Eye of the Needle: Into the Reikai

Yolanda II: Twice as Hot

The halls of the immense maze of concrete and suffering resounded with terrible screams, yet Jo could not find it within herself to be terrified. Every feeling within her heart ignited only as excitement and vigor— a rush, with the horrifying surroundings only adding to this. It was everything she wanted, underwhelming if anything.

Her feet hit the floor and bounded over railings, fences. Any gateways and windows in her path were smashed completely by dense, metallic fists. She reveled in the flashing colors of the hundreds of screens, the slamming of steel on steel. If she didn't know that she was supposed to kill something, she wouldn't have seen the point in looking for whatever it was. Jo could barely control her soulform, with it randomly lashing out at whatever made noise in the form of solid steel spikes or razor-thin claws that cleaved it in two.

It'd been a strange game of tug-of-war for the past few Jo could remember—once the other face showed up. Yolanda never quite lost her will to give up and just let herself go crazy enough to be away from the controls completely, but this situation had spurred quite the well of hopelessness. Jo couldn't imagine doing anything else besides going crazy, though. Spirits preyed on strong emotions right? Feelings about what they represented, or how they affected the world; dumb, limp-dick shit like that. All you had to do was think about how dead they'd be, and it'd come true! Especially if you beat them to a pulp while you did it.

It was a little morbid, maybe, but it worked. At least, in her eyes. For Jo, violence was its own fun. Didn't matter what form, just so long as it happened. She was told multiple times that her behavior wasn't normal by Chiq, but what did she care? Chiq only showed her face at the tail end of her tantrums, or when a spirit died so she could feed off of their lost essence. She wasn't her mother or anything, and Chiq always refrained from calling Jo 'weird' or 'broken' like she was something that needed to be fixed. Jo liked herself, and that was enough.

Yolanda, by comparison, was a pretty sad sap who yearned for affection deep down, and it was always her downfall. Every so often a familiar-enough guy or gal would come through and Yolanda would lose herself in them. Jo always felt like she'd been ripping off band-aids trying to gain back control from a lovestruck puppy gone wild. But Jo was a protector, even if she couldn't protect Yolanda from everything. Heartbreaks, betrayals, and the occasional discovery of some fucked-up kinks she couldn't handle. It was a long road with a few deaths Jo personally saw to on the way, but the Reikai was a lawless land.

Jo herself didn't really care about other people as much. Maybe it was because they seemed so... dull. She was an inferno, a roaring wildfire that glowed so brightly you could see it from space. She didn't see the same spark in anyone else's eyes, madness or innocence. Maybe they really were just meant to be that way. Dull husks scorched by the first signs of real danger, trees who didn't dare move from the oncoming storm. Motionless statues who were too scared to be burnt in order to shine. Jo had asked herself once if she was one of them, a tree rooted firmly in place, but the question itself bored her. She clearly wasn't. She was the flickering flame jumping from leaf to leaf, pushing limits and loving life. Jo burned twice as brightly because everyone else was simply too scared to. Too scared to fight for a good cause or die trying in a world that would rewrite your name anyway.

It was exactly why she hated Yolanda.

Jo skidded to a halt in front of a depiction of some guy with a crown of thorns. He looked like he'd seen a few too many tours in a minefield from the missing pieces that were replaced only by scar tissue. It was a dead-end from here, she'd have to turn around. The rest of the church was fairly empty too, just pillars and shadows with windows that led to more structures outside.

Jo, on pure instinct, erected a sheet of solid soulform steel next to her head. Her ears rang for a few moments, and she coated that side of her body in makeshift mercurial armor. A few more shots rang out, all hitting the surface of the rippling metal harmlessly. All she heard from then was a shivery gasp, then helpless sobbing as a gun clattered to the ground.