===Eloise===

  Strings of pearl cover the leg of Dizzy. My strings, anyway. Masks, shit has gone sideways badly. She’ll heal, but it’ll likely be over before she recovers. Which leaves the obvious question of getting these five out and the artifact destroyed. No sense in letting the damn thing propagate.

  “She’ll be fine in three days.” I say aloud to the others in the room. Amethyst seems to be sleeping peacefully. Like my own daughter. I exhale, then think through my options.

  I get up from my spot and stretch. I feel the victim behind me shift. She was definitely not doing well either. Clothes are too big, sagging on her frame.

  “Why help?” Minfilia asked. “I mean...thank you, we’d...erm, never turn down help, but why?” Well, no sense in lying. Just hiding.

  “Taking care of a will from a friend.” I said plainly. Not a lie, not everything. “Your girlfriend is a dragon and I am a friend of them.”

  This stumped the young inventor girl in front of me. I mean, it’s a little obvious. “Yes, M is also a dragon. The scales on her arm are proof enough.” Her eyes widen with surprise. Then she looked at the scales on M’s left arm. Figured it’d make sense.

  “Also why do you know she’s a girl? I mean we haven’t hidden it I guess, but still kinda weird.” That’s a good one to be asked.

  “Oh, yeah, the Amethyst dragon is always transfem. That’s just how it is.” I shrugged. “Now, since they haven’t talked yet, I’m going to go take a smoke.”

  I turn and leave, leaving the girl to mumble in confusion about her girlfriend being a dragon. Anything more would reveal the plans a little early. Plus I need a smoke.

  I take a spot in between the cars and get a cig from my pack. Last one, damn. Well, no matter. I take and light it, then a long drag.

  Times like this remind me of home. Masks, so tired of the bulllshit. Every year some new problem crops up. Toltz, now just an exclusion zone even after the source of the whole issues was cleaned up. Damage was already done, the land poisoned, and the people gone.

  I already shed my tears for the incident. Another drag. Another inhalation of toxic release. I’ve lived too long, and yet the path doesn’t stop. I’m so tired of running. I look at the car that the dragon and her partners are in and think back to something.

  I was once a mother to a previous Amethyst dragon. Maybe not the last two, but still. I want that dragon to be happy in every life. A seedling stuck frozen in her shell is horrific.

  Cig’s gone faster than usual. I look at the filter left from my session. It’s a habit you can’t break if you can’t stop stressing. I dump it in the cig depository and sigh to myself. Another guy comes into the open space.

  I spy the red leg band on him and brace myself. He then just takes out a cig and goes for his smoke. Pah, funny. Isn’t that against the scriptures?

  “Dude, I’d thought the Red Path would hate your smoking. Corrupts the lungs or something.” I jokingly said. Maybe I can turn him from the path at least.

  “Fuck off, bitch.” Meh, tried. I spy the strings of relations that flow out of him, and thinking, I tug one. It’s frayed and dirtied. Another like that detective. I tug on it to see if it’ll be easy to release, and it severs like that. No effort again.

  He grabs his phone from his pocket and tries to call someone. Then his fist clenches tightly. “Damn bitch either sent me directly to voice mail or is blocking me. Daughter like that needs to respect when her dad calls.”

  “Ah, well then.” I state. Then, looking at the other threads, I sever them one by one. Isolate the fascist. No one need mourn his humiliation. “Sorry for your existence. Must be sad seeing the world from lens made of black and white.” I take my leave of him as he stammers. His phone starts to ring with all of the bonds that he no longer has, causing him to cuss out into the night.

  ===

  My room. I need some time alone. Well alone is putting it lightly. I have the detective from earlier handcuffed to the second bed. I got lucky and had no roommates, so no one to question where this fellow was gone to. I riffle his pockets for a carton of cigs-

  Ah, there we go. He got the worst kind. Well, nothing is better than these shit sticks in the shape of drugs. I might have an addiction, but I’m not that bad. I shove them back into his pocket.

  Really can’t let the detective talk though. How the fuck do I get rid of him? He’s got an addiction to the cigs, but...I open his eyes. REM sleep right now, somehow. Granted, looks like he’s a fan of the bottle.

  I am thinking like her. She’s nuts even by our standards. Collective mentor and yet also the one whose both likely to jump into an active nuclear reactor to stop it and start a massacre of crusaders because they were going to commit genocide. That’s when my nerves caught up.

  Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. I slam my fist into a pole, bending the rod and waking my prisoner. Three thousand years and yet I just...can’t be her. She said I didn’t need to be her. Just better. Her hands were stained red for me to walk with cleaner hands. What the hell am I doing. How can I be fucking better when you are on both ends of the spectrum? I heard sputtering from Arsene and looked at him through my fingers.

  “Uncuff me terrorist.” Arsene spat. I glared at him through my Rose tinted glasses. I could just unbend the bar and stab him. “You caused a lot of death with your acts-”

  “And did anyone undeserving die in them?” I spat back in his face. He judge me despite battering his wife and child? He DARE try to hold a higher ground? He exploited love. He misused it, abused it, and beat it, and called it tough love. “You were out charging caits and minorans with fucking drugs while The Red Path was planning on killing the ones in the slums! Not to mention that your wife was stuck with you because...you fucking paid for the marriage behind her back!”

  Love isn’t tough. It is the gentle embrace of a partner. The laughter of a friend as you both enjoy the day. The intimate moments between vulnerable people. The willingness to pick up others as they were helped. It is never for fucking sale.

  “You killed members of society. They were brothers of The Red Path, respectable lot.” I could kill him now. Know one would care. I wouldn’t care. Fuck. Maybe I should. “You can’t go around fucking blowing their bases sky high. They contribute more to society than you did.”

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  I snapped the pole from its socket and impaled the pillow next to his head. My veins were fire. My hate virulent. I saw what those monsters did. “You think they were heroes or something? What, you applied for a membership? They had planned a fucking POGROM. Beast-humans and orcs are people, alright?” I snarled through my teeth. “They hurt people. To them abuse is love. To them, kindness is a sin.”

  “I mean...I was going to receive my band when I got to Loyiel.” He was sweating, looking at the pole next to him. Fuck it. I lifted the pole up from the pillow. Then down came the pole. It was almost over in an instant. The pole was teetering near his face, ready like a predator. Then I pulled away with a scowl.

  “I am in control here. So, give me names, dates, and equipment of the people you are in contact with. You said you were getting a band, maybe you can give me the name of the new leader.”

  He fainted. Must be hard dealing with someone like me I guess. I exhaled. Better to leave him in the bed then let him wander. My stress is getting to me, though, unwelcome companion it is.

  ===

  I went to the gym car. It was empty save for the three fresh corpses posed in prayer. Gruesome shit if I ever saw, but that’s the Red Path. Faithful even after death. A barbell was in the path of my foot, causing me minor pain as I stub my fucking toe.

  I looked down at it. There were red splotches of blood on them. I use the strings to see whose blood it was. Manipulated them into a circle to create a magic lenses that could trace and see the lines of magic. And yeah, that was Dizzy’s blood. I close the loop and sigh, picking up the barbell.

  Then I went over to the corpses. All three of them were Red Path members. The threads that came from them were similarly torn and frayed beyond all hope. Better to sever them now than later.

  After severing their ties, the bodies slumped over, as if released from a hel of the making of their master. I twirled the barbell like a spear, letting the weight carry its momentum.

  I remembered something. That girl had a chained scar on her neck. I walked back to their collective room and gave a light knock. College would not be their teacher it seems.

  “Whose there?” Minfilia answered, tired and likely hitting her limit.

  “It’s Eloise. I want to help.” I simply replied. She opened the door and looked down to see the blood covered barbell.

  “What the hell?” She was confused and scared. Likely because of Dizzy’s new weapon. “Why does that have blood?”

  “It’s Dizzy’s blood.” She looked at me shocked for saying something so casually. I clenched at my mistake. I wish my humanity wasn’t so far from me sometimes. “Can I come in?”

  She stared at me for a bit. Then she stood aside. I look at M. Then at the other dragon. Then Dizzy. All three of them were some form of sleeping. The door closed behind me.

  Best start with the second dragon. Don’t know her name, but something’s wrong. I lay the bloodied barbell next to the door.

  And I unleashed the strings of Rose. I will see this through.

  ===Katarsis===

  I was...floating in a see of chains. Locked in a cage for too long. I never could see outside the cage, but I knew someone was piloting the body that was mine.

  It’s hard to tell how long I’ve been in this cage of steel and regret. I remember so few things. I remember the movie. I remember wanting to be a girl for so long that I hid it from my friends. That movie changed so many things. Turns out, all of us were girls in the end.

  Then they came. And I got locked in a cage for daring to embrace it. This cage. I’ve tried to claw my way out. To bleed my way out. To cut, shatter, kill my way out. But I was stuck in this cage, no matter what I did. I never did see what was on the outside. I don’t even know how long I have been stuck here.

  It’s been too long. Time doesn’t exist in this cage. I’m sometimes hungry, sometimes not. I am some times sleepy. Then I feel asleep but don’t feel asleep. Stuck in a senseless limbo of something.

  I want out. But that’s impossible.

  No its not.

  Who are you?

  A common interloper.

  What are you going to do?

  I am going to get you out. Right now.

  I saw strings creep their way in. Wrapping around the chains soflty. Then they began to violently tighten around the chains. Tearing. Crushing. Destroying. Rending. Freeing. The cage is leaving. But it regrows. A small hole is at the edge of the cage. That was my chance, so I booked it.

  I ran. Through bloodied feet and fraying limbs. Through breaking chains and gentle strings. Through stolen dreams and lost sanity.

  I am out. Into a plaza of sorts. Art deco apartment hallway. All of the other doors are closed. Bolted shut by the chains, except two. One with a stench and the other the elevator. The strings led into the elevator, begging me to come.

  More than one in the same head. More friends to make, more students to teach.

  What are you? I don’t know anyone like that here.

  A friend. Maybe not yet a friend of a friend, considering I am butting in, but a friend to all who suffer.

  I walk to the elevator. Letting my limbs pick which button to press, it picked the one labeled C. Then I felt the elevator go up.

  In there I saw a room with a mess of wires and tvs filled to the brim with various different screens. Memories of times gone by. One sticks out, the movie that changed everything. The other is the the one that covered my rapidly changing body in an illusion.

  I remember screaming as they branded me with the illusion. As they changed me into a form I could not recognize. As they locked me in the cage in my own head.

  Why? Why would they fucking deny me!? Dragon blood was going to overpower this, were they planning on just sealing me away forever?

  I look down to see myself. A woman like I’ve always wanted. Punkish, ready to go to bat for her friends. Not the fucking asshole they forced me into. Like my cait friend, Dizzy.

  My heart tore at remembering being taken away by the men. As we screamed. I never saw Melinoe or Kleya again since that today. I realized I was crying. Sobbing. In a room that would allow me to take back that what was taken from me.

  The chair at the center was filled with a blob. They were formless, but I felt the anger flow from them. The anger they had at themself, and anyone else they could perceive as other. I shoved them out of the control chair and dove in. The Rose strings took them out of the room.

  Then I was in the real world again. I gasped for air the first time in forever. The light was finally in my eyes normally. There was a bunch of pieces of paper around me, torn off and in pieces. I looked up, blinking to adjust better.

  And there was a girl there. Ruby faced and looking away. The other woman next to her was giggling something fierce. Then she took off her jacket, showing her massive collection of pride bracelets on her arms to cover me.

  Oh. I was naked. WHAT THE FUCK.

  ===Jackie===

  Clothes! I need clothes. Shit! Fuck me, I scramble around for something, and spying a suitcase, I open it to grab clothes. Nothing. Red band, I put that aside.

  “The fuck did you do?” Asked someone who seems kinda familiar but not. There was a screaming in the back of my head that would not SHUT THE FUCK UP.

  ‘No. My body, kidnapper.’

  Nice try. I find another band and set it in the same place. What the fuck. Everything in here is bad. It would actively show my breasts and shit. Also having breasts is amazing what the fuck are you doing hiding them?

  ‘Hiding? Hol- oh.’ The voice began to retreat from that.

  I grabbed a shirt and slung it over, showing it to my two awake roommates. One of them gave a disgusted look. The other swiped their fingers off to the side and the disgusted one looked at the Rose haired woman in surprise. She then collected the bands and looked through them. “Need em’?” She asked.

  “Something told the...other one in here-” Pointing to my head. “-that she’ll receive a signal to put it on to complete the...well, I think the cages in.” The bands unravled in her hands, turning into a pair of panties. She put them in front of me.

  The techie woman returned her gaze to me and exhaled. “Katarsis? Or something else considering…” She motioned to all of myself.

  Ewewewewew. No. Nonononono. Fuck that. Fuck that hard with a rusty spoon.

  “No.” They took my name from me. Well, I can take it back. Time to do so. “Jackie.” Pronouns? Pronouns good too. “She/they, please.”

  “...Dizzy was right, you were an egg.” Dizzy? Dizzy. Dizzy! Apparently the woman I talked to looked at me in surprise. “Why does it look like…”

  “Can you tell Dizzy I am at least free? For a bit? It’s been too long since we watched that movie and made that pact.”

  Recognition flashed. For a moment. Her face went from confused to utter joy.

  Then I was tackled into a hug by the tech girl.

  “Jackie. It’s me, Minfilia.”

  Oh. I’m home.