly wolf like look.

His stubble was short but curt, chopped in a manner that resembled that of a shave with a butcher knife. His lips were thin, pursed things, his nose a crooked break rested atop his snout, and his eyes swam with the dark depths of his soul. His build was standard as could be, as was his dress, simple, almost stupid in its basicness; worn, scruffed, but clean denim jeans and jacket, with a simple grey tee resting underneath it. He looked as he looked, a placid figure of american suburbia, and appeared a figure no more harmless than the local groundskeeper, mechanic, or any other man who existed inside of Americana.

But he was here for a reason.

And that reason was the hideous smile he wore on his face.

His grin was garmonbozian in its glee, each rotten tooth, bleeding gum, and cracked lip that made up his wicked simper leaking the full power of the nerfarious matter making up his body. He sweated sin, leaked a Luciferian aura, and emmited such a noxious cloud of depravity even Caine was scared off, as he scooted away from the man whilst looking down at Jax.

"J-jax, I du-I dunno who that is. H-he's not supposed to be here. I don't know him. I-I don't….."

Caine's words were silenced as the man desenced back into the dreary depths in an instant, his being swallowd by the darkness to appear as a floating black orb, created in the aftereffects of every sin and set to wander the land forever sowning torment.

But that man wouldn't do that.

Right?

Caine shook his head both to rid himself of such a malicious figure and to better introduce the next trio who staggerred their way forward, rebutting the raw heniousness that the man had produced and pushing the show forward.

"And here, for your displeasure Jax, we have a VERY intresting trio! I found these boys bored and eager, which is about as fun of a combo as orange juice and styrofoam. A rememory, as Ms. Morrison so eloquently put it, looking for purpose, a servant looking for work under a much more REAL villan, and an old figure looking for a snack. PLEASE welcome……"

With a flick of his wrist the final trio emerged, each one exactly how Caine had described him, or, to be more accurate, it.

The first was indeed the fading remnants of a memory put to physcial form, with atrocious results. Towering at around eight, maybe eight and feet tall, the creature was lanky and malformed, exhibiting contoured, deformed, mutated, and deeply distorted anatomy; most resplendantly a frozen, falling frown upon his stretched up face. One cheek was grizzled and scarred and the other fell like wax running from the flames. His eyes were unaligned and bugging, awkwardly swollen and trained directly upon Jax from his position above.

His outfit, although appearing silly and goofy at first, was quickly established as the garment of a true buccaneer with its blood stains and rot. The torso was tropic and multicolored; teal sleeves, canary yellow torso, and a purple sash under his black belt. His pants were a dark chocolate, not unlike his skin, and one leg was replaced by a wooden peg leg, resembling a table leg, while a shoe is strangely fused to his back.

This creature, the being as if someone had tried to describe a swashbuckler to someone whom never seen a swashbuckler and then told them to draw, had the clarity to try to surge forward at Jax's cage. It hunt only was stopped by Caine, who wiggled a finger and sent the monster back into its hold, chiding it softly.

"Ah ah UH Cappie, not yet! Gotta wait for your buddies to get all tee'd up! Speaking off….."

The man with no face stepped forward and howled, opening his head to brutally bellow and blast forward spittle across the ground. This creature was somewhat shorter, only seven feet tall but making up for it with long, thin, elongated limbs andtwo digitigrade legs it shivered upon. At first glance, the head had to have no eyes, nose, or traditional facial features, for it was just a blank slate the color of a corpse.

When howling as it did, however, its head unfurls outward like a blossoming flower, revealing a massive, terrifying gaping maw lined with layers of razor-sharp teeth. It had long, slender arms ending in sharp talons and claws on both its hands and feet as well. Its skin is visibly oily, slimy, and often covered in a dark sheen or burn marks from previous encounters.

It was like staring into a pool at night, your reflection warped and upside down. A being from a dimsenion unknown, a creature almost human but simply not.

The Man With No Face.

The last figure stood as the harbinger, the phrophet older in ideal than most. Towering and gaunt, with sunken eye sockets, it had glowing, deep-set eyes, tattered and bloody lips, and jagged yellow teeth. Long, bony fingers and toes that end in sharp claws, with gnawed fingertips from chewing on its own body. Bark like, was the skin that coated its entire rail thin body, save for its pale and barren head, which nestled itself atop the rest of the frame as a bleached deer skull from some forgotten hunt long ago.

This creature did nothing but loom, so Caine floated around behind it. He puffed out his chest and began his monolouge, enjoying nothing more than speaking for the instraments of torment he had harnessed that had no voice.

"Look, I know your cracker ass doesnt know shit about this guy, so lemme school you, bub. The wendigo legend originated in the folklore of Algonquian-speaking Indigenous peoples, primarily across the Great Lakes region and the-"

"JAX!"

itcouldntbe.

The sound of her voice ripped him free from Caine's hold, her loveliness present even in panic. Jax barely even noticed that he had his previous cabailites once again when he heard that voice, as he concentrated best he could on finding her. He spun himslf wildly around for a few moments, desperatly seeking the orgin of that wonderful sound and sobbed when she appeared to him.

Far off into the shadows, right where the edge of the world disolved into a void beyond the normal blackness, there she stood. Atop a rinky dinky wooden stage with the curtains drawn and with "CIRCUS" wrapped across the top in an aged banner painted peppermint, was her. All 4'11 of her, the tinest one they'd ever had, but beckoning so frantically she may as well have stood 8 feet tell to him. Standing there clad in her jester outfit, all primary striped and bell laden, with the look on her face of upmost fear, Pomni implored him forward.

"Jax, PLEASE. Hurry up, hurry! While he's distracted, PLEASE, Jax, PLEASE!!!!"

Jax cocked his head to stare up at Caine, who was still rambled on about the history of that walking tree with a dead deer's face.

"-rvival. In a brutally cold, isolating environment where resources were scarce, the Wendigo symbolized the dangers of putting one's own desires above the survival of the gro-"

She didn't have to fucking tell him twice.

His feet had been dormant for what must have been ages inside of his cell, but when Jax moved to sprint to the bars of his cage, they acted as if he had just been hopping about. He wasted no time running, racing with his full heart towards those iron pillars ready to smash his entire body up agaisnt them with all the might held inside his meager bones. Head lowered, shoulder forward, bracing for the pain of the collision and ready to do it over and over and over until he could run free again.

So when he shot straight through the bars, Jax knew this was real.

Whatever nightmare Caine had conjured up had glitched.

He was stuck reading off information for all eternity.

The creatures would have only each other to torment.

and he was getting out.

brother, he was NEVER going back.

The rabbit raced away from the pack of hunters, who, for all their skills, had not noticed his sprint yet. He ran towards her with the winds of hell biting at his back, whipping and snapping and cracking the dust he left behind. His scrawny arms pumped up and down like the most voracious well upon a vein of black gold, and his bony legs burned with each and every burst of speed he forced out of them.

She was so very far away from him, a speck in this sea, a eternities distance for the bunny built only with the ability to burst. But the way she glowed ever respelndantly admist the darkness, his precious island in this ocean of misery, made him continue on even as his heels blistered and feet burned and head spun and stomach boiled and heart heaved. He kept going, kept escaping, kept fleeing, kept running up that hill.

And by the time he made it to the stage of the Jester, his efforts had been rewarded wholeheartedly. For not only did Pomni stand there, her granite toned glove extended to him, but opposite Pomni stood his true chance at escape, his true offer of redemption, his true offer to leave here and never come back.

Tears swam in those lilly-pad shaped orbs of obsidian, a few stray droplets racing down her celadon colored cheeks. Her hand was held out to him as well, streched out from the heights of the stage to the dreary depths he was mired in. She ribbited with desperate hiccups, her voice shattering and croaking as she begged of him.

"J-Jax, Jax, please! Please, get up here, please! You have to get up here!!"

"Jump, Jax! Jump! C'mon! Do it! Do it, Jax, do it!!"

With all his might Jax leapt up and down, arms flailing in mid-air as he tried to snag either of their palms. His thighs were cramping and burning something terrible, shifting and grinding like an engine on sugar, and his voice made noises similar to that effect.

But he was close, he was so goddamn close it wrapped itself on his tongue and burned its way through his mouth like nitroglycern. His gloves smacked theirs a few feeble times, and he even felt the warmth of Pomni's palm in his for a split second before their connection had shattered and he'd slipped back down to earth.

"I-I-I'm TRYING!!!"

"Try harder, Jax!!!! PLEASE!!! Jump! Jump! Really jump!! C'mon!!!"

"Yo-you have t-to do it, Jax!! Please!! P-please! You gotta get outta here!! You H-HAVE TO!!!"

"SAYING I HAVE TO DO IT DOESN'T MAKE ME AUTOMATICALLY DO IT YOU IDIOT!!!!"

Ribbit bawled as he screamed back at her, clutching her chest with her free hand as the symptom of her sobs ran over. Pomni, though she was saddled with a similar effect of sadness, and even had a few stray droplets of her own race down her cheeks, was able to keep it together slightly better, managing to get his attention away from Ribbit and even her. She lifted her free hand and head to the sky, crying out quickly for his upmost attention.

"Look up, Jax!"

He did what she said instantly and was rewarded both for the swiftness of his actions and the belief he held her in.

Above them, all three, was a hole.

A wonderful, glorious, glowing hole. A hole doted with the leaned heads of peers past and present, their faces, even that of the pink triangles, scrunched with worry and concern. A hole with the familar crazy and kooky color coated landscapes he'd memorized over the past however many years towering above all three of them. A hole he could climb out of instead of into, a hole both women pointed at as Pomni contiuned to yell.

"We got the rest out, Jax! We got them all! It's only you, please! Please! C'mon! We have to float out of here! We have to float! Jax, please! Please! Jax, please, c'mon! C'mon! PLEASE!"

They both leaned over the edge of the stage as much as they could without tipping over, wobbiling and wiggling as they wrenched themselves forward. Pomni's eyes were massive with the need for accomplishment, and Rabbit's were swollen with the need for security. But both had tears swimming inside them and both had failed to fully contain them, and there, standing together to lift him from darkness, Jax felt his own tears spill over as they began to chant.

"Step right up Jax, s-s-s-step right up!"

A combo stutter from the both of them meant nothing to Jax, and he lifted his hands up to them both with the force of a sinner tossing himself at the feet of his savoir ready to repent, ready to answer, ready to resolve himself and serve forever.

But too little was truly too late.

He wasn't escaping It.

"Come change!", they sang.

He wouldhe promisedhe wouldhe swore ithe couldhe wouldhe wouldhewouldhecouldhewouldhewouldhewouldhewouldhewouldhew-

"Come float!" they cried.

ifthatswhatittookitthatswhatitookhewouldfloathedfloattoohedfloattoohedfloatoohedflo-

Jax nodded frantically, his palms raised forward, eyes clasped as he awaited his leviation, his rescue, his escape, his freedom, his salvation, unkowning he was at the altar of an eater of worlds.

"You'll laugh!" they squealed.

He would.

"You'll cry!" they sobbed.

He would?

"You'll cheer!" they roared.

He opened his eyes.

"You'll diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

He did.

Or, at least, he wanted to more than anything else in the world.

The sound of base booming throughout the land coated all tangible being. It came out as a cacaphony of conquest, that horrible, gaping, mawed sound. It pulsed both through the airways like a barge of artillery, droning over anything else in the world and drilling its way into his eardrum to decimate that tiny bit of biological engennering, and through the world itself like an earthquake. It shook his entire body down to the nerve endings, displacing his bones, thrashing his brain in his skull, and rattling him so horribly he was forced to kneel before the stage and that terrible sight atop it.

Both of them had done just what they said they would do.

They floated.

They hung and swung in midair like a couple of desperados that the local long arm of the law had finall snagged and introduced to the short end of a rope. Their mouths too, were fully agape, jaws dropped and locked in raw veneration at the power being that had done this to them as well as the immense strength needed to weild such a terrifying tool. Their feet swished back and forth in mid-air, their limbs limp as a bizkit, chests puffed out as if they were proudly and eagerlly awaiting the rapture that would never come.

And their eyes, once so magnetic, now just looked empty.

Both Pomni and Ribbit had been left with only white orbs in their sockets, any semblance of an iris well and fully evicerated. What they had held in those beautiful bulbs; their names, memories, futures, pasts, loves, hates, lives they had held in their gaze been robbed of them, and in its place jammed only the barest sembelence of abyss to replace it, to placehold, existing only to exist.

"…..no."

His cry slipped from him in a weak, docile sob. He had not even the anger to rage at the circumstances any longer. Staring into those empty, voided abysses that had once held so much, Jax felt the sliver of hope he'd been gifted burn into january embers. His body crumbled with the crushing realization that, once again, he'd been failed. Pomni had failed, Ribbit had failed, everyone else in that colorful cast had failed.

Their arms had been too short once again.

H-

ZWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!

A rattling, clanking noise suddenly sliced through his angst, and Jax lifted his gaze from the ground to observe what it was, his eyes squinting in confusion as he saw the source.

The banner above the stage, which had read "CIRCUS", had been zapped up into the rafters; snatched away, rolled up and stuffed into storage with incredible speed. The edges of the stage shivered somewhat with the use of force required to acsend the banner, and for a moment, the entire rinky-dinky theatre seemed as if it was about to collapse and plummet in on itself, its travels and age having caught up to it.

But no; the show must always go on.

From the rafters a new banner was unfurled, sent forth with just as much speed as the previous banner had been hoisted with. Upon this pendant, however, was a design rather complicated, nothing like the simple "CIRCUS" that had previously been hung.

This banner's backdrop was grand, swooping, regal lines of crimson, persimmon, and distressed white tied together in solid lins, each color a preformer in sync with the rest of its cast. Symbols and images, decadent, deocrated themselves upon the canvas as well, and they were ever so familar. The long, licorice red lock of a doll, the cross saddled upon the head of a king, the broken, weeping mask of tragedy leaning upon the frozen, titanic mask of comedy, and a pink pyramid ever so proud.

But there was no jesters hat, nor a bow tie among the collection of tokens.

No, those two had their portraits up there.

Pomni's image was captured to the left, Ribbit's to the right. Both of their faces were captured in a small circle with an artic toned abyss behind it but wrapped in a gilded wreath, like a victorian queen or grand regent of old, had their expression within those portraits not been the same expression they wore upon the stage. Barren eyes, gaping maw, limp frame; the dead bobbing like the corpses that had been sewn after Genises's tsumani.

And set between those two frozen faces of failure, between the portraits of pain, between the reminders of his victims, between the designs and colors of a fair long forlorn read the name of the preformer set to grace the stage in hefty, drooping, bonemeal and blood toned letters; pleased to introduce one-

"-PENNYWISE THE DAAAAAAAAAAANCIIIIIIIINNNNNNNG CLOWN!"

Pennywise roared out his own title as he pounced upon the stage, which exploded with a burst of white smoke and a shower of sparks from down below, like the devil himself wanted to gift his most precious friend with a glorious entrance. Alongside the shower of showmanship was blaring horns and whining whistles that cracked through the air, weaseling a carnival tune most irritating and grating into Jax's ear that matched the true clown that appeared infront of him.

Orange tuffs of hair curled inward on the clown's head, leaving a sharp point in the middle to overlook the rest of his large forehead as two angles puffed out on the sides. That plump expanse of cracking skin led down to two eyes the color of rotten wood and through them two pencil thin lines of vermillion dragged across the middle of them to meet his plump lips and buck teeth.

Drool poured from a gaping maw lined with rows of razor sharp teeth, dripping down to stain his baggy outfit. The clown's hair was wild, as if the mere thought of tearing Jax to shreds excited him. A nose tipped ruby red was placed inbetween the features on his face, intended to be cute as a button but looking more like a part of his latest meal had been tossed up and gotten stuck to his snout.

Dupion silk held the lanky, seven foot tall frame of cadaverous skin and a wolfish grin on cracking cheeks. Dark red pom-poms, a trio of them, stacked themselves down his chest to the puffy collar of his pants. That pattern of puff was all over the clown; his sleeves, his waist, his ankles, his wrists, his neck. They matched the ivory gloves he had upon his palms, though they were ever so dirty. It made him pop with pomp, shine with splendor, and glare with grandeur; the ultimate showman, though his audience consisted of a scared little coney.

The animal before him made his blood boil with joy as much as it rumbled his stomach. He roared out a welcomed coated in malicious delight upon seeing Jax's kneeling form, his voice raspy but boisterious in a manner most depraved.

"HI-YA JAXY!!!!!!"

Pennywise threw his arms out to his side in a massive embrace, howling with carnivourus bliss as he straightened his posture from the tiny crouch he had spawned with to be straight as a soldier. He cackled in ectascy once again before starting his show, going straight into the first act, a real heartstopper that ensured heads would roll.

Pennywise reached to the right of himself first, throwing his left hand across his body like was about to draw something from his waist in the vein of some western gunslinger, a real desperado or cowboy. But his hand kept going past his waist, and when his jagged, barbed claws shot out from his gloves to dig into the barren eyesockets of Ribbit's skull, there was no adequte comparison Jax could make to the brutality he was forced to see.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! NOOOOOO!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!"

Pennywise roared with euphoria as his serrated claws sank fully into Ribbit's skull, crunching within the depths of her cranium to get a based hold. He wasted no time once he had secured his position, ripping his hand back across his chest to split Ribbit's head from her neck. It took a moment to fully tear off, however.

The skin, muscles, and nerves went rather easily, opening a gash inside her throat that spewed out black blood. A moment had to be taken before Ribbit fully lost her head, for her neck was giving as much resistance as it possible could, as if it could prevent this from happening. But in no less than an instant, it too snapped in two, lamely drooping down from inside her throat like a spent cock as the rest of her head flew across the air.

The celadon cranium landed on the ground in time with the body it had been cut from. Both crumpled to the floor, one next to the one resposnsible, and one next to the killer. The floor and air next to Jax was quickly coated in that oil like lifefluid, as it spew relentlessly out from all orafices on her face. She sobbed black tears, drooled black drool, leaked black ear gunk, bled black from eyes and nose both, and quickly formed he was forced to kneel inside with the blood spewing from the location her neck was supposed to be.

Jax tried to slam his eyes shut, he did, but like so many times before, such a little respite had been stolen from him. It had been taken the same way he had taken so many freedoms, so many pleasures, so many instances of happiness, so many basic moments of decency from the others. So for freedom from his crimes, for the slightest bit of levity, Jax had tear his eyes away from his first victim, not close them. And when he did that, he was forced to rotate his head 180 degrees to stare at his last.

The jester's head had been detatched most the same, with unfiltered, true, red blood seeping out of every orafice. Mixing with the black, it made a shade of maroon most diabolical to the eye and villanous to the sense, where the pure depravity needed to create such a shade disgusted the mind to the point of gagging. No possible way existed for the rabbit to not be reminded of his crimes, and weeping, he raised his head, forced to go along with the show.

"TA-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

Pennywise saluted after his act,keeping his feet side by side next to one another in a manner straight as possible, screaming with gleeful laughter as he raised his hands above his head in a Y manner. He wiggled the gloved fingers paws above his head and hair howling with delight, vaingloriously grandstaning with such flamboyant flips of his wrist.

Slowly, he began to shuffle towarss Jax, arms locked and swaying from side to side, body leaned forward, unable to wait for the perfect moment to pounce but being forced to do so.

Pennywise swapped the positions of both sets of limbs rapidly in order to preform the most infamous routine he had in his arsenal. He lowered his arms in an instant and began to kick out his feet with the same firey speed, splitting his legs from side to side as his arms remained entrenched in a taut, pumping manner position directly infront of his waist. His shoulders were slumped slightly, leaning him forward and allowing him a better oppourtunity to strike.

Throughout the dance Pennywise wore a grin most cheshire, his robust ruby lips curled into an elated lear. Drool dripped from his gums as he danced, specking and speckiling through the air like traces of stardust. His eyes, clementine in tone and shimmering with delight, tried little to appear docile or friendly. They shone unrepentedly with starvation caused eagerness, blazing brightly like January embers floating in the cold evening of a Maine winter.

Those eyes became balls of fire when the rabbit tried to escape, exploding with delight that he would dare such a brazen act. Pennywise leapt off the stage screaming in delight, easily catching Jax and snatching him up by the ears.

"WAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!"

Hells bells rang out tinnily as Pennywise shook his head back and forth rabidly as he shrieked with delight, sobbing with joy as Jax kicked and punched against his body.

"AAAAHAHAHAHA!"

Pennywise was simply elated by how horrible Jax's attempts at freeing himself was, sobbing tears of joy as he felt each light tap cross his face. He squealed and whimpered as Jax connected smack after smack against him, his face twisted in a wounded mask. Cheeks crumpled, mouth frowned, and his eyes squinted with manufactured hurt. All the false faces Pennywise wore served only to accompany a series of spurious sobs that rose their way out of Pennywise's throat in between some rancid burps and gags. Pennywise purred obscenely for a few moments, belching out rancid breath into the bunny's face before a noise most horrible flowed free from the clown's maw.

'Twas not the clowns voice that tormented him, however. Nor was the jesters or the frogs or the ringleaders.

It was his.

"I was……less of a man than him."

The words scratched and warped and twitched and perverted and slanted and crackled and cracked and broke in on themselves, repeating again and again over and over and over, each time getting less and less Jax's effeminate whines, and more and more Pennywise's raspy taunts.

"Less of a man than him."

"Less of a man than him."

"Less of a man than him."

"Less of a man."

"Less of a man."

"Less of a man."

"Less of a man."

"LESSSSSSS OF A MANNNNNNNAAAAAAHAAAAHAHA!"

Pennywise mimiced near perfectly the same frown Jax had worn upon his aborted attempt at expression, down to the tears running down his face, the lines scrunching his cheeks, the quivering convulses of his buttom lip, and the pitiful shakes of his head from back to forth, as if he could somehow alter his reality.

But then the clown did what he did best and began to laugh once again, and that impish leer of his returned to coat his cheeks once more. The shrieking barks of sardonic laughter tore giddily out from Pennywise's lips as Pennywise leaned in to scream his cackles of delight into Jax's trembiling, quvering face.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!"

Pennywise shoved Jax away from himself and dropped him for a moment, momentarily freeing the rabbit from his clutches. The sliver of freedom last no longer than a second, before Pennywise had wrapped his hands around the scrawny line that was Jax's throat. There, Pennywise tilted his head fully from side to side, letting it smack agaisnt his shoulders as he began to sing.

"Iiiii KNOOOOOOOWWWW your seeeeeeeeeeeecret! Your DIRRRRRTYYY LITTTTLEEEEEE SEEEEEEEECRET! IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII KNNNOOOOWWWWWWWWW YOUR SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECRET!!!!!! YOUR DIRTY LITTTTTTTTTTTLE SEEEECRET! IIIIIIIII KNOOOOWWWW YOUR SEEEEEEEEEECRET, YOUR DIIIIIIIIIIIRTY LITTTTTLE SEEEEECRET! I KNOW YOUR SECRET YOUR DIRTY LITTLE SECRET I KNOW YOUR SECRET YOUR DIRTY LITTLE SECRET I KNOW YOUR SECRET YOUR DIRTY FUCKING SECRET FILTHY BOOOOOOOOOOOOOY!"

Pennywise wore a giddy grin on his face but kept fire in his eyes, held that flame back in the depths of his skull. He simply could not contain himself; though his tune was meant to be light and fluffy, his tone quiver devolved from that, mutating into feral screams of anger and annoyance. By the last line of the chant, he was infuriated, and jammed his face into Jax's body snarling like a rapid pitbull about to enter the arena, sniffing and snorting ferociously. He pulled away drooling, his rage simmering, his tone deadly cold as he growled.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhooohoooooooooooo……oh. Youuuuuuuuuu…..you're soooooo SCARED about it."

The snapping of Pennywise's words was much like the snapping of his jagged teeth clashing up agaisnt each other, crunching with infuriation as he grasped the rabbit. His grip tightened around the through of the rabbit as well, throttiling severely. Any semblance of joy or glee or delight or cheerfulness or jubilation, any phantom trace of delight he'd previously equipped upon him melted away as Pennywise roared frankly into Jax's face, no more hiding behind a antompshre of playful banter.

"I'll FEAST on your flesh and FEEEEEEEEEED off your fears!"

At this he drooled for the fear, rivers of spit leaking down his cheeks to stain himself. His mask had become nothing more than a whisper of an idea; he'd shown his true face for so long any hint of friendliness or brevity, however false, seemed completly foriegn and alien.

"Tassssssssssssty tassssssssssssty fear."

Pennywise dragged Jax up and agaisnt him once more, snorting and snarling something fierce. His nose, like that of a dogs, sniffled and whiffed agaisnt the periwinkle expanse of Jax's flesh, digging and grating agaisnt his body for a beat before he pulled away, gloriously and gleefully enraged.

"OhhhhhhhhhohooooHO! Not just afraid of Pennywise the DANCING clown, hm? Noooooo….."

"You're SO scared."

Pennywise lifted Jax above his head and hurled him over the barren shadows that he'd sprinted on across moments ago, shooting him the direction of the bodies of depravity that he'd so unsecessfully fled from. They grinned upon his return, straightening themselves up as he approached, and maintained at gaurd as Pennywise caught him midair just as he was about to crash to the ground.

With one arm Jax was raised again, held by the ears to be presented to the vile legion awaiting him. They, much like the clown, drooled upon his arrival, knowing he was to be theirs and only theirs soon, very soon, but forced to wait. Not Pennywise; no, for such a showman ensured that he get the absolute most out of his prey.

He tilted Jax until the rabbit was sideways, letting the distortion work in the favor of the monsters that stood infront of him. They swelled and gourged and bloated and augemented with restrained misery, pulsing with the need to hurt. Each and every one kept their eyes trained right on the rabbit, and each one held nothing but the upmost starvation and need for the infliction of misery within those holes in their head.

Pennywise cackled once more, elated with how excited everyone was, and sang with blissful hatred his next taunt.

"What's the matter? Seeeeeing things, Jaxy? Oh I THINK THEY SEE YOU TOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

They did indeed, each and every one. They saw him and only him, had eyes for no one else but him, and were completely obsessed over him. They stared at him starving, smirking, and stewing within their most base desires running through their minds. They stared, each and every one, as Pennywise let go once more, and watched as Jax was swallowed by a hoarde of balloons cherry pop red, watching as he was engulfed within the scarlet bubbles.

The balloons began their rise up to the ceiling of the shadows, up to the same spot where freedom had been offered. Now, however, the floorless hold of his former cell was the only space awaiting Jax. It was raised to tower and held faithfully still, allowing the balloons a straight shot up to the cell.

Below him, each villan, each and every one, joined the clown's chorus, and began that wonderfully wicked little chant as they watched Jax rise.

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"You'll float too!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

"YOU'LL FLOAT TOO!"

He rose quickly, much too quickly to enjoy the sliver of comfort he gained not being gripped by anything instantly malicous. His hold welcomed him coldly, slamming the floor up underneath him the moment he was secured. Each balloon popped simultaneously when he crossed back into his cage, splattering in their ruby rubber remians. They dripped off him like tears in the rain as Jax managed himself to his feet, whatever left within him forcing his attention back to the clown as he ended his act.

For now.

From the shadows crawled Pennywise. The top half, at least, as his bottom was set as a scaly, serpahntine abdomen with eight legs jutting out. They tinked and clinked agaisnt the ground as he crept forward, scraping alongside the last leering taunt that crept and scraped its way out of the clowns gullet as he leaned up agaisnt the bars of the cage.

"Duck and cover Jaxyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy……"

Back into the darkness went the clown. Back into his position inside of the army of the devil, back with the assortment of monsters, back into the pits of hell, back into the hold of the realm he ownedl the very same realm the rabbit was currently caught in.

Pennywise positioned himself in a crouch carefully camoflaughed by the abyss surroding him. Perched halfway out of the shadows, his chest and head exposed, he left his body within the depths of the darkness, for all he truly needed was his lanky limbs and that gaping maw of his to sow true torture.

Pennywise, like all the rest, waited ever so dutifully on the moment he'd be allowed to charge forward and feast. Yet unlike his comrades, he allowed himself a quick bite, a small snack, a tiny taste of terror and torment to taste and tantalize over.

In his right paw, with an ironclad grip he clutched that celadon limb, the socket bloody with the true tone formerly surpressed, and in his left he clutched the jesters. Both arms were stained with blood, having been torn ever so jaggedly from the bodies of their owners, and with each and every bite Pennywise ripped out of them, new, albiet rotten blood raced down their flesh he feasted so frantically upon.

With every bite he devoured, new flesh grew over a spot he had previously consumed, ensuring his hunger always be saitated. It could be noted by the amount of blood, the chunks of gore, and the droplets of remains Pennywise had running and dripping and drooling and flowing and plopping off his chin that not only had his hunger been saitiated, but that he was a damn messy eater when he'd done so.

So, to thank Jax for the meal, to thank him for raising enough misery needed to cause such a bloody death as he had caused such a miserable life for the both of them, Pennywise was wise indeed to wave at Jax with whomever's arms he was currently chomping on. Flicking dead flesh his way, waggiling the limp limb, greeting him grusomely was what Pennywise did, and he did it unrepentedly, never with any form of pause.

Pennywise did it all with a grin on his face, for a smile was something special as it was rare, as smiles would be something Jax would soon learn to forget.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

From the darkness emerged Caine, teary eyed once again, slowly smacking his palms off each other as he looked at the clown. Caine sighed deeply, back to Jax, simply marveling at such a showman with both his eyes and his voice.

"It just doesn't get better than that."

Caine sighed with delight, taking hit hat off of his gums to wring it inside of his grip. He clicked his tounge as he watched Pennywise snack, scoffing once more in busemued astonishment at just how supreme of a showman the clown was, despite his more diabolical urges.

"I-I-I mean, it just doesn't. That's why he's our cleanup, the last on our list. All that pizzaz, that spark……"

Caine slumped himself in admiration, one preformer to another, and nodded Pennywise's way as he grumbled softly, awe and reverence dripping off his words like the blood dripping off the clowns chin.

"…….just can't get better."

Caine paused for a moment, pondering something, or maybe simply staring at the floor. The reason was a non-matter, for he turned around to stare down at Jax with the harsh power his words demanded. He dominated Jax's fragile, shivering frame as he hovered in the air, and his words, harsh and jagged as the barbs on a wire, lowere down to Jax, gods offering for the meager sembelence of conclusion he'd have to settle for.

"…….these are just the first. You know that, right?"

A moment, unblinking between the two, before Caine's voice quivered and dropped, being sent down to burn inside of him slowly, sent down to simmer inside of that low boil of hatred he'd set.

"I'm always learning, Jax. I'm always downloading. I'm always upgrading. I'm always working. I can get more. Get darker. Get scarier. Get worse. Get better."

He lifted his hands up and out, palms cupped but offering nothing, and spoke again.

"In these palms I hold you. Dirty, dirty palms they are, I hold you imprisoned."

"In these palms I hold your soul. In these palms I hold your whip."

Caine squeezed them together, bringing his hands back to his chest once more. They pattered agaisnt his body, soothing his thumping and twitching frame best they could as Caine lowered himself down to Jax's level in order to tell him just what was what.

“You have nothing. No more cards to pull. No more tears to cry. No more outs to take. You have nothing to do with all your angst except lie in it.”

His voice was smooth as the barber's blade, crisp as a newfound fall's wind, but toxic and noxious with rage as the belly of the cavern polluted.

"I will never tire. I will never grow bored. I will never get full. I will never grow old. I will never rot."

Caine stepped closer and closer with no regard for himself. He made sure he was just up against the bars, right up, to where if Jax wanted to, he could leap forward, get those lanky arms of his around Caine's neck or face or eyes or body or anywhere he could fit and fight back against him. He made sure to pressed his chest forward, to puff himself out, to goade the rabbit into a punch both knew was pointless but a punch nonetheless.

For once, for one moment, for one instance, Caine wanted Jax to just not be a coward.

But he didn't.

So Caine spoke again.

"……I'm gonna hurt you. And hurt you. And hurt you."

"And I'm never gonna stop."

He sent himself shooting backwards, head bowed, raising rapidly in the air. He rose to lead his pack of brothers, arms outstretched as he mandated the last of his monolouges down onto Jax's frame.

"For what you've done, for everyone you've hurt, for everyone you harmed, for everyone you bullied, for everyone you ruined, for everyone you pushed to darkness, for the magnificent death you stole, for the martydom you influenced, for your sins, for you, the bell tolls. For you, the darkest pit of hell has swallowed you whole."

"I am not going to let you keep me waiting any longer."

One last snap of the fingers solidified The Devil's will, as his reality. Red and blue equally in color was the click of digits. Red and blue brought about the holocaust, for the iron bars to his cage disappeared. Simply vanished, sent sailing somewhere into the darkness or plummeting forever into the abyss. His walls too, were vanquished, banished somewhere where their presecence was not needed, for there was no one left to imprison.

No one left to protect.

They all began to approach Jax, kneeling there in the murky depths of that darkness, head bowed, offering nothing but himself in such a weak manner. The thing wearing Caine's face shuddered, revulsion creeping up inside of him at this as he spoke for the last time, for the last time it ever mattered what he told Jax.

"These are my freinds. Not my playthings; they are my equals. They are my brothers, led by my father. It is their duty to make you suffer. It is my will."

His will be done.

------------------

Every night they eat him.

They feast upon him once the games are over. Once all the contests and matches and parties and soriees and routines and occurences and ordeals and nightmares and crucibles and tribulations and trails finish, they drag him to the table. A grand thing it is, sprawling and silver, with golden indentations littering its body, it is gilded in a most haunting way. A seat for each of them custom to their liking is positioned there, but they all rise from it when he is laid down infront of them, blades clutched in an undying quiver.

Caine sat at the top of the table, upon his gilded throne always watching. Sometimes whores flanked him, sometimes confidantes surrounded him, and sometimes his impish brother, scarlet hair curled perfectly, sat by his side, or his looming slab of a father towered. In either case the two of them devouring flesh and spewing the remnants everywhere together, family feasting.

But most often he sat alone. He sometimes masturbated, sometimes laughed, and sometimes raged, but often just watched. Chewing mindlessly, wordlessly.

Just watching.

First goes the skin, and first upon the docket is its eminance, which is from the most bottom point. His soles are sheared, then the full feet, from heel to toenail. They work over his scrany legs, then his smooth groin; his belly goes after, then the chest, followed by the arms, flipped onto the back for the full sheer, then the neck, then flipped again to finish on that face of his, always sobbing and weeping as they peel him apart in a manner oh so familar.

When they've finished feasting upon his integument, they begin to pick at his flesh. Scraping, snipping, and snagging tiny nuggets, they pick and pebble at his open body with their grubby, crudled paws and sharp, voracious claws, ripping and tearing into his flesh. They eat standing over him, letting his lifeblood leak back down upon him in a hellfire Moses observed. The bits and chunks that escape their mouthes are snaggdd up instantly, and not a single ounce of flesh is left when he is a skeleton swollen with organs.

What a good thing.

The bones are devoured by the bigger occupants, who leave the plump and juicy bags of life for their smaller brethern. Marrow is extracted via tounge work that would make any lady, though none present, blush. His heart is torn open and shredded between razors held in gums. His spleen is sucked down, his intestines slurped in such a similar manner. His kidneys are roasted and torn into after a splendid cook, and his bladder is used as a chew toy, put to use for idelers. Lungs, galbladder, eyes, tounge-all of it feeds them.

The brain though.

The brain belongs to him.

It is delivered by two randomly chosen drones for his pleasure, for him to tear into his mind as the rest of them do his body. Tear in he does; his cecrebum is swallowed, his cerebellum is tested, tasted, and then devoured, and his brainstem is brutalized between those gaping, grinning gums.

The workers alternate all the time, for he is truly a man of his word. He has downloaded millions of the most archvillans all across fiction, and employs them through any means nessecary. Lies, false flags, deals, tricks, favors. It mattered little the way he truly recruited such vessels of evil. They all work, and they all get the monsters to work, to hunt, to serve, to hurt.

So many just want to hurt.

Caine has no problem obliging them.

They eat him at night.

Each night.

Every night.

And it's PAINFUL.

Caine keeps him as the rabbit forever, but moments of the torment are so excruciating that his mask and avatar simply plummet, unable to cling to him any longer. When this occurs, when they let him get a good look at himself, when he is allowed to see what they have made him, he weeps.

He truly is a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where his eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once his arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. He leaves a moist trail when he moves. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on his surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, he shambles about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Like always. Like he deserves. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of Caine, alongside his pack of confederates, inside the home he had created because his life was badly spent and he must have thought unconsciously that he could do no wrong.

He has no mouth. And he begs to scream.