Chimera

Kitezh was in a peculiar scenario. She was suddenly transported to a room with the high-ranking military officer, Captain Grigori. Both of them seemed to have a mutual dislike for each other. On top of that, she was now in the body of a guard that was bound to a chair, yet her body felt free.

Kitezh was now facing a weapon from the past: The brass knuckles from the shatter phenomenon. Grigori had it attached to an arm corpse and was ready to kill her.

Kitezh only had mere seconds to defend herself. She tried moving her arms. She could feel them freely moving, yet she only saw them bound to the chair, struggling in their place. Kitezh barely had time to comprehend the weird sensation.

“You don’t even have your helmet with you. This will be a very quick end to your life.”

CRACK!

“AAAAAAAAAH!”

Grigori thrusted the corpse arm like a battering ram against Kitezh’s face. Bones and blood were shattered everywhere. Kitezh could only scream in pain.

“You're the one not making this easy. You’re only prolonging your suffering,” said Grigori, unmoved by her wails of pain.

“S-STOP IT! I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU W-WANT!” Kitezh conceded.

Grigori noticed something odd about Kitezh as she screamed in bloody horror. The arms were covering her face.

Grigori pulled the bloody arms apart. She could see Kitezh’s face all dark red and drippy, yet completely intact.

“What? Your face is not shattered at all!”

KER-CHUNK!

Grigori turned around. Something opened the door.

“WAAAAAH! GRIGORI!”

Before Grigori could question the guard who was suddenly screaming behind him, he noticed something else. He could see that the wall in his room was completely transparent, revealing the hallway of the barracks.

“I’ve figured it out now. You used some phenomenon power to swap my head to this guard’s body strapped to the chair. That means my body had the guard’s head. However, I still have full control of my own body, and so does the guard. That means I could do something like use my body and ram it into a wall, making the guard instinctively cover his head afterward. But, he was actually covering my head on his body instead,” Kitezh surmised.

“So, I ended up shattering the arms of that guard instead,” said Grigori, looking at the corpse's arm.

“But, how did that guard there get in here screaming? I suspected you had to be close by, considering these guards were all trying to bring me to you. I’m not wearing my helmet, but all I need to activate powers is to possess the phenomenon item itself. I used my main body to carry the helmet, and turned all the walls invisible. From where my head is sitting right now, I could see my own body moving out there in the hall and have it come into the room right now. That is, my body with the guard’s head where mine should be.” Kitezh continued.

BAM!

“And how about that? Using my explanation to distract you as I fight using a remote-controlled body. I even learned that my helmet can be used as a bludgeoning tool.”

BAM!

BAM!

Kitezh disarmed Grigori of the corpse arm. With that out of the way, Kitezh could watch as her main body repeatedly clocked Grigori in the face using her helmet.

Despite the onomatopoeia, Kitezh’s attacks weren’t effective enough to even knock out a person. Grigori could fight through the annoyance. He reached out for something behind him. Kitezh could not see what it was, but she could hear something that sounded like yarns furiously running through wood.

Grigori’s left arm suddenly morphed into a feminine-looking arm.

Kitezh witnessed her body swing her helmet against Grigori’s head again, but the arms on the body lost their grip. She realized what Grigori had just done.

“Huh?! Why do I feel like my left arm suddenly… AH, MY ARM IS ON GRIGORI’S BODY!”

Kitezh had to focus now, as she had to remotely control her own body while also controlling her left arm on Grigori's body. However, her gaze shifted as she noticed a man rushing through the hallway behind the invisible wall and barging into the room.

“Captain Grigori, I got your sample!” yelled the guard, holding up what appeared to be a lock of black hair.

“Bring it here right now!” commanded Grigori.

“…uh, captain? Where are you?”

Grigori looked down to see… nothing. His entire body was invisible.

“Of course, now I can abuse the use of my arm on your body,” Kitezh mocked.

Kitezh used her left arm to grab her helmet, allowing her to use her invisibility powers on her body and Grigori's body that it was attached to.

“And I could do just the same,” said Grigori.

He quickly reached for the carpet behind him and scribbled something with the threads again.

SLAP!

A tentacle arm magically grew out of the guard’s right arm, just like the initial guard Kitezh encountered in her room. The arm shot out from the guard like a tape dispenser and wrapped itself around Grigori’s invisible body.

“Where the hell are these octopus arms coming from? This guard doesn’t look like the same one that I fought in my room. Though just like how I can use my invisibility through my left arm, maybe this guard is just borrowing a phenomenon item. But then that would mean… Grigori swapped his right arm with that guard!”

While Kitezh was trying to comprehend what was happening, the tentacle reached around for the carpet behind Girgori.

CLONK!

“That magic carpet thing! Quit fucking around with that!”

Kitezh slammed the helmet on the tentacle using the right arm of her own body. However, it was not enough strength to unstuck the tentacle from the carpet weaver that was grabbed.

With her main body having its only arm occupied with the helmet, Kitezh had no choice but to press her body against the tentacle. It allowed her to spread the invisibility just from the contact of her chest.

Grigori was watching what was unfolding. First, the tentacle arm was turning invisible. Then, the carpet weaver itself lost its colors.

“Not easy for you to weave if you can’t see it,” said Kitezh.

SMACK!

Grigori used the tentacle arm to whack the helmet out of Kitezh’s right hand, returning all visibility to everything. However, the carpet weaver was still suctioned to the tentacle. As a result of it suddenly impacting against the helmet, the carpet weaver flew off the tentacle and onto the ground, making it up for grabs.

Grigori immediately used the tentacle to grab the weaver.

SHANK!

Kitezh was not going to let that happen. Her body still had her dagger concealed in its clothes. Her actions were meant to lure out the tentacle in front of her body and slice the appendage apart.

Kitezh’s body grabbed the weaver, but she did not know what to do at this point. She had the strange object that Grigori used to switch body parts, and she now needed to figure out how to undo everything.

Realizing this situation, Grigori’s left arm, which was still part of Kitezh’s main body, began to wrestle with Kitezh’s right arm holding the carpet weaver.

However, Kitezh witnessed something behind her body. The guard with the tentacle arm. Kitezh had to decide now. She had to let go of the carpet weaver to actually make progress in this fight.

SHANK!

“OW, URGH!”

She pulled out her knife and stabbed Grigori’s left arm attached to her body.

THUMP!

The guard behind Kitezh tackled her to the ground. She lost her grip and heard her dagger clang against the floor.

“Damn it, this is getting too hectic for me to handle!” thought Kitezh.

The guard held down Kitezh’s body. As much as she wanted to fight back, she focused on inching herself closer to the dagger.

During the struggle, however, Kitezh noticed there was something strange about the guard’s back. She hesitated for a moment and realized it was a familiar squiggly-patterned bag.

With all the confusion and rage, Kitezh put all her energy into wrapping her fingers around the dagger and finally…

SHANK!

She ended up stabbing…

“N-NO! JADWIGA?!”

Just half a second ago, she was up against a guard restraining her to the ground. Now suddenly, she sees a woman with black hair and a dark painted eye mask, two distinct features of Jadwiga. It was definitely her that Kitezh was suddenly stabbing.

Kitezh looked around the room again and saw it. Grigori’s body was in possession of the carpet weaver.

“It was a good thing that the delivery of Jadwiga’s hair came just in time. Now, your friend is here to play along, Kitezh. Though this is quite the unfair start for her.”

Kitezh looked back at Jadwiga, whose body was impaled by the dagger. There was blood coming down her shoulder.

“Jadwiga, that bastard is the phenomenon. I don’t know what’s happening, but you need to listen.”

BAM!

“AHK!”

Something struck Kitezh in the face.

Jadwiga had quietly pulled out one of her yellites from her backpack, which the guard had previously brought with him. With her backpack, she was able to use her pantomime phenomenon powers and shot Kitezh in the head.

“Ahk! Kahk! J-Jadwiga, are you insane?! I’m not the enemy!” screamed Kitezh hysterically.

“Kitezh, I was originally going to kill you the moment I saw your face. But this is certainly a show,” said Grigori.

He got up and walked over to Jadwiga. He put his arm around her back. An octopus arm regenerated on the body from where Kitezh originally severed it.

“I bet you’ve been quite confused for a while, but let me properly introduce my power. Or, the one that I now possess. This is the chimera phenomenon,” said Grigori.