Are We Cool Yet? [Complete!]

Blood

Shy's POV

So there are only maybe two more chapters until the end of this book! This one might be short cause I have to go bake a surprise cake.

I'm planning a sequel, tho, possibly including that asshole scientist, a few *dead* characters, and maybe our favorite computer and unkillable lizard.

—————

Peanut flits away, out of my view in an instant. He's going to protect them. He's going to fight for them. I want to fight, too. For Mask and Doc, and for Peanut, and for Larry. I follow in his wake.

I'm not the only one, either. Docents flood in from the surrounding shelves, heading for the sounds of gunshots. Other anomalies and men alike, strangers marching on either side of me, some bristling with weapons or spikes, some completely unarmed but just as willing to fight.

There's a word on the tide, whispered from creature to creature. The Jailors are here. The Foundation.

The space opens up into a battlefield. Easily hundreds of MTF, hundreds more bodies from both sides. The air is thick with blood and bullets. Peanut is working, crunching. How is no one looking at him?

There's no time for thinking about that. A guard fires a few rounds into my stomach. I reach for him and throw him down, but he gets up again and again. I thought I was stronger than that. I have memories of...

I need to take off the cloth. To do what I need to do, I need them to see my face.

With shaking fingers, I try to undo Doc's knot, and the soft pink cloth comes loose in my palm. I let it flutter to the floor.

I lock eyes with someone. 

The MTF's eyes don't just meet mine, they seem to pry until I'm laid bare and he's staring right into me and all the parts that I don't want to see again, the parts I don't want to remember, and the parts I want to remember forever. He's going to steal it. Steal me. 

I'm dizzy. My vision clouds and fades. This is how it always goes.

I don't know how long it lasts. I'm aware of everything and nothing. I'm numb, but I feel the flesh of body after body ripping open, blood underneath my fingernails, blood on my face. I can't see, but I see the fear in their eyes. I see them run. I'm impossibly fast— then more blood. That's all they are now.

Red.

I want it to stop. I don't want it to stop. At least now, I can't cry. I don't. I scream. At least now, the  deepness of everything is gone. Shallow shadows where my feelings were. No pain.

I'm going to return to it, eventually. I'll feel the pain again. I'll be sane again.

They fill me with bullets, but I don't care. They could tear me limb from limb and I'd hardly notice.

After a century or thirty seconds, I find myself in a field of blood. I take in a sharp, cold breath, the first I remember taking in a while.

I'm back, I— shit, I—

I'm standing in them. Everyone. God.

There's nobody left here. I see a few last shapes running away into the shelves. Running away from me. Because, if I was out... maybe I killed more than just MTF. Maybe I— maybe I— nononono.

"P-Peanut?" I call, and wince at the carry of my voice in the emptiness. "Doc? Mask?"

"You are done now Shy?"

"Peanut!" He slides out from behind the nearest shelf. "Yes, I... it's over."

"That was what you called the rage state? When you are looked at?"

I cover my face, more from shame than anything else. Peanut and I are good at not looking at each other except out of the corners of our eyes. "Yes."

"Even when family sees?"

"Did I..." I can't finish the sentence.

Peanut is holding something. A familiar shape, a shredded D-class uniform, a pale, white-striped face caked in blood.

"D-did— did I, did... is... he's not dead, right?" He can't be he can't be he can't be I couldn't have—

"I do not think so, yet. He is close. I came and got him when I saw."

Oh God oh God oh God, my hands and face are dripping with blood and some of it's his and I might have killed Doc, he might die, and I can't—

There's something else, behind me. The gold light of a Docent's lamp, then more and more. "What's—"

I don't finish. I don't have to. They've come to take me out. Away from the Library. Away from everything.

I deserve it.