Gacha Story (Mature Readers Only)

Nia...

Avocado was standing next to his son, Shadow, who was infuriated, purple eyes burning with rage. Surprisingly, Avocado was playing on the defensive, despite maintaining his view that what he did was right. He wasn't going to change his opinion, not even for his own son. "Shadow..." Avocado said, as if to be reassuring, blue eyes sparkling with something hidden and ambitious. "Don't worry about Arya. You can do better. She's a heartless, psychopathic freak."

Shadow stared, shocked by his own father's words. "How - how could you say that?!" His voice was cracking, tinged with heartbreak. "She's not like that -"

"She's a murderer!" He interjected, furiously now. "She laughs when she kills - Don't let her influence you! Look at this, she's making you turn against me, your own father! Fucking brainwasher. If you want to be like her, a killer, then -"

"If anything," Shadow was saying, "this is your fault! All of this is because of you," he spat. "You left her in a forest and Dreamer trusted you! Arya does these things because you made her! You broke her! You turned her into a - into a -" He cut himself off, tears sparkling in his eyes, unable to carry on.

Avocado's laugh was cruel. "A monster?" He asked coldly, and Shadow stared into his blue eyes, seeing a different person wearing his father's skin. "So you admit it," he drawled on. "That's what she is." Avocado placed a hand on his son's shoulder, half-comforting and half-mocking him.

Shadow backed away from him, as if terrified of his own father and what he had become. He couldn't recognise him anymore. Shadow stared, broken and defeated, purple eyes glistening with tears. "This isn't you - something happened to you -" His voice lowered suddenly, like he lost strength in his voice so that he could only whisper. "This is something wearing your face. Not my father. You're really just a monster that hurt Arya."

He snorted, hardly seeming to care. "She's messing with you, Shadow!" He yelled back. "A fucking dark witch!"

"So you have a problem with her being dark?" Shadow asked quietly. "I'm dark too, you know."

"She's different -"

"Like Nia?" Shadow demanded, no longer able to keep his emotions in, his tears falling down. "Is that why you hate her? Is that why you lock her up?"

"They're both freaks," he snapped. "Arya's a witch and a psycho, but Nia is a mixed -"

Before he could say anymore, Nia was standing at the doorway, tentatively looking between her older brother and father. Shadow's eyes widened as he stared at her and Avocado could sense the fear and panic. "Nia!" Shadow and Avocado yelled in unison, and Shadow rushed to her side, to assist her.

"You didn't -" Shadow started, but Avocado spoke over him.

"What are you doing out here?" Avocado demanded, thunderous. "Didn't I tell you to stay in your room?"

Nia brushed him off. "No," she said firmly, looking fiercely at her father. "I heard it. I heard it all! It was very loud. I couldn't stay in my room. I couldn't sleep. Why did you do that, Daddy? I heard it," she said defiantly. "I know what you did."

"Nia..." A smile played on Avocado's lips, and Nia felt a sudden burst of rage and frustration. "So, now you know. I never liked you from the moment you were born, you know. And I never will." He bit his lip, amused in her expression saddening. "You're just a freak."

She just stared at him, eyes blank and broken and Avocado's smile grew wider at that. "That's it?" she asked, voice trembling.

Shadow stood between them. "Shut up," he hissed at his father, then turned to Nia, voice kinder. "It isn't true," he told her. "Dad is angry and he doesn't mean it."

Avocado laughed cruelly at this. "Oh, I mean everything that I say. Who can deny what is the truth? Go on, Shadow, keep telling her lies just to make a freak feel better about herself. I thought staying in her room would make her realise how ugly and pathetic she is."

Nia looked so vulnerable, as if she could be shattered into a million pieces in that instant, her eyes, both black and white, flooded with tears. She couldn't hide it, but she didn't want to show it, her cheeks turning red as she covered her face with her hands.

Shadow glared at his father, and shoved him back, not too roughly. "Leave her alone, Avocado."

Letting her hands swing back at her sides, Nia looked back up at Avocado, voice fragile now, unlike before when she had first shouted at him and accused him. Avocado was still her father and it hurt to hear those words from him. Though, a part of her told her that she knew this a long time ago but never wanted to believe it. Never really wanted to admit it. Even Arya had wanted to tell her it. "Did you mean what you said about Arya?" she asked Avocado.

He grinned. "I meant every word," Avocado replied smugly. "Don't defend her. She played with your brother, broke his heart and left him, and she kills a lot of people." His eyes were wide, laughing at her and very crazed.

"That was all because of you!" Shadow challenged him. "You know that she never would have done any of these things if it weren't for you! And she wasn't playing with me. It was love."

Avocado laughed at that. "What do you know about love, little boy?"

Nia jabbed a finger at her father. "Who are you?" she asked and Avocado only laughed again. Craziness. It wasn't the same man that had raised them, that he had known their whole life. "I hate you."

Avocado was still smiling. "You don't believe that, little freak."

That may have been the truth, but Nia was no longer so sure. "I don't care." Nia stepped forwards, superiorly, despite being so small and her hands were open out. Bluish black energy emitted from her palms, hitting her father in a crack of light, engulfing him in dark, glowing energy. Shadow stared silently, wide-eyed and transfixed. His feet felt stuck to the ground, as if he was falling in quicksand, his own body suddenly feeling so heavy, and he couldn't shake the heavy weight on his shoulders. He tried to say her name, to tell her to stop or to pull her back, but he couldn't. The energy vanished and so had Avocado. Wiped out from existence and torn out of the world through a chasm of dark magic. Nia put her hand over her mouth and Shadow voiced her thoughts before she could herself.

Avocado had called both Nia and Arya freaks. Both of them, becoming murderers. Both of them, because of him.

"You - you killed Dad!" Her brother shrieked, and whatever he said next, Nia could not hear as a sharp ringing sound filled her ears and her vision began to blur, tears masking her vision. Collapsing onto the ground, she covered her ears with both her hands, the sound echoing down a deep and dark tunnel. Shadow was still cursing behind her when tears flooded her face, falling thick and heavy. Then, the ringing stopped and her vision began to clear.

"I didn't mean to," was all she said before she buried her face in her hands, crying into her palms. 

How would Crystal feel? With her husband dead and her daughter a murderer? What about Roxy, who's once bright smile would be erased forever.

A shadow creeping up from behind.

Shadow fell onto his knees next to her, wrapping a cold arm around her, pulling her into him. Her heart was heaving heavily against his own, rib cages thudding roughly. Between their sobs, an unsettling silence filled, and Shadow's eyes flickered shut. He didn't want to look. He didn't want to see that his father was gone. He didn't want to see his sister crying. He didn't want to see this nightmare again.

But it wasn't a nightmare. This was reality.

For at least an hour, that was where they stayed: crying into each other's arms, weeping over the accidental death of their father, knowing that there was absolutely nothing else to do, but to accept the silence and grief.