Beckie.

  “C’mon, Beck! Don't be like that, sit down and have a drink, celebrate with us!”

  Beckie's fingers twitched, even as her eyes narrowed, her body moving as though it were on autopilot.

  It was a light feeling—almost floaty… As though, against her own words, she’d asked Cire to take command and do it all for her, all the while, Beckie simply watched from within, the static fuzzing at the back of her mind all she could truly focus on.

  Just how much grief had Mason caused her?

  All her friends abandoning her?

  Check.

  The bcklist on her name from joining any of the competent teams?

  Check.

  All the syndicate-run apartments that ‘magically’ had no avaible openings for one of its own members?

  Check…

  Mason had pushed and pushed and pushed… Using his influence to fuck with her in every tiny and petty way possible.

  All across Port Pride, she ran into the same shit whether she ate at a dinner or tried to buy beer.

  Life had been a nightmare since they’d broken up.

  No!

  Life had been a nightmare since she’d met the fucking asshole!

  Seriously, why was it that whenever Beckie tried to go get something so simple as a case of god's damned wine, every store in syndicate territory had the exact same problem when trying to verify her Trinity damned Republic ID!

  Sometimes it was merely the little things that most got under Beckie’s skin… the little things, and the thoroughness with which Mason worked.

  How he could be so competent at spitefulness but not his real job, she really didn't know. But nobody could tell her that the consistently miserable and boundless shitty luck was at all ‘fate’ or some other ridiculous notion of a preordaned nature. Not after she’d started catching on to what was happening.

  Beckie had been marked as somebody to actively fuck over by the entire district! And prior to meeting Cire, it had been getting so bad she’d nearly considered trying to defect to a different criminal organization.

  Sadly, such tales often didn't end in happy-ever-afters… Yet, she’d felt so completely frustrated by it all! Hemmed in on all sides like a caged dog with an army of toddlers and pointy objects constantly jabbing her in the face!

  And shing out didn't work when there seemed to be a damned city of people ready to pick up the torch…

  No…

  As Beckies knuckles whined, her mechanical arm stressing itself in it's shaking fist, the young woman felt like she’d finally hit ‘fuck it’.

  A step too far.

  A mistake that couldn't be taken back.

  Ohhhh, Mason was going to get exactly what he fucking deserved, and she was going to serve it to him on a god damn fist-shaped silver ptter...

  Passing by the corner of the bar, Beckie reached out and took advantage of her arms' extreme coordination, effortlessly plucking three of the flight of shots that Ben, the bartender, had just pced down for a half dozen eager revelers.

  All of which were likely drinking on Mason's credit, all to 'celebrate' their patron's big day.

  His victory.

  “H-hey, Beck! The fucks your problem?”

  Two of them turned, one already making to start something about it, but Beckie just shouldered by, knocking back the first, second, then third little gss of tequi with a sneer before dropping the trio to crunch under her boot.

  The first man who’d moved up to her side and grabbed her shoulder was the catalyst for the detonation of temper and violence that had been steadily building for months.

  In an instant, and without thinking, Beckie rounded on the man in a moment of explosive and violent instinct!

  Her arm snaked around and back up as it took a handful of his hair from the rear, twisting brutally as the man, gasping shock, transitioned to a sharp whimper, his arm popping from it's socket as she held him there.

  She keep Masons eye for heald a beat before cruelly smming the handsy assholes forehead against the metal bartop, crunching his face twice more for good measure as hard and fast as she could!

  Beckie felt the crunch resonate through her arm, luxuriating in the sensation of a savage and primal outlet for her emotions, only realizing what she'd actually done as she dropped him from shaking fingers...

  His form fell lifelessly to the floor as the staccato beat of the distant DJ hammered in time with her racing heart, her eyes bloodshot with tears, gaze fixated for an eternal moment upon the foul smear her fury had left in its wake.

  That, and the twitching body that fired confused neurons from within a damaged brain.

  With all the chaos of the club, hardly anyone reacted to the initial screams or the sudden and brutal violence that followed.

  Yet, as her gaze drifted to fall on familiar, hate-filled eyes now very wide and no longer quite so amused as they’d been, Beckie knew, deep all the way down in her gut, this was what she wanted.

  The trio of asshats that were waiting for her, supplying alcohol to any who’d cheer their ‘great victory’ on while partying like it was the weekend, realized this wasn't about to go how they’d pnned, right about the time Beckie decided there was no going back.

  This was what she’d chosen.

  Hah… no… That wasn't right.

  This was what had to be done!

  Had to be finished for no other reason than principle.

  Mason had made this about life or death the moment he’d backed her into a corner…

  Good.

  If she could do nothing else with her life, that look. That sudden and visceral look of realization, of horror and fear that he’d finally pushed her too far. That stare on Mason's face was what she desired to see when it all went dark…

  Beckie smiled wickedly as she held Mason’s eye, the bdes in her arms springing free with a sudden and gleaming ‘jerk’ that she felt all the way to her spine!

  “F-fucking stop her!” The ‘underboss’ screamed, half scrambling to his feet in terror and understanding, even as he whipped his beer gss in her direction, not missing, but Beckie barely reacted to it as it bounced off her right breast, the woman lurching to a rage-fueled sprint for the final steps.

  Jeremy was the first to respond, already on his feet, even before Mason had screeched his order, a few nearby ravers looking just in time to see Beckies forearms fre again with their gleaming scythes.

  “Beck—” Jeremy began, big dumb smile twisted with partial amusement, a golden eyebrow raised as he zily dropped into a pugilist's stance, “just calm down! It ain't such a big—

  The rge man, just an inch taller than herself, realized far too te the ‘extent’ of her resolution, the gze of alcohol creating a sheen over his honey brown orbs, which only grew wider as she stepped into his range.

  Jeremy was good, better than herself in all honesty, but he was also drunk, compcent, and she felt he really didn't understand what was about to happen. Not really.

  To him, no, to them all, ‘fucking with Beck’ had just become little else but a game!

  Something to amuse them.

  Something to pass the gods damned time…

  Fuck them all.

  He threw up one arm to block her initial punch, even as he pivoted, a shadow passing by his side. The brute managing to catch her flying fist as it fshed for his face, but the bdes simply weren't taken into consideration.

  He wasn't a ‘soldier’, wasn't even a pit-fighter. He was just another gym rat who spent too much time sparring in the ring.

  A bully who only ever threw his weight around against those who couldn't fight back.

  The bdes flickered forward, the mechanism causing the intricate arms attaching them to extend the weapons further in a ‘quick jab’, the tip of the gleaming steel piercing right through Jeremy's wide and confused left eye!

  The weapon yanked back a moment ter as if on a rubber band, ripping his eye from his socket as the other crossed inwards, a small spatter of blood spritzing Beckie’s face in the process.

  Oliver was on her before Jeremy could even let go of life, or her hand. A small knife appeared in his palm, which proceeded to shank her kidney so fast she couldn't even register how many holes he’d put in her side!

  When she swung at him in a brutal arc, immense, white-hot pain flooded her every thought, spiking her adrenaline as the greasy brawler ducked away, backing into the crowd with a calcuting grimace, bde flicking back and forth with expectation as though predicting her to follow, but she had no interest in that.

  Instead, she roared as she hauled his friend's limp form, her legs and arms straining with his weight, wound gushing blood before she unched him at Oliver as hard and fast as she could! Trapping the whealse between a flying asshole and the crowd that he’d put at his back.

  She didn't bother to see if she hit him or not, immediately spinning just in time to avoid having her head sliced partially off by a hissing psma sword that hummed with brilliant blue energy.

  Instead, it scored her across the face, searing her flesh! Destroying one of her own eyes and digging deeply into her cheek, but Beckie was a berserker!

  She only leaned into the flurry, screaming her frustrations in her tormentor's horrified face with flying spittle and unhinged insanity!

  His right arm bounded off her left as he tried for a weak haymaker, his following backpedal causing him to stumble over another patron and her stool as he half rolled, half pulled himself away from her, using whatever and whomever he could find to help him stand.

  “Fucking help me”

  Beckie just stalked towards him, gaining ground, bleeding from far too many pces, but she didn't care…

  She felt liberated!

  She felt amazing!

  And when she finally caught Mason, cutting down a man who tried to intervene, it was with a scream of unholy despair that she deflected his sloppy strike, taking his bde in an arm that severed halfway through as the other locked him in pce by both shoulder and neck.

  She smashed her face into his, earning a horrible yelp as he tried to blubber something from his serpentine lips.

  His nose broke in a fountain of gushing blood, the young man reeling as he bent backwards over the bar, gagging and blinking away his surprise!

  His shock only growing by the moment as, with a fluid stroke, Beckie eviscerated him from belly to groin, watching merrily as his insides slopped free from the brutal incision, her next blow nding on his face as she jumped on him like a lioness hunting a gazel, not with a bde, but a horribly violent ‘hammer-fist’ that was fueled by years of anger!

  His head splintered after the second blow, sponging in on itself like an overripe apple, Beckie hitting him again then again then again as she screamed and screamed and screamed, louder and louder until her voice was hoarse with pain and raw iron!

  She didn't stop, unwilling, unable, denting the bartop in on itself, never slowing before the world around her, lost in the red haze of madness as it was, without warning, abruptly stalled, fshing, for the briefest moment, red, then grey, then—

  Madmcgee