The Hyper Confrontation 5 – Boiling [Claire POV]

Every good place of mischief and love required a groove.

The system of tunnels and retreats would have been lit with pink and red torches at better times. While there was red light, its source was altogether of a less innocent nature. The eyes of Claire’s Household were crimson dots in a darkness nearly complete. A stronger, intrusive glow came from the veins of her opponent.

Tabbie’s blood vessels were visible even through her bodysuit. They were horrifically widened, dominating much of her surface. Had it not been for the way the capillaries split off, even the vampire maid would have been uncertain if she was looking at veins and arteries at all.

The Chosen of the Syringes injected another fluid into her arm. Fractal shapes the colour of yellow puss bloomed within her veins, adding another kind of disgusting light into the mix. Kaleidoscope changes streamed up the sides of her widened veins to the beat of an accelerated heart, giving it the appearance as if thousands of snakes were constantly fighting for her skin.

“So nice of you to wait for me,” Tabbie said. The red and yellow glow rose pronounced from the back of her throat, discolouring her teeth. “At least one of you dolls has manners, I suppose?”

“I simply have no need to hurry,” Claire answered. “My Master won the moment he chose the terms of this engagement. Your threat to his life is already eliminated.” Her voice turned darker. “The damage you have done to his mental wellbeing, however, I will carve you up for.”

“Oooooh, scary – is he going to become even more of a goodie-two-shoes?” Tabbie’s voice dropped with her own venom. A third injection of **** into her veins made her muscles twitch. Claire could see her close her eyes, the fine network of blood vessels pulsing while she let out a content sigh. “I was so close…” the apothecary whispered, “…just a year or two more, just a few dozen more experiments…” her knees buckled, “…imagine it.”

“Imagine what?” Claire asked. She knew nothing about this woman, besides the quick download she had gotten from her Master before departing. An apothecary, a mad scientist, searching for whatever her individual magnum opus was supposed to be.

“Immortality for the worthy, fuelled by the bodies of the unworthy! Those that can prove their mettle-”

Claire did not want nor needed to hear anything more. A mental command sent her crowd of summoned creatures into a frenzy, all of it directed at the **** up psycho. Wolves ran, spiders skittered, bats screeched, and Tabbie just stood there, letting all of it come towards her. The vampire’s Household sunk their teeth into undefended flesh.

The bodies of the first wave of attackers bloated, then burst into squalls of corrupted mana. Bloodrivers scattered everywhere, slithering towards the nearest familiar to lend a fragment of the power of the dead summon to another member of Claire’s Household. Yet, yellow and green blossomed fractally within those moving streams.

Claire ordered the rest of the familiars to back away immediately. An exertion of her will snuffed out the Bloodrivers. They died with a serpentine hiss.

Clapping her hands, Tabbie smirked, her clenched teeth a tight prison for the light within. Teeth marks all over her body healed within seconds. “Quick reaction!”

“Spare yourself the compliments, iron-hearted monster,” Claire hissed back. “I will cull you as I cull all of your kind.”

“What even is my kind?” Tabbie asked, producing a set of additional syringes out of thin air. One after another, she injected them into herself. Each time she did, she introduced an ugly round blot into the already disfigured capillary weave. “I consider myself unique, you know?”

“You are the essence of banal evil,” Claire responded.

“Oh, come now, that hurts!” Tabbie clenched her heart, as if it had been broken. Then laughed and tapped the side of her head. “I’m at the very least advanced evil. He told me to be.”

“Your insanity needs no further establishing,” Claire stated. “I will simply demonstrate that even in the world you dream of, you would not be among the worthy.”

“I already know that; after all, I was not chosen.” Tabbie twirled an empty syringe between her fingers. “I’m the henchwoman of a deluded, ****-crazed maniac. Ah well, it will be the better way to go.”

Claire knew she was being pulled along, but there was the chance here to learn more than Tabbie wanted to spill. “Compared to what?” she asked, the **** of her Mesmerizing Gaze behind the words.

“Getting undone by Gaia.” The slight lull to her voice betrayed that the control had been at least partially successful. The blonde shook her head, then laughed. “Ahhhh, so much less than his touch, but still not bad, not bad.”

“Whose touch?” Claire asked.

Tabbie rammed another syringe in her neck before she could answer. The colour of her glowing veins turned darker, the patterns angrier. “It will take the fun out of it all if you know. If I am afforded any kind of afterlife, unscientific as that hope is, I want to enjoy the show.” A giggle rose in her chest and swelled until she was screaming, her madness now loudly declared. “NOT EVEN CHAOS WILL SEE THIS ONE COMING!”

‘I have to take her in alive,’ Claire thought. There was something here, something that her Master would have to know in order to prepare accordingly.

Tabbie charged across the room with a maddened screech.

‘Do not draw blood,’ Claire ordered the powerful wolf by her side. The familiar had received much of the limit Claire had on the Levels of her Household. When it stormed forwards, it did so at such speed that Tabbie could not react before the wolf, the size of a war horse, swiped its paw at it. The crazed apothecary was thrown to the side, slamming into and through a stone wall half a metre thick.

Claire conjured a weapon, a spear with a long, curved blade. Like all of her summoned creations it was deep red and black. It swiftly sliced the foot of the wolf, covered in glowing blood. The familiar did not react to the dismemberment, only retreated from the trail of poisonous ichor its attack had drawn, despite hitting with the soft of the paw.

Stepping forwards, Claire carefully dipped a finger into one such splotch. She winced from the pain, the various magics eating away at her skin and the metal beneath. Her regeneration fought against it and ultimately would win. In the meantime, Claire raised the blood to her nose. It smelled absolutely rotten.

“Ah, your wild curiosity.” Tabbie giggled, dusting herself off. She adjusted the nurse’s cap on her head, while her flesh knit itself back together. It was a disgusting type of regeneration. Rather than reverse the damage, it accelerated the healing, covering her in scar tissue. Her skin got progressively thinner, her organs showing in the gap between her inhuman veins.

“It appears the powers you have invested in are self-destructive,” Claire observed.

“I know, right? How fascinating!” Tabbie scratched at her neck, tearing the skin open with the ease of popping a bloated boil. “To be attached to a Latebloomer’s absurdities is an incredible rush. You would know, your powers exceed mine many times over!”

Tabbie thrust her hand outwards. A spray of acidic blood spread in a cone in front of her. To escape, Claire turned into a swarm of bats. A few of them were caught, cut from the flock without a second thought and left to die to the toxic ichor. The rest flew around the wall that Tabbie’s body had broken a hole into. On the other side, they reunited into one vampire.

Immediately, she and Tabbie engaged in an exchange of blows. Claire considered herself a slow woman, but that was in comparison to the harem. For one who sparred with Siena regularly, the furious swipes of the addled woman before her were utterly predictable. Even at matched speeds, Claire felt that she was faster. Tabbie was clearly not used to her new power and the way she fought was just an inferior version of the shadow spirit.

Every swipe of noxious hands was knocked aside, every lunge side-stepped. When Claire got the opportunity for a stab, she took it. Her spear sliced through mushy flesh and gelatinous bone. The mana sizzled, the corruption spreading up the shaft. Claire dismissed the weapon before it could reach her hand and created a new weapon.

Tabbie whirled around to take advantage of the short vulnerability. Alas, there was none. Claire opening herself up like that was inconsequential when her familiars were the true physical powerhouses in her toolset.

The massive wolf familiar slammed the Chosen of Syringes down mid motion. She bounced like a chewing toy, then was flung across the room by a second swipe. Claire cut the blood-covered parts of fur off immediately, letting her mana drain to recover the familiar within moments. “Good boy,” she complimented the semi-sentient creature. “Had enough yet?”

“Kehehehe…” Tabbie cackled to herself, half-embedded in the wall. “You don’t get it, this isn’t a fight, this is my suicide.” She pushed forwards. “You think I’m as idiotic as the rest of them? The sexist drunkard, the bitter smoker, the envious pill-gobbler or the delusional gang member? You think I’m half as high as Hypercrush?” She jabbed yet another concoction into herself.

“You do not have my permission to kill yourself,” Claire stated bluntly. “You have a use to my Master.”

“Alas, mine prefers if you are left in the dark.” Tabbie smirked broadly. “In this you will meet your match. You will not learn what you want to learn. You can look into all that I have ever done and you will not find out what would have gotten Gaia to smite me before it happened. If you could have found out, you already would have.” She smirked a little broader, her head tilting as if she listened to something distant. “You can never be prepared for what is to come. The re-alignment of the entire Abyss is on the horizon!”

Claire’s need to take her alive only doubled.

The vampire maid snapped back forwards. ‘I just need to weaken her enough that I can mesmerize her,’ she thought. A difficult task, but not an impossible one. Oversized spiders spawned in her wake, rapidly climbing the walls of the cave in anticipation of their moment.

Tabbie laughed. Her body temperature rose sharply. Her bones were dark lines. Her intestines were almost plainly visible, as if her fat was made of glass. She charged forwards, hair melting into horrid clumps, matching the speed of the wolf and exceeding that of Claire.

The sudden increase caught the vampire by surprise. Her attempt to strike was simply swerved around. Tabbie ripped open the skin of her forearm, showering both Claire and her summon in the horrid ichor. Claire’s skin and clothes, part of her being, hissed as regeneration struggled once more against the damage sustained. Her HP ticked down, but the ultimate winner of the struggle was clear. The wolf was a different affair, getting infested by the foreign mana within seconds. It turned into a worm-like tide of corrupted Bloodrivers, killed by the **** of Claire’s thoughts.

It was a struggle, like leaning with all of her weight against something that refused to yield only to suddenly give. It distracted her for long enough that Tabbie could kick her in the side hard enough that it was her turn to fly across the room.

Claire scattered into a swarm of bats before she could turn a lovey-dovey construction of beds and couches into shattered wood. Consciousness spread throughout the flying rodents, she observed Tabbie from above. Sensitive ears picked up the beat of her heart, eyes watched the shifting of the shapes in her exposed bloodstreams. The sound was a near constant hum. The kaleidoscopes moved along without pause. Even a superhuman’s heart could not withstand this level of stimulants forever.

Consolidating back into her human shape, Claire went on the offensive. She was pressed for time. The desperation to achieve her objective made her push into a melee she had little to no way to win. Tabbie weaved through the motions with ease, laughing triumphantly at dodging attacks that were meant to lock her down rather than harm.

“You are so ****, it is adorable!” the now hairless woman screamed. She was an abomination of scar tissue and melting flesh. Skin dripped off her fingers like candle wax.

Claire took the blows. Her physique could withstand them. Even the pain from the blood that counterblows smeared over her chest was a mild bother at worst. It would take Tabbie longer to kill her than she had. In the deterioration of the woman’s condition also lay Claire’s only hope.

The thigh bone of the apothecary collapsed like freshly poured cement. It was in that moment that the spiders all around the walls struck. Strands of silk were shot from every direction, spinning the woman up in a cocoon.

Tabbie broke it. Where the silk attached to her flesh, the liquifying fibres simply gave away. Chunks of her were ripped out, causing a slurry of organs and blood to fall to the ground. The apothecary laughed and laughed.

“You will live! You will tell my Master what he needs to know! You will not leave questions unanswered!” Claire shouted, voiced filled with all the mesmerizing power she could muster.

It got her nothing. Tabbie’s bones faltered one after another, giving in while her muscles rolled like excessive fat. She was soon nothing more than a mocking pile on the floor, sizzling with acidic blood and heat, and yet somehow capable of grinning up at Claire.

The victory was hollow.