☽ 𝓈𝓊𝑔𝒶𝓇 𝓂𝑜𝑜𝓃 ☾

[ayzrules]

 

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆

ꜰᴜʟʟ ɪɴꜰᴏ • 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑠 ✧ 𝒸𝑜𝓁𝑜𝓇 𝒸𝑜𝒹𝑒𝓈**]
{ 𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐀𝐑𝐃 }

𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒

𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝑜𝓃𝑒 ✧ 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑤𝑜 ✧ 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝓇𝑒𝑒

 
━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘᴀ x ᴘᴀ x ʀᴀ x ᴢᴢɪ: ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴜ

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━ 𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄 ━━━━━━━

[ayzrules]

 

[ayzrules]

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄
𝒴𝑒𝒶𝓇 98 𝓉𝑜 𝒴𝑒𝒶𝓇 100

𝐌𝐄·𝐓𝐄·𝐎𝐑  /ˈ𝐦ē𝐝ēə𝐫,ˈ𝐦ē𝐝ēˌô𝐫/
ɴᴏᴜɴ. 𝑎 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ'𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡.
 

𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝟗𝟖, 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍

   The heavens were pale like ash, that day, and the air was shining and still as the hissing heat slithered over the arid land, coiled itself tightly around the jugular: it scalded through flesh and fur alike, choking fine bits of sand and grit into Chrissy’s lungs and boiling blisters into her fingers and smothering every last droplet of moisture into mist.

   Chrissy sighed, adjusting her grip on her bag. On days like this, when even the wind was mercilessly beaten down into the ground by the overwhelming heat, there was not much anyone could do except wait for nightfall. The darkness was life, here in Meteor City, and the people prayed for the storms. Even Chrissy - cynical as she was - couldn’t help but to let out a sigh of relief whenever thunder rumbled long shadows over the stratosphere and growled menacingly from behind hyacinth-bruised clouds, the skies swollen with dust and water vapor in the moments before silver-sawed lightning gashed the world in two. There was no god, here, save for the rain. Besides: death was too commonplace, too unendingly 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒, to garner any sort of reverence.

   Nobody died gloriously in this city of people who did not exist. Chrissy had seen her fair share of unfortunate souls being gutted open like rotten fish with sharp bits of scrap metal and shattered beer bottles, vermillion splattering over the ground like streaks of paint in some absurdly expensive Pollock Jackson piece. It glittered ruby-bright, gleaming like a lancing spill of gemstones, but jewels were worth less than nothing in Meteor City.

Spoiler

   Afterward, the corpses were tossed haphazardly into one of the never-ending heaps of 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑠ℎ that crowded over the twisting streets like an unruly swarm of skyscrapers. The smell of blood would have run over the sand-singed terrain like water percolating through limestone, filling every last pore with crimson-copper agony, if not for the rusted piping and acid-burned batteries and sludge-mucked oil strewn across the land, splashed over the horizon in a spray of leaded sea foam. Anything the world didn’t need, they dumped it here in Meteor City: this empty stretch of desert that started as an unmarked junkyard, before they realized they could leave people here, too, and nobody would say a single damn thing.

   Chrissy’s phone vibrated, and she fished the device out of her pocket to find a text from September: 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒. She pursed her lips and cast a furtive glance around her, her gaze flitting idly over the vultures that flocked to Meteor City like flies to honey. Whenever a fight burst up - shining and scarlet-shrill and spewing out from crumbling buildings and tangled alleyways in a frenzied rush of maroon - they circled lazily over the sun-scorched desert, eager for their next meal. In the evening, they gathered together like passels of pigeons as embered twilight smoldered its way across the land; Chrissy hadn’t paid them any mind in years, now, and so she duly ignored the group picking at the strung-out entrails of some rodent or the other as she passed on by.

   Chrissy dialed September’s number before bringing her phone up to her ear. “Hey. What’s up?” she asked when her friend picked up, rounding the corner into a flat stretch of open “road” as she did so. The ever-present mounds of trash had been shoved to the side and cluttered together into rolling hills, jumbled and hodgepodge-d like a discarded jigsaw puzzle of mangled plastic and shredded tires and stabbing chair legs. Sawtoothed bits of glass and iron jutted jaggedly out from every direction, like the prickling spines of some kind of giant man-made porcupine. Chrissy wrinkled her nose - the entire city was drenched in the sickly-sour rot-stench of overripe fruit, and it seemed to suffocate all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. The unrelenting heat and stagnant air only made things worse.

   September’s level voice was broken up by crackling shots of static. “Are you busy right now? I have a client who’s got a few openings.”

   Chrissy hummed, considering. “No, I’m just hanging out with Jess, but I have a feeling that she kind of wants me gone soon,” she replied drily, nimbly sidestepping a viscous stream of liquid that was oozing its way downslope. The oily substance was sheened in ricocheting rainbows under the pale midday sky, like silver-burnt fish scales glittering with blood and sunlight at the edge of a razor-sharp boning knife. It smelled about the same, too - stinking and putrid and flushed through with salt-sting and iron. 𝐺𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠.

   September laughed. “How’s she taking to the WiFi set-up? I can’t 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 you’ve let her free onto the Internet.”

   “Well, last I heard, she got into a fight with some fucker named ‘Jeon-kook’s Right Knee’, whoever the hell that is. I think it was on Chirper.”

   “You’re serious? That’s a-pop, man. You don’t mess with a-pop fans - that’s 𝑡ℎ𝑒 first rule of the Internet.”

   Chrissy let out a derisive snort. “It’s not like Jess listens to 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑠. She’s also got some Spectrum stans coming for her ass, so I guess it’ll be us against the a-poppies and Tones. Anyhow, what’s this job like? I might be interested.”

   September rattled off the details - a higher-up in the Heil-Ly Family wanted one of the Cha-R underbosses dead, apparently - as Chrissy shouldered the door open and made her way into the cramped set of rooms she shared with Jess. Weak rays of sun-bleached light floated in languidly through one of the cracked window panes, swimming over the kitchenette to doze off in a glimmering puddle of dust motes pooled out across the threadbare rug.

   Chrissy peeked into the toaster oven to make sure that Jess hadn’t burned anything in her absence before turning her attention back to the phone, huffing in mock consternation. “Heil-Ly and Cha-R? That’s the Kakin Empire, and the Kakin Empire’s in the Azian Continent, September. Whatever are we going to do if Jeon-kook’s Right Knee decides to track us down and beat us up for even stepping foot in Jeon-Kook’s homeland?”

   “Oh, shut up,” September laughed in response. “The client is paying 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 well, and the boss hasn’t said anything about gathering us all together soon. That reminds me - you heard about Zieja?”

   “Yeah, I did,” Chrissy answered, leaning back against the cheap card table that they used as a counter. “I always wondered why he didn’t fuck off sooner. Dude’s 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ a dick.” She paused, lowering her voice, “you think Axel’s looking into a replacement?”

   “Proooobably?” September drew out the word, her voice uncertain. “He hasn’t said anything to me, though. Just tell me if you want the job by tomorrow? They’re closing the posting in a week.”

   “Sure. Thanks for letting me know,” Chrissy responded, and they bid their farewells.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   The next morning, Chrissy blinked awake just as daybreak tiptoed up the horizon, painting the world in old gold and silvered steel as the stars retreated behind the clouds. She frowned, her nose twitching-

   -then 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 bolted out of bed.

   “Jess!” she yelled, sprinting toward the kitchen. “Turn that off!”

   Chrissy coughed, and the stinging taste of ash singed at her tongue. She reached blindly for the outlet of their toaster oven, yanking at the chord and waiting until the...bread? shoved into it had stopped smoking. She groaned, eyeing the unappetizing hunks of charred foodstuffs.

   “Didn’t I tell you to set an alarm for this shit?” she muttered in Jess’ direction, pushing open one of the windows and throwing the inedible toast out into the street, watching idly as a stray dog bounded up a haphazard pile of rust-spotted appliances to devour it whole. This early in the morning, the sun was no more than a small sliver of the sky in the east; even so, Chrissy could feel cutting rays of glass-sharp light slashing her flesh to blood-burnt ribbons, piercing straight to the bone.

   Jess barely even glanced up from the laptop Chrissy had stolen for her, squinting crankily at the screen through her thick glasses. Her hair was dark like nightfall, shot through with strands of shadow-spun starlight; Chrissy frowned, realizing that she couldn’t remember exactly when her friend and caretaker’s ink-black curls had started going gray.

   “I’m busy,” Jess replied shortly, and Chrissy rolled her eyes skyward.

   “Busy with 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡? Getting into Chirper fights with a-pop stans? You know, September said that not engaging with them was the first rule of the Internet.” Chrissy sidled over and took a peek at the monitor, and sure enough, there was a cheerful yellow bird emblazoned into the top left corner of the screen.

   She rolled her eyes again. “Will you be done soon? I’m probably going to plug in the fridge, and I don’t know if it’s bright enough outside for us to run the router at the same time.”

   Electricity was still a sporadic thing in Meteor City, as precious as rain and as fleeting as flickering flame; when night fell and snuffed the sun out, the solar panels Chrissy had brought back for Jess’ place went dark until dawn. And it was strange, Chrissy thought, that having a toaster oven and mini-fridge and electric kettle had become 𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑙 for them. She preferred not to dwell on it, but sometimes, when the world got cold and soft in the dead of night, she could still remember what it used to be like: she remembered the stabbing pangs gnawing at her abdomen like a rabid dog sinking its fangs into her gut, acid searing away at her insides.

   Like most of the children abandoned to this junkyard city of people who did not exist, Chrissy grew up kicking and screaming and clawing her way to the top of the ragged food chain, fighting against the other vicious, hunger-sharp street urchins and refusing, refusing, 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 to quit. The only way to survive in this world when you did not exist was to be stronger and faster and smarter than anyone else, and in Yorknew City and Glam Gas Land, Chrissy had seen grown men being arrested for stealing a loaf of bread or a bushel of apples. Here, children would have 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 for that burnt piece of toast she’d tossed to the dogs, carving each other open like lambs on the butcher’s block as blood splashed to the ground in a spray of liquid ruby. Chrissy knew that she certainly had.

   There was nothing to be done about it, though. This was where Chrissy came from, where she fit into the universe. Somebody - presumably her parents - had left her in Meteor City, and Jess had found her as a baby, nestled in snugly with the piles of garbage, horse flies humming restlessly overhead. Chrissy didn’t remember any of that, of course, but sometimes there was still a half-familiar bitterness tearing at her ribcage and clawing out her throat, crushed ruthlessly around her heart. Even her own 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 hadn’t cared enough to keep her, so why should she - or anyone else thrown to the wolves in this city of outcasts and refuse and people who did not exist - care about what happened to the people in the world around them?

   𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐼 𝑔𝑜 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓, Chrissy thought wryly, shaking herself out of her thoughts. The past didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d survived, and now she was strong enough to steal all the riches of the outside world if she had to. She’d do it in a heartbeat, if that was what it took to give Jess food and water and - okay, fine - Internet.

   “By the way, September called about a job,” Chrissy told Jess as she knelt down to plug in their mini-fridge, which she’d pilfered out of a House Depot the last time she was in Parasta. “I think I’m going to take it. It’ll pay well, and I have nothing better to do right now anyway.”

   “Oh, really?” Jess asked, poking at the fresh slices of bread Chrissy had set out in front of her. “Where’s it going to be?”

   “The Kakin Empire,” Chrissy answered, standing up and dusting herself off. “Izzy’s making a trip into Yorbia tomorrow, so I’ll hitch a ride then take it from there.”

   “Don’t die,” Jess grumbled, glancing up. “I’m still waiting for you to get me a rice cooker.”

   “What’s the point of a fucking 𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑟 if we don’t have any water to the cook rice with?” Chrissy retorted, rolling her eyes, but she smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. 𝑌𝑜𝑢, though - you need to stop harassing Jeon-kook’s Right Knee. September tells me that these a-pop fans are 𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠.”

   “Tell them to meet me outside, and I’ll smack them across the Azian Continent to their precious Jeon-kook and Monster Rap and whatever the fuck these singers are calling themselves now,” Jess groused, and Chrissy couldn’t help the fond smile tugging at her lips.

   It was always hard to leave. Meteor City was as brutal and unforgiving as the desert itself, its people as harsh as the unrelenting heat and as merciless as the vultures that circled restlessly overhead...but whether Chrissy liked it not, it was home.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   The hotel their client owned was nice enough, as far as those things went. Chrissy appreciated the discretion, at least: there were no nosy clerks nosing through her (very much falsified) records, no janitors secretly working for a rival mafia boss trying to spy on her. And although Chrissy wasn’t normally into that sort of thing, the bar looked nice enough, so she found herself staring out the rain-misted window as she waited for the bartender to take notice of her, the skyline transformed into glittering points of crystalline brilliance under the darkness of the night sky. Although some parts of Kakin - like the imperial capital - were wreathed in the architecture of their ancestors, with delicately-wrought domes and eaved rooftops and painted walls that blazed with all the scarlet-scorched glory of the ancient empire, this particular region was a picture of modernity, gleaming with the sharp shine of glass and steel. Even the stars were overtaken by the cutting glow of the glaring street lights.

   Chrissy was relaying her order to the bartender when she sensed a shift in the air. The presence was familiar, and Chrissy would have recognized the rippling aura anywhere - it tasted of maraschino cherries dripping saccharine syrup-sweetness and vodka twirled over with pomegranate juice, almost (but not 𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒) masking the bitter burn of alcohol laced with the hungry viciousness of Meteor City.

   “You’re never hard to spot,” a voice behind her said lightly, flicking at the ends of her metallic pink ponytail. “Though I think you could use a touch up. Your roots are coming in.”

   “Fuck off,” Chrissy grumbled, but it wasn’t as if he ever listened to a single damn thing she said. She turned, giving Namjoon an irritated look. Against his midnight-black attire, the assassin’s hair was a shock of bold cherry pink, vibrant and eye-popping and 𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑, the color of some then-unreleased designer lipstick (was it Berrybure, or maybe CAM Cosmetics?) she’d stolen for one of her clients a few years ago. Put all together, his dumb hairstyle blazed as fiercely as the stars that they couldn’t see.

   Chrissy let her gaze linger challengingly on him for a moment longer, then rolled her eyes. “Well, good thing this client isn’t paying us for our hair, then,” she replied drily, nodding her thanks to the bartender when they returned with her glass of water. She gave Namjoon a sidelong glance. “Where the hell have you been, anyway?”

   A cocky, shit-eating flitted over his face - 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 was also familiar, much to Chrissy’s eternal consternation - and Namjoon ordered a drink of his own before answering her. “Oh, well. Around. Here, there, everywhere…” he trailed off as he took a sip of his whiskey. In the distorted brightness of the hotel bar, with soft halos of light puddling down around them as the refracted radiance of the city below ricocheted through the fogged windows, the amber liquid was a pool of molten sunshine and beaten gold, glazed over with copper and caramel. The ice cubes clinked gently against each other as Namjoon set his glass down and finally answered her question.

   “I've been trailing a target in Padokea for a while,” he admitted. “I needed more money, though, and you and I both know how well the Kakin mafia families pay.”

   Chrissy huffed out a breath. “It depends on who’s in charge of the job overall, I think, no matter if it’s Heil-Ly or Cha-R or Xi-Yu,” she said. “But - you’ve been in Padokea for ‘a while’ now? How fucking long is this job supposed to take?”

   She thought for a moment, and shrugged. “Whatever. That’s none of my business. But if it's money you're after, I'm sure you could talk to Axel. One of the other members just left, so we’ve got an opening. We actually hit the Poli-Metrotan Museum of Art two years ago, and my share’s been more than enough for me and Jess.” Chrissy paused and grimaced slightly, pushing her bangs out of her face. “I hooked her up with WiFi, but all she’s been doing on it is picking fights with Tones and a-pop stans.”

   Namjoon’s eyebrows shot up, and there was a laughing smile twitching at the corner of his lip. “Ahhhh, Axel. You 𝑎𝑟𝑒 still running around with him,” he responded, taking another sip of his whiskey before pulling the stool to her right toward him and sitting down properly; Chrissy leaned back to give him some space, angling her body so that she was directly facing him.

   Namjoon gave her a long, appraising look. Then, the same laughing smile was skipping over his expression once more.

   He downed the rest of his drink then set the glass aside. “I’ll tell you, that sounds awfully appealing - and a hell of a lot better than killing rookie Hunters in the meantime. It’s gotten so boring,” he sighed, picking at his teeth with his straw. “Axel really has an opening. Hm.”

   Chrissy snorted derisively, not at all impressed by his dramatics. “Yeah, he does. Let me know the next time you’re at home, and I can put you two in touch. I’m sure he’ll let you get the spider tattoo in-” she flicked her eyes up to Namjoon’s hair- “designer lipstick pink, if you really wanted to.” Chrissy took a few more sips of her water and got up, smoothing a hand over the sleek black leather of her jacket. “You have my number still, don’t you? Just use that.”

   She grinned at him, then, a bit playfully. “And good luck with your rookie Hunters in the meantime.”

   Namjoon tipped his empty glass at her, and Chrissy threw him one final eyeroll before she spun on her heel and made her way back to her own room. She did one final check-over of her supplies before she went to the bathroom to get ready for bed, and as she was brushing her teeth, staring idly at her reflection in the mirror, she realized with a jolt-

   -shit. Her roots really 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 coming in.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝟏𝟎𝟎, 𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍

   Jewels might have been worth less than nothing in Meteor City, but Chrissy had not been very old at all when she learned that in the outside world, jewels could buy 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠. In the outside world, the blood-bright rubies she once dug out of a rusted safe while searching for food could mean the difference between slowly starving to death and living to see another day.

   There were other things that could buy life, too. Like the painting she and Axel and September had stolen during their first foray into art theft: it was just some shitty old piece of cloth stretched over a few pieces of wood, with streaks of paint thrown haphazardly over the canvas. Under the shrieking red glare of the alarms, it had reminded Chrissy of ribboned rivulets of blood splattering into the air.

   But: they couldn’t eat a painting, they couldn’t take it apart to build something useful, and it wasn’t like it depicted something she didn’t see every goddamn day. So why the ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙 had it been worth over a billion Jenny when they sold it, just because the artist’s name was Pollock Jackson? It didn’t make any 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒.

Spoiler

   Chrissy was older now, though, and (arguably) wiser. So, that was why she was slinking down the lushly carpeted corridor of some old billionaire’s mansion in the mountains, slipping silently past rows of polished wooden doors and impassive security guards.

   Once she was in Battera’s private wing, Chrissy let herself relax, just slightly. This deep into his personal quarters, there were only three pairs of guards patrolling the halls at any point in time. Chrissy checked her watch; she had a few minutes before the shift change, and that would be when they discovered the two bodies she’d left for them in the control room, bathed in the wintry luminance of their respective computer monitors.

   That was fine, though. Chrissy was all but gone.

   Drifting moonlight floated in through a pair of French doors, drowning the flurrying snow in frostbitten incandescence and dancing quicksilver. Chrissy quickly made her way over, her eyes zeroed in on the balcony just beyond the doors.

   Then, Chrissy’s ears picked up on a pair of quiet footfalls - was someone there? Chrissy gritted her teeth, reached for her aura, and 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑.

   Barely a second later, the unfortunate security guard was dangling by the throat from the crystal-tipped curtain rod, feet thrashing uselessly at the air. His body jerked once, twice, and Chrissy yanked her Nen threads ruthlessly tight, choking off his screams as thin lines of blood slid down his neck to stain his starched collar crimson. Under the soft shine of shimmering silver-gleam trickling in through the windows, Chrissy’s threads were glinting blue beams of charged lightning pulled taut, razored and sharp. And when she was certain that the man was dead, Chrissy released the corpse to loop the threads through her needles instead as she darted out to the balcony.

   𝑊𝑒𝑙𝑙. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛, Chrissy thought. She climbed atop the railing and leapt downward in one graceful motion, disappearing behind the treeline. The chilled air tore its claws across her skin, sank icy talons into her flesh; Chrissy duly ignored it and made a beeline for the sleek black car that she knew was parked at the side of the treacherously narrow road. Trees rose up all around her, jagged mountains of gnarled roots and ice-sheened branches, and the thin blanket of snow crunched and crackled beneath Chrissy’s feet as the biting wind swirled restlessly through the sky and nipped at her fingertips.

   “You got everything we came for?” September asked as Chrissy slid into the passenger seat, pulling the door shut behind her. The other Spider’s platinum blond hair was a glimmering cascade of pearl and opal haloed around her angular visage, and long shadows prowled over her features, submerging her eyes in midnight gloom. Even Chrissy’s vivid pink mane was bleached pale in the snow-dusted darkness of the winter night: her ponytail was an unruly tangle of steel-plated candy floss, and the long sliver-wisps of hair that had escaped from her braid fell forward into her face, gilded in moonglow and star-shine.

   “I think so,” Chrissy replied, bringing her bag up to double check. The gemstones she’d stolen from Battera’s vault glittered cold and hard, glistening like dewdrops and twinkling like princess-cut diamonds shattering over glass.

   “Yeah,” Chrissy confirmed, a moment later. “I’ve got it all.”

   It wasn’t until they were speeding down the highway, hours later, that September spoke up again. “Axel wants us in Yorknew for the Underground Auction this fall,” she mused out loud. “You told me about the Lukas job. Do you think you’re still going to take it? Won’t it be a bit tight?”

   Chrissy shrugged, glancing out the window. “Well I mean, Minseok Im isn’t shit. He’s a nobody in the mafia community, from what I’ve heard. I don’t know 𝑤ℎ𝑦 Lukas wants this fucking...𝐷𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑙’𝑠 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑜, or whatever, but he’s paying big. I’m not asking questions.”

   “Hmm.” September went quiet.

   Beyond the glass of the car window, shards of sunshine were gouging out the last traces of dawn, wrenching the skies into daylight and tearing all the stars to shreds. Chrissy turned away.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

   “All of it.”

   Chrissy blinked. “All of it?” September echoed beside her, and the morning light cut crystals of dancing silver and misting starlight into the frigid air as it trickled in through the cracked windows. Chrissy wrinkled her nose in distaste; the abandoned church was well-hidden, but terribly drafty.

   “Are you serious?” one of the other Spiders asked, coming to stand right in front of Axel. “The Ten Dons run the mafia community for the entire 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑. If we steal everything from their Underground Auction, we’ll make enemies out of them all!

   “Are you scared?” Chrissy shot in his direction. She could already feel the familiar thrum of something that felt dangerously close to exhilaration galloping through her veins, incandescent like roaring lightning. Already, she was relishing in prickling pulse of her aura, the surge and rush of pulling her Nen threads taut around a hapless security guard’s throat, the lancing spill of star-spun shimmer-gleam slashing over the finely-cut edges of stolen gemstones.

   For all intents and purposes, Chrissy didn’t exist. But in those moments in the darkness, when her aura was pouring over her in a bottomless ocean of power and she held the lives of those people who did exist by the ends of her razor-tooth threads, Chrissy was a falling star - moon-struck, diamond-molten, burning up even as she hurtled down to the ground.

   This world was theirs for the taking. And they were going to 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ･ ｡ﾟ❀: .✧. :❀｡ﾟ. ━━━━━━━━━━━

ꜱʜᴏᴜᴛᴏᴜᴛ @ɴ-ᴇᴜꜱᴇx ꜰᴏʀ ᴄᴏʟʟᴀʙɪɴɢ!