Realisations and Loneliness

"Everyday... Everyday you people act so miserable. Why not spice it up with a show!" Arachne yelled from a makeshift stage made from discarded wood and bones. The spider idol was getting bored just sitting around the airship, so in a spur of the moment act, she decided to put on a show. 

As everyone gathered around the front deck, Avis stood beside the miniscule stage and began playing her heart out. It had been a few days since Nvr's hunting game, and Lucy had failed to realise that her contract summoning was one way only. So both Avis and Vinea were stuck on the ship. 

While Avis was annoyed she didn't get to bring ehr stuff, Vinea saw it as more of a free vacation from his 'royal' duties. And for those who were curious about Pit, he had been locked in the brig, since no one really knew what to do with him. 

As the idol's show performance went on, the crowd was going wild. Though, Kiola herself had yet to make an appearance, because the four horsemen were trying their best to convince the dragon to let them run their store out of her ship. 

"We could make TONS of gold!" Arlo said as he pushed a crudely drawn presentation into The Dragon's face. "From what we've heard from your underlings, you enjoy eating gold, correct? IF you sign with us, you could eat as much as you want." Min said with a crooked grin, pulling the dog back. 

"Uh... I dunno. Ye see, I'm no good at this business stuff. But if ye want to do whatever your sayin', I'll let you do... What ye sayin'." Kiola answered with a nervous laugh, not exactly sure what she was agreeing to. 

The two both smiled at each other, quickly running off to tell Ro and Lamb about their new business venture. Once Kiola was left alone in her cabin, she peered out of her window to catch the tail end of Arachne's performance. 

"Huh... I didn't know they liked music. Oh! I'll have Cyel make a record player! Oh... Oh yeah." She mumbled before letting out a sigh of mist. Having Pheya hadn't exactly filled the void of Cyel's constant pestering, since the little red dragon was actually rather quiet once she got to know him more. 

She would try to bother Nvr again, but the bio-weapon had been itching to experiment with her new Ego and Kiola wasn't about to let that happen. She then considered teasing Ayre, but since Vinea had arrived, she wouldn't be allowed to. 

Then their was Lucy. The demoness had been rather distracted by her new pet, Mammy. Kiola could already hear her going on and on about how Mammy was like the perfect assistant again. So that was a no go. 

"There's also... No. What about... Nope. Uh... Shit. Oh, what about the centipede!" She began getting excited about the thought of entertaining herself with the new engineer. Without a second thought, the dragon ran below deck and soon found Senshi tinkering away in Cyel's old room. 

"You, Centipede! I want ye to enter-tain me!" Kiola yelled as she burst into the room in a haze of mist. The sensitive centipede let out a hiss of fright, accidentally knocking over her latest project. "W-What in M-Mollia's name do you w-want!?" She screamed, scuttling back around the worktable she had been using. 

"I... I wanted ye to do something." The dragon said with an awkward smile, squatting down to the arthropod's level as her tail thudded against the ground repeatedly. Senshi wasn't exactly in the mood to pander to the dragon. "I'm w-working."

"Working on?"

"A-A weapon to surpass metal gear, w-what do you think?"

"What's a metal gear?"

Senshi let out a sigh, scuttling onto a doll sized sofa and lying down, staring up at the dragon with a bored twitch of her antenna. "W-Why don't you go and p-play with your dragon? I thought you went out of y-your way to get him?"

"Meh, He's boring. I wanna play with someone fun. I know, how 'bout ye tell me one of ya dreams?" She smirked, sitting down on the work table, causing it to audibly creak under her weight. "Fine... I've a-always dreamed a-about getting c-choked to death by A-Arachne."

Kiola had to take a second take, but since this was more of a game to her, she thought Senshi was just joking, failing to account for the centipede's honesty. "Well my dream is to have an entire empire in the palm of my hand."

"A-And why is that?"

"'Cause I've always wanted a bunch of little people worshipping me like a god."

"Y-You don't dream small, huh?" The centipede giggled, continuing to tinker away on the small device in her hands. The dragon began going on and on about her dream, explaining it was one she had since she hatched. 

It was practically an obsession to her. Without warning she suddenly bolted out of the room and came back a few minutes later holding a clear glass bottle containing miniature landmarks that she proudly showed to Senshi. "What'dya think?" She asked with an excited smile.

Senshi didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't exactly impressive to her, since she was the reason that Rat had managed to steal an ancient tower that easily dwarfed all of Kiola's collection. But she was a people pleaser at heart and answered with a simple; "C-Cute..."

"You could act more... I dunno, en-fusi-atic."

"Enthusiastic. A-Actually, that's a p-point. W-Why do you struggle t-to say somethings?"

"Oh, I never went to school." The dragon said with a casual shrug as she placed her collection down onto a counter. "W-Wait, Dragons g-go to school? A-And why d-didn't you?" The centipede questioned, slightly interested in the dragon's life.

"I ate one of my clutchmates and just kinda stopped going in. I mean look at me, I'm unstoppable." She cackled, exhaling a bit of mist into Senshi's face. "Uhm... W-Wow, okay. I f-figured you'd murdered people, but eating them? Y-You're a cannibal... G-Granted, not the first cannibal I've met. B-But a cannibal none the less." Senshi mumbled, waving the mist out of her face. 

"Who's the first one then?" Kiola was now more interested, since she hadn't really heard much about The Iris or its many inhabitants. 

With little else to talk about, Senshi began telling the story of one half of The Twin Lords Who Starved.

"Long ago i-in my world, a young g-girl got lost i-in a snow covered forest with her b-brother. She had been lost, wandering around for days. The girl's brother had p-passed in the dead of winter's night, and in an act of desperation... S-She a-ate him!"

Senshi tried to spook her, jumping at the dragon playfully. Kiola remained composed, not exactly understanding the story. "That's just a ghost story... How did you meet a cannibal?" 

"Oh, w-well she ran a-a domain and w-w-was kind of known for cooking death row inmates. T-They called h-her Wendy The Wendigo!"

Kiola looked stunned for a second before bursting out into laughter. "There w-was someone called Wendy a-and she's a Wendigo? That's bloody brilliant!" 

"H-Hey, she was pretty scary... T-Then she got more scary when s-she melted with the other leader."

"What does that mean?"

"From w-what a f-few people had told me, I-I wouldn't h-have believed it myself... B-But during her b-battle with Ven, s-she was hit by a combination of her partner's candy c-cane and... An incomplete suppressor shot m-made of dragon's mist. 

I-It fused the t-two together, their hearts m-melding into one. T-They became Tophina Lolligore, a b-beast made of s-sweet treats and meats."

"And this thing is where?" Kiola asked, satisfied with the shared stories. "I d-don't know? M-Maybe they're e-eating more in the city-" Senshi actually hadn't considered where Tophina was, she just assumed she was roaming around in the detained city of Pandora's Tears... But since Apex had returned, there were a few theories she'd come up with to explain the Decaynine's presence.

Her first theory was that during the whole "reality collapsing and opening portals" thing that happened, Apex's body fell inside a rift and fell into the Eye. But that seemed unlikely, since there were way to many variables to account for it. 

A more playful theory she'd come up with was that Apex was just a being that was always attached to Grey, a monster that would pursue him no matter the world, no matter what condition her body was. As long as he lived, she'd be there to hunt him down. 

But that wasn't an actual theory to her, more a playful guess. Her last hypothesis was one that now grew slightly more concerning. From the information Senshi had overheard from a conversation between Nvr and Pit, The so called Beast of Havensbane had only been active for the last month.

And if Apex's corpse was able to get out of the city, then that could mean...

"Midas c-c-could have c-cracked open the city."

Senshi quickly scuttled away, now terrified of the possibility of the possible repercussions of Pandora's prison being opened. Yet she was more scared over the reaction Lucy herself would have. But that didn't really matter, and with a quick apology to Kiola, the centipede ran off. 

"Oh... Guess I'll hang out by myself then." Kiola grumbled, now alone once more.