It has been far too long since I have last checked on big bro. A smile tugs at my cheeks gently, before I stick my hands out, shoving open the doors briskly to hurtle through them. Weaving to the side of a nurse hooking a new mask around his ears, who threw his bloody old one in the trash as he zoomed by it, and flashily pirouetting out of the way of an ER stretcher flying on someone's Skills. Unlike before, I can avoid being just an obstacle to all of them. While the Doctors still have much higher Speed and Dexterity than I do, my many traits dedicated to Perception allowed me time to react. And my Charisma in such large volumes boosted all of my Stats considerably. With a little bit of parkour, I use Inhuman Movements to stride over a racing team of surgeons and flying spells like a Moko Jumbie. Some of the strangest injuries were on display, some I could only guess how they were achieved, while others were immediately apparent to me.

A couple people obviously had metal hooks used to pull back on their facial features to disfigure them. I frowned, not in surprise, but in confusion. Why would the torturers let these people go alive? According to proper procedures, they should be disposed of whatever eccentric collection of skills the torturer has.

I mean, silver linings: they are alive? My eyes roam back over some of the people, twirling my hair around my finger.

I flinch at the appropriate times. A woman screamed, her eyes steaming with a contaminant (Magic?). Another, an 11 year old, had its nose over its forehead.

Honestly, there was not much I could muster in the way of sympathy. It had already happened to them, and there was nothing that could be done on my part. It was shrug-worthy, and I simply noted the various moments to act as needed.

A reporter on the waiting room TV screen, not that there was any space with haphazard beds laid on every possible space for any waiting family members, piercingly gazed into the cameras. She was a werewolf, the classic jaundiced yellow skin of one not disguised under makeup, with a genuinely mournful expression. Rather surprising, both that her agency hadn't fired her yet, and that she was genuinely mournful, rather than wearing a practiced smile fake as a grin carved into someone's neck.

“Breaking news! We are in a time of historic importance to the battle of Magic and Miasma. Panic is raging in the streets, the ripple effects of a purposeful move on the Torments' parts to damage Magic itself increasing the death rates to the levels of when Miasma and Magic first arrived in our reality. Morale of the world has taken a deep downturn, increasing the rates of suicide and natural Tormented Zones. Looking at numerous Skill-created statistics from some scientists, in virtually every measure possible, turmoil has become our present." She gestured to many graphs, none of which I cared to analyze. "As you are likely already aware of, we mourn the loss of multiple Magical Guardians in Indiana, which has had the fifth highest rates of Magical Guardian deaths even amongst the countries of the world. Our state has rocketed the United States of America to the peak of losses of Magical Guardians, an impressive feat considering that just last year, the number of Magical Guardian deaths for the world itself could be counted on one hand.

"Some were well-beloved fixtures of the community, while others were recently found by the Familiars only to be tragically lost to the Torments just as quickly as they arrived...”

I wonder who each of the Magical Guardians are?

I can perfectly guess who they are. I just don't care to know.

At all.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"In the most tragic incident Magical Guardian-related of the year for the United States of the flag," she salutes to the flag flying half-mast, "An entire elite team of Magical Guardians has faced grievous injuries, with Fire Fighter on death's door, and a new Magical Girl cut short before the team could intervene. whose secondary title was Charity. Multiple Magical Guardians joined into the battle with the Torment The King, who managed to stand toe-to-toe with the most powerful Magical Guardian on our continent, Magical Girl Sunshine.

"And he did so for nearly an day our time," she professionally emphasized the utter insanity of that statement. "According to the distinguished Ms. Sunshine, the sacrifices of an unknown type of Miasmic entity that she has not seen before in her entire career was the cause.

It cut to an interview of Sunshine, whose clothes were terribly ripped, a symbolic representation of her currently low Vitality. She kneeled in obvious pain, her cane with the U.S. flag poking out of it half mast. Her Essence had to be practically nonexistent, because the Traits that made her stand out were not standing out like they should have been.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

"We mourn the loss of my chi- Magical Girl Charity," the reporter says. She covers her face with her forearm, her expression completely collapsing. Tears and snot dribbling down her face.  She runs off the screen, her anguished yells trailing, before ending with a door slam as she exited the studio.

...

Nurse O’Sullivan is not in this time. Huh. I don’t recognize this one.

And Stars DAMN!

She is ridiculously tired. Everyone is beleaguered to the point of deep concern. This is an important hospital, but there should not be doctors dripping sweat onto the ground like slugs with slime. One huffing, puffing red-faced doctor is literally dripping like a recently bathed dog. And the injuries...

They were all Miasmic corruption. The Tormented Zone of lewdness must have been a symptom of something much worse. It was not this advanced, nor do the injuries follow the themes of its anti-magic.

A blue blur zooms by, purifying them. A Magical Girl is helping with the patients, and hasn't already dealt with the entire hospital's patients on her own.

I act shocked that she went by, when really, I am deathly terrified.

Please don’t sense me. Oh fuckin’ please. Presumably, she is doing this in an attempt to prevent the anti-magic from getting a hold in reality.

My heart chills, as the worst sound I could hope to hear rings in my special ears. My Eye of Charisma dilates in palpable terror for my brother. Someone is using Charisma to boost the doctors. Not Will.

The realization dawns on me and the puzzle pieces click together. Alexa stabbing me and an incredibly strange increase in anti-Magic. The Magical Guardians’ delayed response to The King’s Tormented Zone. A promotion of one of the students of my school to Magical Girl. Another Tormented Zone in such a short range in such near proximity. Elisa fighting against Anathema in a wholly different area from where I am. Corruption of other Tormented Zones showing up on patients in a hospital whereas normally Magical Guardians would be enough to deal with their life mission on their own.

Something is pushing an entire assault. A mass collaboration of Miasmic cults of the Goddess Diarrhea or even, insanely, the Goddess Diarrhea herself, have somehow created a virtual war. And not just here. No, no, no. Otherwise, Magical Guardians would travel to help, using their special travel stuff, like chariots and giant, teleporting turtles to come help put a stop to abnormal activity? That would be insane if true, but it makes so much sense. Some way, she has escaped endless conflict with the Magical Deities, and she, the Sadist of the Social, has started waging a war against the Magical Guardians. Already, she has created multiple fronts to busy the guardians; won some victories.

“Can I help you?” the stand-in doctor asked blearily, not cutting through my laser focus. It all made horrid sense.

Charisma? How can they be so desperate to use Charisma?

I give a querying look to my surroundings, my Crystal-Faceted Eyes revealing a figure in the center of the chaos. Essence of black suits and neatly done ties. It reeks of a Politician’s Skills.

Charisma is the equivalent of running on fumes. The stat is far more They are relying on blatant mind control to keep the doctors moving.

If my titanium grasp on my emotions had not been so strong, and if I had not created the Eye of Charisma to exercise my hold over emotions to the stat of Charisma, I would have paralyzed everyone in this room with the bone-chilling horror of my realization. I am so out of the loop. What if they haven’t been able to take care of my brother? What if they made a mistake with his procedures? They are likely so exhausted that there is a very real possibility the alchemical solutions pumping into his veins could be messed up right now, even despite the Sleep Deprivation Management and Vitality they all have.

“I am Theodore. Here to check on my brother.”

She glances down to her computer, her fingers a blur on the runic array.

She frowns. “I’m sorry. Do you have parents coming?”

“No,” I say flatly.

“I’m not sure why you have so many visits but as a minor, you are not permitted to be alone in the hospital. Go get your parents and schedule a visit at a later time,” she says, stifling a jaw-wrenching yawn, before zooming off to give people medications, and hurtling back into her chair.

I lean forward, placing my elbows on the table. With the watch of the Lady of Death & Taxes, calling in the authority of the local gang wouldn’t work. Thanks to the Stars making me feel COLORFUL once more, I was not currently mind-wiping this nice, but overworked, doctor. I just need to remember that this woman regularly saves lives, and she is a person of great fortitude and courage.

“Are you aware of the current estrangement between my parents and me? They have expelled me from their home as a minor,” I say kindly, with a hint of pain in my voice jabbing into her heart like needles. I ply her with concise statements accentuated by the perfect puppeteering of my face, quickly getting her to my side easily. The Puppeteer trait is, quite honestly and unsurprisingly, a waste for what I can already do.

“Oh sure. I’ll, uhm-” she stops with utter shame and humiliation, trying to find the words in front of my utter saint of an act “-I’ll *YAWN* oh I’m so sooorry...! I’ll get you down you to your brother immediately.”

“Don’t worry,” I emphasize clearly. “I know the way like the back of my hand. But if you want to take yourself or someone else to follow me, then I am totally fine with it.”

With that, I start walking towards my brother.

The halls are so long, the bright lights flickering as I pass.

The white everywhere makes me itchy. Miasma bites into my skin like glass splinters, accumulating as my worry grows.

I speed up my walking, my sedate pace quickly lengthening until every step takes a third of each corridor.

A doctor gives me a wry look as I stretch comically by her, her blond curls shaking with amusement at my panic. I bypass the elevator, wrenching open the stairs door, it rasping close behind me. I just stretching up. My arms lengthen, skin stretching like grey-brown taffy, thinning out and tearing.

Fingers as long as a regular human wrap around the handle at the top of the metal safety rails, and an overly stretched being of ribbons flings itself onto the concrete form.

I revert from nightmare fuel to normal me. Every time that I do this, the scream builds in my throat.

The scream builds and builds, my body preparing for the horror of the death of big bro.

At any time, with every step, the news; –however it may be said to me, from whoever – all of the possibilities...

They hit me like sledgehammers, bruising the mind.

I close my eyes to steady myself.

The Broken Mirror whispers to you.

A fragment of the Broken Mirror floats within the darkness.

A nurse is so sorry to say it, but my brother has died. The world rings around me. Teeth sink into me. They are mine. They carry off me to the asylum; a rabid dog ready to be put down.

“STOP!” she growls.

A second fragment of the Broken Mirror follows the first.

My parents call me and start lecturing me for letting my brother fall ill. “It is my fault I could not keep him alive.” When they say it, it is then I realize big bro is dead. We scream at each other. The fault rests on all my monstrosity, no matter how they tried to hide stuff from me on his health.

STOP! they growl.

A third vision floats around in front of me tauntingly.

“It’s ok sis. It’s not your fault. You kept my life... How do you put it? Colorful.” This would never happen. He can’t speak. He’d probably try to say it though as he died.

“STOP!” he growls.

I must love to see him die... a sadist am I...

I am the perfect soul to make into a zealot of the Goddess Diarrhea. So many thoughts running through my head. You know how often a paranoid prepper for the impending apocalypse of his death is overjoyed when proven right? They truly desire the apocalypse to fulfil their preparations.

“STOP!” the adorable trash bag sobs out.

I’m at his door, feeling the blank, undecorated metal. All of the stickers I plastered over it are gone.

The Happy Bard has removed your tears. It has removed yo-You beat me! You mesh further with me but don’t even use me for your expressions? HAHAHA! Grrrr... AHHHHHHH!!! YAY! WHYYYY!? NOOOO!!!

I give a quick read through of the System message. The meaning behind it disgusts me. Internally, I wrinkle my nose, the bitter bile of repugnance welling up inside my throat like a stagnant pond filled with flesh-eating bacteria. You can die in a hole for all I care, Happy Bard. A developing personality does not matter to me. I am willing to stifle your existence as needed.

I push open the door. If I didn’t have the control over my body that I did, my arms would be vibrating in absolute suspense.

“You know, “gal pal”, I did not expect to see you out of the Tormented Zone. You were one and done, but you really have gone on to serve the Goddess perfectly. Like, you just keep on giving gift after fuckin’ gift to the war effort. Girl, I’m just really fuckin’ impressed,” whistled a Torment, curled around the bed. With the distortions of space, a barricade of stone curled around my BROTHER’S BED fit within the patient’s room. It was a disrepaired castle, a hollow monolith of a centipede...

“ALEXA, I SAID I WOULD KILL YOU!" I scream. The beast rears back, hit with the force of my words.

“Where. Is. My. Brother,” I rasp out.

Enshrouded in the dark patient’s room’s shadows like the specter of death, an eyeless centipede hunches over my brother. Mandibles splay out toward me, laughing with joy. Checkmarks hang in the air around her, as if she had succeeded in filling out some demented list. The sound of Divinity, a tolling bell that made my heart tremble against my ribcage, literally bumping against the flesh surrounding the organ. She exuded it. The Torment exuded the mark of the Goddess Diarrhea.

My Stars looked at it with unadulterated delight, rolling around with excitement at such colorful wonder.

“You are just the gift that I will offer to the Goddess Diarrhea. The Zealot, girl BOOOooossss, THAT i am – WONDER! PRAISE BE! LET THIS CHILD BE CONVERTED! Follow the Sadist of the Social, gal pal!” came the horrid raving that poured of the Torment’s body, a choir’s preachings that resembled the results of the God of Wind Zephyrus deciding to create a floating island of cliffs that created sounds as the wind ran past. “I wouldn’t have even realized he existed and was of importance if you hadn’t visited today. What luck! HER fav-v-v-v-vor SHI-HI-HI-HI-HI-HINES on me.”

Infectious window found. New front of war started. Novel methods tried with anchor of The Broken Mirror. Infection conveyed by the Zealot, and released from dormancy by the Zealot. Miasma of Dying like Flies absorbed, and brought under the purview of the Goddess Diarrhea, the Sadist of the Social. Sibling of The Charismatic Star – error. Change name: Sol. Improve her blessing as a reward her for her development. Sent the infectious fragment of soul. The Mummifying Soul Cancer has been created. With the aid of Sol’s presence and her class The Broken Mirror, class of the brother has been consumed. The Anathema class The Evergrowing Cancer has been created. A new front of war has been created.

My face remains unchanged as I see my brother lying on the bed. I even raise my head up with surety. My brother will never be victim to my problems. He will always know my life as wild and strange and- and- and COLORFUL.

He heart wrenchingly shrieks like a puppy, all the more painful as it is the only sound he has been able to say to me for a year. Flesh bubble and bulge, cracked brown masses peeking through his emaciated limbs, viscous black blood oozing from the dry cracks riddling the rapidly growing tumors stretching his body apart.

The Star behind me, the Eye of Charisma, burns. Biblical pillars of fire twist and raze over it like tornadoes across its surface; white-hot sparklers streaming around it. Cracks riddle reality behind it.

“I said it, and I don’t LIE,” I whisper, my eyes glowing a furious purple. 

The Jester becomes livid, wagging its finger with an utterly delighted grin at the impending doom. A purple silhouette with a tragedy face stands in the square of New York Times Square. People whose features are covered over with skin, bows tied on their heads, bustle by the figure that stands unmoving.

The Hound curls at the foot of the Charismatic Star, doing tricks for a treat. Its ears perk up as if it hears the sound of something delicious, basic triangles poking out of the silhouette’s joker hat. The jowls of the service dog jostle as it bounces and wags with joy.

The Torment Princess decrees death for the mad zealot. The state religion is the worship of the Stars. Let the genocide of cultists of the Miasmic Goddess commence.

You have purposefully stopped the mind-wipe of the massacre you have caused.

-Rapier of Broken Reflection Level 0 Tier 2: Choose an emotion to make snap off for the time of battle and wield a shard of The Broken Mirror, causing others to feel your Pain. Improve in sword-fighting Skill and slice open flesh and mind alike to increase in level. You will only feel variations of that emotion during the battle. Try to survive its use. Don't try to survive its use.

"I choose to snap off the emotion of my love for my sibling," I declared. Miasma grows and multiplies within my soul, burning out the Goddess' Diarrhea with the possessive and protective love it is now tinged with. It accumulates, doubling and tripling and quadrupling in power. The threat of the Zealot made me commit to my truths, both Magical and Miasmic.

Within my outreached hand, my guitar from the The King's Tormented Zone appears within my hand. It turns an industrial steel color as my Skill works its effect. I become razor-focused. Nothing is important more important to me than saving Dennis.

Biting into my palm is a razor-thin piece of silvered glass with floating shields circling around it. Of all things, the symbolic shields resembled the malware protections symbol.

The Torment freezes in its constricting grasp of my brother under the full weight of my Charisma.

This is going to be so satisfying.

I walk slowly to the Torment, before calmly sinking the sword into the head of the creature. Silver spreads across its stone masonry self, yet it remains immobile under the ethereally dominating gaze of my guardian Stat. Imperiousness sets into me, my ears growing like willows into a furry crown. My heart races, beating like a growling fox.

I pick up my brother in a gentle cradle carry, my Miasma ruthlessly pushing out the Miasma of the Goddess Diarrhea. The cancerous growths reverse as the hospital warps around me, the patient's room depositing me on the ground.

-Rapier of Broken Reflection Level 0-->Pending Tier Evolution.

The Torment Princess has grown.

I walk up to the Lady of Death & Taxes carrying my brother, an aura of many meanings embedded within my Eye. Like the Charisma, I keep it restrained within the skill that I created, and she kills me for convenient travel again.

But not before I convince her to bring my soon-to-be-headless body to nameless off-brand restaurant number 130. With a bottle of Ultimate Spice Sauce between my teeth, my head floats on a cradle of Miasma in front of Karen, while my body still cradles my sleeping big bro.

"OH MY GLORIOUS LORD!"

"THE TRANNY DEVIL HAS COME TO TAKE MY SOUL!" pierces the restaurant manager's angelic voice into my ears.

"SAVE ME LORD," my restaurant manager screams panickedly. She wobbles in fright with all of the sturdiness of our Authentic Mexican Noodle Dish™. Her hands scrabble across the ground.

I work my cheek-splitting grin around the slippery glass bottle with altogether far too much satisfaction. My ebony black tongue curls around the smooth glass, the paper label rubbing lightly against it.

Gently and, just as she wanted, carefully, I pour the contents of both my head and the sauce bottle over her. This is even more delightful than drop-kicking her into a vat of the Ultimate Spice Sauce! Drops of brain fluid and acidic hot sauce speckle her face and cheeks, evenly distributed over her beloved uniform.

Vengeance is best served spicy hot!!!

I scoop the completely, wholly, fully, surely sanitary combination onto the cap of the bottle; and then, with supreme kindness writ on my face, I make her suckle on the tainted spice bottle.

Her face quickly starts sweating like a cheese rind left out on the counter. She turns beet red. The peppers make her weak tastebuds shrivel, her cheeks and nose bunching up worse than a warthog.

My eyebrows knit up, my lips puckering, as the silent chuckles outpour. I affect as smarmy an expression of petty vengeance I possibly can.

"He can't save you. I..." I pause in writing the words in the air with Miasma and Charisma, imprinting the meaning in her mind.

She hangs on to every word I write.

"What did you do," she whispers.

Curiosity killed the cat, Karen.

"I have anointed you with the unholy fluids of a heathen worshipping Eldritch beings," I finish.

Her face flattens, ripped clean of emotion.

"UHHhhh... " she moans out. "It's not true... I refuse to believe it... I am no Satan's spawn."

"You're right," I write smugly. "You've fallen further than the fallen angel Lucifer himself. Even he would reject you as you have now rejected your God. My COLORFUL blessing be upon you," the Stars help me actually say the words despite being a head. Their gaze focuses on the impromptu ritual I just pulled out of my currently departed ass, resting on Karen for a second. Naturally, she senses my FRIENDS hugging her.

Her eyes promptly roll to the back of her head, dropping to the ground with a faint like a sack of rotten lettuce. Like she was, frankly. She was a sack of rotten lettuce in mind; a moldy tomato at heart.

I shake my head back and forth, free as a bird, before zooming into the hand of the Lady of Death & Taxes. With the declaration of "DEAR ELISA, I BETTER SEE YOU AT THE SCHOOL OF MAGICALS, DEMONICS, AND ALTOGETHER ELDRITCH ENTITIES, SINCERELY THEATER" in fireworks, we blast off with a sonic boom.

Me and big bro head off to school. With a flex of Miasma, I move my separate body to brush out my brother's newfound hair, a mess of spun-gold locks.

The Torment Princess, dually a Happy Bard and Forsaken Jester under the Charismatic Star, wielder of the Broken Mirror.. The Noble Vixen of the Fae Heart, cultist of the Weeping Eyes Beneath the Nonexistent Blood, and friend of the Vengeful Spirits Masua and Enterion... And now also the Protector of Family... they head to school.