“Hikita, it seems the lab is being attacked,” the worker explained, dispassionately. “This facility is going to be destroyed. Get to the escape trains quickly.”
“Got it. You go first,” Psycho said, casting a glance toward the two specimens.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you this…but all research specimens are to be disposed of. If we let any of them live, there’s a chance they could join the other side.”
“Yeah, yeah, just get out of here already!” Psycho said, chasing her colleague from the room.
“Welp, it looks like this is good-bye. I wish I would have gotten a chance to kill a few people in actual combat first.”
“I know how you feel. But we’re just two pieces of filth. We always knew this day was coming. It’s a fitting end for those like us.”
“Yes, this is exactly the end you two deserve,” Saiko said as she reached out and pressed the button to unlock their restraints and open the doors.
The two stared at Saiko in shock as their manacles fell to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here. I’m not done making use of you guys yet.”
“Saiko, baby!”
“Saiko!”
The two hugged her with their modified bodies.
“Ow-ow-ow, that hurts!” Saiko shouted in pain.
They quickly released her.
“Okay, let’s go. The director probably won’t be too happy about this, but I’m sure I can smooth things over. I am Professor Hikita’s daughter, after all.”
Saiko and her two experiments began running down the hallway leading toward the escape trains. Most of the other workers had already boarded the trains and evacuated. Despite the shrieking alarm, the place felt eerily quiet.
The two test subjects suddenly froze in their tracks.
“What are you two waiting for, let’s go!”
The expressions on their faces grew cloudy.
“I’m sorry, Saiko…”
“It looks like there’s something pretty nasty after us.”
“Wait, don’t do anything stupid…”
“We’ll keep it busy.”
“Keep running, Saiko.”
Saiko didn’t try to stop them. Her survival instincts were screaming at her at full volume to get the hell out of there. If she died now, who would be left to create the ultimate masterpiece?
So she ran.
She ran and she ran.
But she just wasn’t fast enough.
She wasn’t even sure what got her in the end, just that it was a living bioweapon. Something not human.
“All my data…my masterpiece creation…,” she muttered, moments before it all faded to black.
“That’s right…”
The light returned to Psycho’s eyes.
“Psycho! Don’t move; you’ve got a hole in your chest!”
But the wound, which Ada had been unable to heal with all her magic, began to close before her very eyes.
“How did I forget? I got this tattoo to remind me,” Psycho said, stroking the tattoo around her wrist. “All this peace and safety must have rotted my brain.”
Glancing around, she saw that the monster that had put the hole into her chest was moving much more slowly now. It was nearly incapacitated. Tsutsumi must have taken care of it while Psycho was still unconscious.
“I’m sorry, Psycho! Y…you and your friends saved me, but I couldn’t even speak up for you! I was just scared… I know I need to get stronger, but I’m still so weak…”
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter if you’re weak now as long as you get strong someday. That desire shows your heart is in the right place,” Psycho said, stroking the sobbing Leela’s head as she stood up. “Hmph… I had my priorities all backward. I don’t exist for the world’s sake. The world exists for mine! I don’t want to be useful to others. I want to bend the world—all of it—to my own ends! Then I can become the one to realize No. 13’s dreams.”
“Psycho, what are you talking about—?”
Psycho bared her teeth in a grin.
“This place is about to become my new laboratory. It’s time I created a link between these corpses and the future. And if anyone doesn’t like what I’m about to do—well, now is your chance to survive long enough to complain about it!”
Ada and Leela stared at Psycho in shock, while the other refugees continued to hurl abuse. The mean-spirited soldier was leading the pack.
“I knew you were working for the Dark Lord!”
“How can you desecrate the dead?! Something is wrong with you!”
“Idiots!” Psycho snapped. “What good are a bunch of dead bodies to you?! The only people who can do anything right now are the living! Us! Tsutsumi, get your ass over here!”
Tsutsumi understood what Psycho was about to do even without being told.
“With this many bodies, I think we’re gonna get pretty close to making a masterpiece today.” Psycho placed a hand on Tsutsumi’s chest, and Tsutsumi’s body began to pulse. “Patchwork chimera!”
A moment later, several bony wings sprouted randomly from Tsutsumi’s body and began spilling poisonous gas. The teeming cloud of gas enveloped Tsutsumi and then began rolling down the main road, like an avalanche with a mind of its own.
“Time to feast, Tsutsumi.”
Something seemed to be writhing inside the black, smoky mist. Something hard and narrow and gnarled, like bones. Whatever it was unfurled languorously, reaching toward the corpses of the soldiers on the road and dragging them into the mist.
“Who gives a shit if people see us? We’re at our strongest when we do things our own way. From now on, we eat out whenever we damn well please.”
The writhing mist, whatever it was, began to pick up momentum, swallowing up even the corpses of the monsters lying along the road. Psycho let loose a shout as it enveloped her, too.
“Masterpiece prototype specimen 001: Grand Centipede Shogun, the Four-Armed Human-Monster Fusion Punchenator…attack!”
Psycho rose from the turbid mist, tall and glorious. She seemed to be straddling some sort of colossal creature, which reared its massive body at her command.