Elena stood across from Maddie, a block away from the Devil’s Due - the dingy, dark bar that was currently alive with the sounds of gunfire and shouting.

  But she wasn’t paying attention to that; she felt like she was about to vomit.

  She must have heard wrong. Skye can’t have run into Patch.

  Right?

  “Skullgirl, respond!” Maddie shouted, her voice sounding ragged.

  Elena watched Maddie as she frantically tapped her earpiece, shouting into it.

  “Fucking line’s dead!” Maddie snapped, before punching a wall.

  An image flashed across Elena’s mind: Skye, fighting for her life against Patch, being cut apart by someone who wouldn’t stop.

  Elena wanted to take off, wanted to run.

  “Don’t.” Maddie cut in, her voice cold.

  Elena looked up at her; she expected to see the unflappable, smug, know-it-all Maddie, the grinning girl whose very presence somehow found a way to annoy her, the girl who always had an answer for everything.

  So seeing the expression on Maddie’s face - pale and positively terrified - made Elena’s stomach drop like a stone.

  “So…so what do we do?” Elena asked, her voice cracking. “We can’t just leave her!”

  “I know!” Maddie snapped back. “But we need to think; we got lucky last time, I don’t fancy our chances a second time.”

  Elena went to retort, but she couldn’t. She was right; they’d gotten incredibly lucky last time, and Elena knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be able to take Patch alone.

  “But why’s she gone after just Skye?” Elena asked, stepping in front of Maddie. “All three of us took her down last time? So she should’ve gone after all of us, right?”

  “It…it doesn’t make any sense.” Maddie shook her head, her breathing shallow. “You’re right, we all took her down, she’s got history with me. Skye was the one who-”

  Maddie stopped, the words dying in her mouth. She spared a look at Elena, her eyes widening.

  “Fuck!” She gasped. “FUCK!”

  Then, she took off like a shot, sprinting away from the Devil’s Due and back towards that abandoned shopping mall.

  “Wait!” Elena called out, running after her. “Did you figure something out?!”

  Maddie didn’t stop or answer her; she fished into her costume’s pocket, pulling out her phone and tapping the screen.

  It rang for a moment as they ran, then-

  “Hey I- no- stop! Listen to me!” She shouted into the phone, “We’ve got a situation, a Patch situation. I need you here ASAP!”

  The abandoned mall had become a veritable bloodbath.

  Skye-

  No, not Skye. Not anymore.

  Slaughterhouse stood over Patch’s body, a white wicked blade like the head of an axe erupting from her right arm as she slammed it into Patch’s waist over and over again with a powerful, rhythmic thunk. Each hit sent a spray of blood spurting around her, while Patch just giggled gleefully as each impact cut into her flesh.

  “Harder, baby!” Patch squealed, laughing as the blade tore through her stomach. “Harder!”

  Slaughterhouse wasn’t enjoying this; she was frustrated. Her old body would have been able to pull Patch apart with no effort at all, but Skye's comparatively weaker body meant she had to put in some elbow grease.

  She raised her arm high, and with one final swing she cut Patch clean in half at the waist, the manic woman letting out a delighted moan as she came apart.

  Slaughterhouse panted, much to her annoyance, pulling herself up before kicking Patch’s legs away, sending them spinning and scattering down the mall.

  Slaughterhouse looked at her hands. No, not her hands, not fully; not yet. They were spindly and bonier than her last body; in fact, Skye’s entire body was frustratingly lean and boney. There was some muscle mass that she knew hadn’t quite been there a month ago, true, but she was more used to her old body, how musclebound it had been, how it could go on for hours without tiring.

  She was also shorter than her old body; only by about four inches, but four inches made a lot of difference when they dictated where her head was.

  Ah well. She thought, rolling unfamiliar shoulders, Beggars can’t be choosers.

  On the other hand, there were these powers. Perfect manipulation and awareness of one’s own bones. With a bit of creative thinking, she could reshape her body endlessly.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She had to admit, she was a little envious of Skye. There was a precision to this that her own previous powers had lacked, but Skye had barely even tapped into her power’s true potential.

  “Don’t mind me, baby~!” Patch chimed, snapping Slaughterhouse out of her observation.

  Slaughterhouse looked down; Patch’s upper half was crawling over to her legs like a determined insect, giggling. Slaughterhouse narrowed her eyes; a familiar prickling, burning sensation bubbling over them as she looked over Patch, activating what she’d nicknamed ‘organ-sight’; the only one of her old powers that Skye had inherited so far.

  Like an x-ray, Patch’s insides were revealed to her. What struck Slaughterhouse was that there was a manic energy to Patch’s insides, her organs writhing and shifting like starving worms searching for food.

  Fascinating. Slaughterhouse thought, examining her insides. Patch was regenerating fast, too; muscle, skin, stomach, and intestines refilling and regrowing in a matter of seconds.

  She watched Patch curiously as she approached her own legs, pressing the regrowing stump of her torso against her waist. Immediately, there was a fleshy, visceral slurping sound with a crunching accompaniment as the two halves recombined, flesh and bone knitting together in an instant. Even internally, everything wound together like she’d never been cut in half; the wound was gone, no scarring in sight.

  Every organ, every muscle, every bone, all good as new. Slaughterhouse thought. Doesn’t matter what I do to her, she comes back as good as new within seconds. Fairly sure I could rip her head off and she’d barely notice.

  Seeing it through normal eyes was one thing, but like this?

  She looked down at Skye’s body, then at Patch’s. Then she smiled wide, teeth bared.

  Skye’s body was serviceable, sure, and her powers were fantastic, but she was fragile compared to her old body.

  Patch’s, on the other hand? She could survive anything, rebuild herself no matter how badly she was broken.

  She could be very useful. Slaughterhouse thought.

  Whole again, Patch jumped to her feet, brushing herself off; she was close to naked now, her clothing having been ripped and shredded to pieces, the only thing covering her decency being the scraps of what was left and a crimson sheen of her own gore.

  “What round are we on now, baby?” Patch asked, rocking back and forth on her feet. “Four, five?”

  Wordlessly, Slaughterhouse looked over Patch’s shoulder; the mall’s hallway was absolutely coated with blood and viscera, most of it Patch’s from when they’d been fighting. It looked like enough for half a dozen people.

  “You like, lost your voice or something?” Patch asked, tilting her head.

  Slaughterhouse didn’t respond. She couldn’t; the vocal cords weren’t quite responding the same as everything else was.

  It didn’t matter, though: she wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  She leapt at Patch like a wolf, arm-axe held high. Patch skipped back, narrowly avoiding the blade as it swung down like a guillotine. Patch was still holding one of her many knives, slashing at Slaughterhouse with a manic grin on her face.

  She was swinging hard, too, the knife tearing another patch of the costume open and cutting a red line into the skin just below the chest.

  Slaughterhouse grinned, focusing Skye’s power; a single rib shot out and up from the wound like a harpoon, jamming through Patch’s shoulder before immediately sliding back in. The large hole it had torn through Patch immediately sealed shut and fused together, good as new.

  Slaughterhouse pushed the attack, stepping forward with each slash she made, moving them further and further inside. It was getting darker now, windows getting more and more sparse, and it was getting harder for Slaughterhouse to see much of anything.

  Not that she minded.

  She buried the blade of the axe in Patch’s chest, spraying blood around her before Patch ran backwards. With a giggle, she went out of Slaughterhouse’s line of sight and into the dark.

  Slaughterhouse stopped, slowly turning her head to try and catch any sight of her.

  “I knew you’d come around!” Patch’s voice echoed. “I knew you were totally interested!”

  Slaughterhouse couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Was Patch really that clueless? Or was she just delusional?

  Immediately, she heard rapid footsteps against the floor, at Patch bolted from the dark, cutting Slaughterhouse in the side before darting away.

  Slaughterhouse stumbled back, before Patch ran by and cut her in the back of the leg, causing Slaughterhouse to fall to one knee.

  “Keep up, slowpoke!” Patch shouted as she disappeared into the darkness.

  Slaughterhouse sighed, standing up again somewhat shakily, listening out for Patch. She tried to focus, to hear any sound of footsteps.

  There.

  Patch shot out from the dark, giggling wildly, something new - what looked like a katana - clutched tightly in both hands

  Patch swung the blade once, then again, Slaughterhouse ducking back from each swing. She could hear a humming from the blade, like it was cutting through the air itself. Slaughterhouse swung her arm-axe up to parry it and-

  The blade sliced right through it, like a hot knife through wax, clattering to the ground with a thunk.

  Figures. She thought, retracting what was left of them back into her hands. She focused Skye’s power into her legs, a scattering of spikes jutting from her shin as she spun, burying her leg into Patch’s side with a hard kick. The smaller, near-naked woman went tumbling, that strange katana tumbling to the ground, before she immediately bolted towards Slaughterhouse again despite the scattering of holes punched into her abdomen.

  “God, I could do this forever!” Patch shouted before leaping at Slaughterhouse.

  As Patch flew at her, it was like time slowed down. Slaughterhouse focused Skye’s power into her arm, into the bone. She willed the humerus to separate, coming apart and changing into a series of smaller, interconnected bones like the vertebrae of a spine.

  You’ve never done this before, then? Slaughterhouse thought, surprised at Skye’s lack of creativity.

  The new spine-like length of bone erupted from her arm, unfurling like a whip. Slaughterhouse’s grin widened as she swung her arm down, the whip cracking Patch in the side, shattering her ribs like glass and slamming her out of the air, where she landed with a thud.

  Slaughterhouse repeated the process in the other arm, the second bone-whip shooting out from underneath the skin. Then, focusing the power more precisely, she forced the whips to slither and slide like snakes, coiling them around Patch’s throat before wrenching her off of the ground, winding them tight around her neck.

  “God…you’re…so…perfect!” Patch choked out, her face turning a bruised purple as the whips tightened.

  S-stop! Skye shouted in Slaughterhouse’s head.

  Slaughterhouse’s fingers spasmed open for a moment, the bone-whips briefly slacking.

  Keep quiet. She snarled back in her head, before she forced the whips tight again.

  Poor little Skye still had some fight in her.

  As she clenched the bone-whips tighter around Patch’s throat, Slaughterhouse couldn’t help herself, opening her mouth to laugh.

  Or rather, to try and laugh. Instead, Skye’s voice tore out of her mouth; a shrill, bloodcurdling scream, the only act of defiance that Skye could make, trapped inside her own body.