I reach out with my new arm, gleaming oiled obsidian aglow with status lights all green, the titanium plating sleek and sinous in the sun. The cybernetic paw is strong enough to crush a diamond to dust, and as it wraps around the throat of the neo god in the Kitsune mask I feel a twisted peace.
Vengeance.
"Now I have you," I whisper, ears flat back, eyes bright, panting in some twisting maelstrom of elation and horror that I've let my hate for a stranger go so far.
Of a sudden his paw finds that metallic wrist, grips it with the softness of a feather, and his gaze meets mine and then he rips my choke hold aside.
"What is love," he asks simply, his eyes framed by painted plastic, gray as a distant hurricane and searching mine. "Is it the wonder when you touch one another, is it the children that come after, is it the alteration of the future when they try to start families of their own or slay villains like me? If only I knew..."
Suddenly there's a crimson rose between us, tall and glowing with life. His free claw carresses the petals, evades every thorn. I can't see his face, yet his words are something I'll never forget. "We're already dead, they tell us it's to make room for them yet that's something I can't accept, so I'm going to fight it," he says. "I'm so sorry."
Not again. It can't be. Yet it was.
Green fire.
I sunk to my knees, my flesh melting from my bones like wask, and in that last moment he took off his mask. Ash swirled around him, acrid and black, his kimono smoldering in an armageddon of his own creation.
And do you know? Behind it was nothing at all. The power he'd found had ended him as well as the world.
-
"Triss wake up! Do you copy?"
I groaned, rolled out of bed. A bottle of sparkling rose wine tipped over, fizzed angrily.
"Triss. This is Six Four Two Zero. Master command HQ. Do you read?"
I whimpered, fumbled for the commset. "I read," I slurred.
"We've got great news. We found Kitsune dead in a one bedroom apartment. He was holding a rose but the science lab has already run an analysis. It's ordinary. He's dead. We've got him. Traces of calcium carbonate, rags from walmart. The bastard's dead. He's dead!. The mask on his skull was a match!"
"Good news," I forced.
-