Wrinkly Little Tentacles

From the diner in which they were sitting, Naomi watched the intersection, next to which a cop car was sitting. She could often be seen observing like this, for her first few months beget her naturally curious nature. A sedan was approaching the intersection, when the light yellowed and turned red. The sedan ran through a red light, and Naomi looked to see if the cop would go after them. They did not. It seemed even this close a sight had gone unnoticed to all but herself.

Naomi had memories insofar as a highschool education and a better grasp of concepts than her peers, but she had little socialization; most of her reactions were self-created, and in ways that sometimes offended others. Not in a regressive way, merely that she was sometimes socially awkward, and this naturally put her well with Yuruko. Serena's transgenderism similarly never bothered Naomi, for she had never been taught that she should be another way.

Some concepts are helpful shortcuts as one ages but must be unlearned in adulthood; Naomi had essentially skipped over this, yet her lack of memories past the last few months left her with no essence of herself to separate from her corporeal body, and so she felt but a shell. She was instinctual yet sometimes lacked empathy.

Serena was sitting beside her, attempting to read one of mangas Mia had bought for her in Japan. (Subsequently, it was in Japanese.)

"Which one is that?" said Naomi to Serena.

"JoJo's." said Serena, relevantly. "Um, it's the one where their breathing gives them superpowers - Hamon. This one's part 9, Golden Experience." Serena shrugged. "I dunno what that means, though." She looked to Naomi. "Um, did you not want to tell Matoi about you getting harassed? I know she looks scary, but Mia said she's sure she'd help you if you asked."

"I know she would, I just... I dunno. It doesn't feel that bad that I need to go to her about it. They'll get bored eventually."

"Um, Naomi, that doesn't work with people like that. I used to date someone like that. If you don't give them any satisfaction, they just get worse until you do. They'll keep harassing you until you graduate." Serena resumed reading. "I mean, I used to get bullied in highschool and tried that *just ignore them* stuff. It doesn't work. They just want to feel better than you, and they'll keep it up until they do or you make it so they can't. Like Matoi with Kirihara."

"I guess, but I'm not sure what else to do. I know you and Yuruko had a few ideas, but they say really awful things about you, too, and I just wouldn't want to get you involved in..."

"Yeah, but I can handle that."

It was the implicit *and you can't.* that stuck with Naomi for the day, yet she knew there was a ring of truth to what Serena said. Words often damage half- or malformed egos; Naomi's was clearly the former for now.

Naomi looked over and saw Serena resuming reading her manga, its pages filled with the ultraviolence she would recreate in later fights. Naomi was not traumatized by violence the way a Saya or Luna could be, but it sometimes disturbed her the enjoyment Serena got out of torture & violence. There had once been a hunt with Serena & Yuruko where the two had incapacitated their foe and spent three minutes pummelling the shit out of him together, both shouting some nonsense from an anime. It felt to her that Serena did not see their opponents as fully human; they were assemblages of pixels she could splatter in to blood & gore & loot from their corpses, and this was only worsened when she was around Yuruko, for romantic couples often are amplifiers to each other.

For not partaking in this, Naomi was obviously quite the bleeding heart around campus. She perhaps possessed a more objective eye towards things, which necessarily distanced her from others.

Serena's tablet vibrated, and the two shot up.

"Where - where is it?" said Naomi, peeking over -

- and the scream in the diner across the street answered; with no time to waste, the two rushed out the doors, sidewalk&road ahead, second diner in the lot beyond.

The two entered the parking lot, streetlamps flanking them as they ran -

- and a man they knew as their foe burst out of the diner's doors, dufflebag in-hand and bouquet of tendrils out-of-chest -

" - Urasaria, dipshit!" shouted Serena -

- and received two jets of ink replying towards her -

" - Avalanche!" shouted Naomi, stomping down; a wall of asphalt burst up ahead -

- and in to the sudden barrier splashed the projectiles. Naomi snapped her stone fingers, and the wall turned to dust as the man ran left ahead. Two starting their pursuit around the lot, more jets of ink flew towards them -

" - Blackburn!" shouted Serena; and the next scene was instant.

Streams of fog flew in to the ground, acid filling the asphalt and corroding holes; at her side, Naomi stomped -

- and funnels of stone burst out of the holes, tall ends guiding the jets of ink away as they kept their rush going, sixty feet separating them but starting to gain speed.

"Better keep running, dickless!" shouted Serena, shittalkingly -

"- yeah!" shouted Naomi - " - run with your, lack of - lack of dick between your legs -"

- the two started cackling as she continued -

" - yeah! Miasma's gonna, uh, gonna fill your face with -"

- as they kept their run going, Naomi's voice lowered - " - uh, what are you gonna fill - once we catch up -"

" - a surprise."

" - with, with a surprise!" shouted the hypewoman, two laughing as they kept their chase. Another streetlamp was beside; stopping quick, Serena saw the man step beside another one ahead -

- and the next scene was instant. Her tentacle shot through the pole; ahead, the second lamp's bulb shattered in a rain of glass, man shrieking as the shards sliced his skin -

" - dumbass!" laughed Serena, but in the next instant -

- a jet of ink burst out of her streetlamp's bulb, two-way connection allowing it to travel through the wires & hit the duo's faces; the blindness staggered them back, fog repairing the ground before the second volley could come. Ink stitching and starting to clench their eyes, they heard the man fleeing again up ahead; streams of fog flew underneath the two's ink and filled it with water -

- but the two barely sighed as the ink absorbed it; new streams of fog flew in to their black pools -

- and filled them with hydraulic concrete. It started instantly to harden, vision still blinded as they staggered forward -

" - Avalanche!" shouted Naomi -

- one Avalanche punch shattered her prison to dust, and a second smack of Serena's freed the two as they swept back, nodding as they ran with clear eyes again. They caught up quick to sixty feet away again, man on the sidewalk now.

"Nice - shitty tentacles, dumbass!" shouted Serena, waving her own like a challenge -

" - yeah!" shouted Naomi - " - all short and wrinkly! Way smaller than Miasma's - "

- and Miasma's lips pinched as they kept their run going, foe with tentacle way smaller than her's veering out to the road. The two gave careful pursuit, streetlamps beside as they rushed to the sidewalk, forty feet separating the two -

" - wait -" laughed Naomi as she passed by another streetlamp - " - got it!"

Avalanche's arm gripped the pole, and as a woman might pull a weed -

- ripped it clear out of the ground; streams of fog filled it as she threw it ahead, and as the man turned to counter -

- the explosion within blasted his right arm clear off; shrieking as he stumbled back, true confidence filled the two as they cleared the clearing, and as Blackburn's tentacle gripped his neck -

- a cloud of white gore burst out of his stomach, torso caved in like a drill had gone through -

"- death by milk!" laughed Serena.

The grisly white corpse fell rigid, and Serena started laughing as the milk&blood dripped down. Naomi nervously laughed at first, but was soon in the absurdity of it, and this satisfied her for a time as they swung back by the diner.

+++

If there was one thing Vinny Greco could not be accused of it was dereliction of force. He had no mind wired for strategy, but his stature & crocodilian Revenant gifted him a certain level of intimidation towards other men, and the small crew he had been able to accrue over the years were generally just stupider apes than he was.

He loved violence and he loved getting into fights, and often as teenagers his brother Geno was forced to get him out of scraps that were above his head; without it he would have been found out as a host much sooner, and likely get himself killed by whatever student came to arrest him. The two brothers were linked, for though Geno was the more reasonable, over time he was pulled to get Vinny out of various messes Vinny often had no capacity to know he was in.

Vinny had just come back from selling some stolen goods when Geno glanced up to him from the couch of their shitty little apartment. "Vinny, I've got something to-"

"God damn, I can't get through the front door first?" He shut it. "Hang on, 'cause I gotta fuckin' story to tell you. I was meetin' up with Frank, and he's got somebody new he wants me to look at. I'm thinking, alright, this kid's a runt, but I'll eat lunch with the shit. We go over to Mel's, and I swear, I ain't never seen a pickier little shit than this kid. He says he wants a quarter anchovies on one side, half pepperoni on the other, all of that shit. He's asking what type of root beer they got. Damn, I had half a mind to slap that little shit and throw him out the window." He laughed. "'ey, it's like that time with the guy in the toupee, when we-"

"Vinny, we got-"

"Hey, I wasn't finished with my story. But damn, I felt bad for whose takin' our order, 'cause any of that shit is one hair off then he's getting his ass blown out by this kid, *and* by his boss. Damn, I fucking hated working in a place like that. That's why it's better when you answer to yourself, nobody else. That's real power there."

Geno sighed. "Well, as I was saying..."

"Saying what?"

"There's students here."

Vinny turned to the door. "What, right n-"

"No, not right now, Vinny, in the area."

Vinny turned and shrugged. "Yeah? So what?"

"Well, we gotta deal with them one way or another."

"Yeah, if they show up when we're doin' something, then-"

"Preemptively, Vinny." Geno shook his head. "I know this chick who works down at the Holiday Inn. Those students don't make shit for salary, I'd bet you that's where they're staying. That's if we wanna fight them, or we could leave for a week till they get bored and leave -- that checkpoint ain't no issue for us. Sally Trangese can put us up somewhere for a few days. I know ever since that thing happened between you two, you ain't been close with him, but-"

"Fuck that. We've got our own thing going here. I'll get Gaspari and Rich to see if they can deal with those two little pricks. Damn, I hate fuckin' Sally." He looked around the shitty apartment they lived in, seemingly deep in thought (for him), then muttered again: "Damn, I fuckin' hate Sally."

Thus far you can guess how these two men will end, and even had they not been killed by Serena & Naomi, they mostly would have ridden their life through to its inevitability. Vinny was a man too zomboid for much else, and it's doubtful whether he could even have grown to be a functioning member of society. Geno, of course, never developed a real identity detached from his brother.

The Greco brothers were insects who having made it in from the outside, and onto the house's new floors, were then plastered below a layer of wax, trapped underneath it and left to writhe to their inevitable conclusions, unable to grasp anything which may have cleansed themselves from the detritus of their everyday.