[Yandere Meowscarada x Reader] I'll Make Them All Disappear!

79 | The Cat and the Rat

One moment they stand, the next they are reduced to heaps of broken metal. In the air there is the smell of rust and hot steel, as if blood were baked—the stench of dead machines repugnant, causing your nose to crinkle up. That is the least of anyone's concerns; rather, it is who shattered the machines into a million pieces. Who stands in a sea of metal. Who looks carelessly around at her surroundings with an empty expression on her face—no empathy, no feeling, no remorse.

Out of everyone suspended in silence, Briar is the first to speak. "What... the... hell." She speaks for you all. It may not come as that heavy of a surprise to you in particular, given you've spent your life with the cat and that naturally means living in a world dominated by her strength, but even still it is a moment of sheer shock. Even Kieran, who has been the most skeptical of Meowscarada's abilities, is stuck with his mouth hanging ajar. And though Penny's eyes dazzle, that is only the glare of crystalline lights reflecting from her glasses.

Cinnamon and Zoroark are captured by the way Meowscarada stands, and both take silent steps away from her when her soft pink eyes land on them.

You look away from Meowscarada's stony pose in the middle of the fallen machines and look up at the stranger in cloaks who isn't moving a muscle and, really, hasn't moved a muscle ever since Meowscarada swept through their team. "Do... do we pass?" you ask, though you know the answer, and telling by the way their head gently tilts to the side, as if avoiding your gaze, they must know the answer too.

All they offer is a nod, surprisingly quiet. Given their stance before the rest of you, the way they've got their face hidden and the rest of their body clad in off-white rags, you were expecting at least a villainous "fascinating..." or something like that. The way they do in movies, but you must remember this is not a movie, this is real life. Real life doesn't feel real, exactly, not right now, but you are not in some dreamscape. Not in a nightmare. The stranger ahead of you calmly lifts their arms and grants Meowscarada a slow round of applause.

"You aren't some ordinary travelers, I see that now," they say. "Your Meowscarada's fighting style is really familiar. It's uncanny! And man, her power! Anyway, now that my means of protection have been reduced to scrap metal, I guess I've got nothing to hide from you. Be excited! Walk through the lab until you reach the elevator at the back, and head down to the Underdepths. From there... well, you know."

They turn around and descend into the lab, leaving you and the others to stare longingly at absent space. Penny marches forward with her hands on her hips, kneeling down and palming a few chunks of metal from the ground. She turns the stuff over in her hand, holding it up in the light of the crystals, smelling its smooth rigid edges. Her face sours.

"Never thought I'd get to witness a massacre," she mutters, head turning away from the warm metal. "And I never thought the victims would be a bunch of robots. They didn't even have any robot-y blood."

Kieran joins her, picking up a handful of metal debris. He drops it a moment later and stares at Meowscarada. "We're just gonna move past what happened, aren't we?" he asks. "Move past watching this cat completely obliterate seven Pokémon before we could take a breath." His eyes shift over to you like knives cutting through the air. "Is this normal to you? Is this what you've lived with all your life?"

"I mean," you begin with a shrug, "kinda, kinda not. She doesn't do this... normally."

"But she does it." Kieran stands up straight. He breathes, running pale hands through his sweaty locks. "I know what we're all thinking; I'll just come out and say it. She is scary! Horrifying!"