Ugly Things Should Die

Jenn looked left. Kaito’s generic elf sex-slave was on her tail. Flying through the air with a wooden staff in hand.

“How can you use Latin for your spells? Don’t you realise how generic that is? How generic your existence is?”

The elf remained silent, but her face betrayed hints of sadness. “You’re insane.”

Jenn laughed. “The quality of a personality is determined by many things.”

“Does such villainy satisfy you so?”

“Yeah,” Jenn replied, jumping to another roof. “It feels good, alright.” She continued, angling up the wet terracotta tiles, stumbling once but never falling.

“Do the bounds of your morality not demand cessation?”

Again, a laugh. “Morals,” Jenn repeated. “What makes you think you deserve to know mine?”

“Because I’ve suffered from them! Is that not enough?”

“No! It’s not, and it never has been! You think you deserve closure because you were wronged by me?” She shook her head. “Aesthetics and beauty determine what’s good and wrong. Good isn’t good unless it’s aesthetic. Evil isn’t evil unless it’s aesthetic. And a silver-tongued cockroach with no morals, racing against the clock for what she holds dear?! That’s aesthetic, you dumb elf broad!”

Her laugh grew louder and louder, rising and falling without warning. Every time it peaked, Jenn’s voice strained with pain, and every time it strained, it peaked even harder, delighting in the fact of its existence.

“Ignis.”

Three more bolts of flame manifested from a circle. Fzzt, sizzling, pew pew pew.

Jenn dodged a bolt. Doing so with ease and a smile, leaping to another rooftop in the process.

“Gotcha, nyan!”

The catgirl leapt from a corner yet again. Jenn was caught yet again. The two fell from a roof, spiralling down, yet again.

And yet again, Jenn touched the roof just in time, marking it to rewind to her previous location…

Two bolts caught her then and there. They impacted against her arm, and she felt her clothes and skin burn. It was hot. Hot enough to fuse leather and skin, and hot enough to draw a yelp from Jenn.

She winced. “So they realised…”

Her arm sizzled like meat on a pan. The rain, steaming as it touched her skin. Jenn toppled from the rooftop, falling straight into a wheelbarrow of barrels.

“W-woah!”

The barrels spilt and clattered down the street. By luck, Jenn landed on her feet, now balanced atop a barrel. She flailed. Rolling it through the streets. Trying to manage this river of barrels that rolled and rolled without end.

“Magnus Ventus!”

Now the elf appeared from her right, wind forming around her staff in great, green circles. The barrels kept rolling, at times smashing into walls, at times, people, and at times bouncing off of them.

“C-crap.” Jenn dug through her pockets.  She wanted something to throw in the elf’s face.

Mages stopped casting spells when they got hit. Anyone with a IQ above a dumpling knows that.

She pulled a token. “Nope, what if it breaks?” A napkin. “Nope.” A phone. “I have my photos on there!”

In one last-ditch effort, Jenn leapt forward. Unfortunately for her, the Catgirl was there waiting. With a barrel in hand, she tossed it straight into Jenn’s stomach. The impact folded Jenn in half.

“Got nya!”

Just in time for the elf’s blades of wind. They both pushed and cut, and as they did, launched Jenn through a wooden double-door.

But the inside was dark. And Jenn was fast. She scurried into the shadows and vanished before long.

“Let’s go!” The catgirl and elf followed, staff and claws ready.

The inside was thick with dust and after-rain mould. Rats scurried. Things shifted. A sound like a locust being crushed came underfoot.

“Can you see her, Erinyan?” whispered the elf.

“You knyow cats can’t see in absolute dark, right?”

“I do.”

A hand shot from behind. Jenn seized elf-girl by the hair, and slammed her head-first into Erinyan. The two bumped heads. Before the elf could reel back, Jenn yanked, driving a fist straight into her midsection. With it came blood and spit. With it, the elf flew into a stack of boxes, the scent of wine now leaking onto the floor.

“Where are nya?”

Jenn retreated, basked in the shadows again. The catgirl seemed to learn. Silent as the crypt, she tread with all the quiet she could muster, claws extended to slash.

Then—it hit. Something smashed Erinyan in the face. It burst into a cloud of fine particles. She snarled, wiping the nose-blood with her hand.

The catgirl wouldn’t let that happen again.

This time, Erinyan felt the wind. The heavy whistle of an object her way.

Erinyan dodged. Then dodged. Then dodged again.

One. Two. Three. Four. Each miss lengthened her smile and she grew increasingly satisfied with herself.

“You’ll have to do better than that nya~”

“Here!”

Jenn’s voice rang from the warehouse’s entrance. Moonshine cut the dust-filled air across her frame. In her hands were two small, ordinary coins. Pieces of ordinary metal for ordinary work.

Erinyan leapt after her.

Jenn flicked her wrist. The two coins arced through the air and collided mid-flight. A spark leapt. Little circles of orange.

Tng.

Like a supernova, the little flashes of orange bloomed into something bigger.

—A dust explosion.

Igniting the air itself, fire formed in the warehouse in a chain of explosions. Wood shattered. Barrels erupted. Some unlucky wine caught in the process, stirring the flame all the more.

Jenn dove out, rolling into the street, grinning through it all. She was near.

She was laughing hard. “I did it. I killed them all!”

And what a beautiful thing that was. The chase. The barrels. The final blaze of orange. All in service of her. All for the greater good of Jennka Cockehead, she whose promised land was the macrocosm of aesthetics, beauty, and thus righteousness.

Why, that doesn’t sound villainous at all. Not one bit.

“Hahahahaa!”

Jenn ran and ran.

It couldn’t be too far now. A bridge was ahead, the bridge. A stone deck arch spanning a hundred metres, with spiralling columns, and wrought iron lanterns on top—shining their usual, Indarian blue.

It was probably named after someone important, given a rather large statue of a woman with a gun. But Jenn had no clue, nor any care for the matter, as she just kept on running and running, gunning for the other side, passing by a few White Hat guards, already half there by a couple of seconds, already ready for what laid ahead.

But not for what came from above.

There was the loud whir of metal. There was the smell of rust and iron. There was a flutter of a red dress, split like a pomegranate, layers swishing and swooshing in the wind. And then it came to Jenn—quite literally—that a loli with a chainsaw had just sliced her down the middle.

“You ran pretty quick for a hag. I’m surprised the syphilis from your retirement home didn’t melt your bones and brains already.”

Jenn fell to one knee. She saw the gash in her shoulder, and tried to move it. It responded—limply—dangling with all the finesse of a puppet on strings.

“You—I-shit.” The pain took her, and she could say no more.

Jenn looked up. A sawblade emerged from Cerica’s right arm, attached by lengths of red muscle and tendon.

“You wanna say something clever? Go ahead, hag. Say something clever. Call out my appearance. Make fun of cherry boy Kaito for falling for a literal 300-year-old loli. I've heard it all.”

“Did you choose to wait here instead of chasing me?” Jenn asked.

“Who else?” replied Cerica, giving her smug, self-satisfied smile that probably did a number of otakus in.

“Y-you're pretty smart for a kid.” Jenn groaned. Stuttered for a bit. “I’m gonna have to turn up at one location anyway. So why not just save the effort?”

“Bingo!”

“All this for poor, Kaito-kyun.” You could hear the disgust. “At that point, just become a participant yourself."

Cerica had a proud look. “Sometimes, a little bit of watching is better than the doing, you know.” She played with her drills, twirling them around her finger with a grin.

Jenn studied her face for any giveaways. Then shot her head from side to side, as if searching for a way out. “Listen. Listen, just work with me, alright?” She was bleeding, and bad, and in her wounded state, sounded on the edge of desperation.

“Hm?”

“Since I have Kaito’s token, I’m now officially a participant. That means you can’t hurt me.”

“Uh, is the syphilis kicking in?” said Cerica, looking to the bridge’s stationed guards. “Do you think I would’ve cut you, if I could get in trouble?”

“So what you’re saying is… you’re not a participant?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, could you repeat that? I’m kind of hard of hearing. Comes with age.”

“I’m not a participant.”

“What’d you say?”

“I’M NOT A PARTICIPANT YOU HAG!”

Her scream rang loud and clear, surpassing even the muffle of rain.

“Oh, fair enough.’

Jenn slowly rose. She gripped her left fist in her right, and raised it up as if in some declaration of battle. “Listen, Cerica-chan. I didn’t want to play this card but—don’t you see?”

“See what, hag?”

“The truth is I’m an agent from the Indarian Kingdom.” Her left arm flared to life, a beacon of red in the midnight. “Me and Filly? Agents both. All along, we’ve been testing you and Kaito.” Jenn shook her left hand like a lightstick. “The scam. The chase. All of it. And in doing so, what we’re really trying to do is—FILLY SHOOT THE FUCKING LOLI!”

Bang. A hit to the knee. Bang. A hit to the arm.

With each shot came a chunk of mangled flesh, and a split-second flash of light. Sherica fell to one knee. Her face was twisted in momentary surprise, still unable to process the situation.

That was all Jenn needed. Charging Sherica like a bull in mating season, Jenn shoulder slammed the poor girl over the bridge, straight into the lake below.

“Hahaha~” A giggle burst from Sherica’s lips. “Hahahaha!~” It turned higher and higher, shrill with the manic joy she always had. “Oh, what a turn-on!”

She hit the water back-first. Sherica’s dress floated around her, in the near like-ness of a bloodied rose.

Jenn stood watch, peering over the stonerailing. In a flash of thunder, her face became plain to see—a smile, in equal satisfaction as it were cruel.

She crossed to the other side. The smell of gunpowder was still in the air.

“Thanks,” said Jenn, tipping her head to Filly.

He twirled his revolver, then tucked it tight in the holster. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

They went ahead, moving to a great stone statue. It portrayed a woman in plate, with a naginata at her side, and an Arisaka Type 38 at her foot. A sort of make-shift stall was before it, manned by five White Hat guards collecting tokens in small wooden boxes.

Kaito was there, waiting. Arms crossed in some display of faux violence.

“Jenn-san, I wanted to as—”

She backhanded him. Kaito turned in the air. Life moved on.

And so Filly and Jenn did as any person would, depositing their respective tokens, and sitting on a small wooden bench, eyeing the comers and goers with casual intensity.

“Might wanna get that checked out,” said Filly.

“I will,” Jenn eyed her shoulder wound, and whispered a half-answer.

She lifted her head. The sky was set to the colour of ash and ink, stretched so thick that the stars could not peer past. Jenn opened her mouth. Rain and wind caressed her tongue. She smiled, chin high, as if indulging a particularly succulent meal.