She’s resplendent, wearing a beautiful green dress with a long slit running up the leg. The dress’ pattern is a shifting mass of black, like calligraphy decorating the fabric. On her belt is a thin rapier, sheathed with one hand on it. Her shoes are lime green flats, at once fine and quite practical. You catch a sight of her legs- firmly muscled and strong, decorated with scars and war wounds.
Rose has become a woman now- you can tell that without looking at her face.
Daringly, you glance up. Her right eye is gone, replaced with an eyepatch. Her hair is different, with the sides cut short and a green streak added to the rest.
Her face is emotionless. She looks like an exercise in drawing neutrality, not a person.
She says something. Her voice is flat and without anything resembling tone. “Excuse me.”
You take three steps back, more out of shock than anything. “Rose,” you breathe. “Goddamn, Rose. Goddamn.”
“She’s radiant, isn’t she?” says a whisper that makes you want to scream and hide. A giant ducks under the doorframe and narrowly fits his massive shoulders through it. He’s wearing a green coat, and his face is the face of Satan. “My handmaiden. She’s become a beautiful woman, hasn't she?”
Shakily, you nod. “Y-yeah. What can I say, being hot as fuck runs in Lalonde blood.”
Rose’s face doesn’t budge, but the monster chuckles. “As does ingenuity, it seems. You two are the first game winners to ever share a last name, and with Penny Majors, you are the first three consecutive female game winners. A pair of finds, you are- but you’re the silver medal, Roxy. Rose is gold.”
You look at Rose and her face is like winter. Cold and distant, with no traces of emotion. Hell, even you aren’t that soulless. “She has no mercy and no compunctions,” says the monster. “She will do anything I say. I could tell her to go the maternity ward of this hospital and kill every infant inside and she’d do it without blinking. I’ve never seen anything like it in one so young. Even I felt something vaguely like mercy until I was about twenty.” His hand goes to Rose’s chin, cupping her face. “Your cousin is a wonder, Roxy. The perfect killer. I’ve spent my entire life looking for one, and I finally found the right formula. I can’t wait to see if I can replicate it.”
You swallow, your fists clenching. “You... you big bastard,” you whisper. “You are such a fucking cum-guzzler, gushing about how badly you fucked her up. That ain’t Rose- cuz Rose had a stick shoved up her ass, and this girl has a lamppost up there instead. What, am I supposed to be impressed that you broke her down or whatever? Why would you even care what I think?”
“I don’t care,” says the monster. “But I do care what you do- you’re one of my daughters as well, Roxy, just a disappointing failure of a daughter. I love each Program winner like they were my own children- it pained me to gun down Penny Majors.”
So Rose didn’t kill her. But while the Rose who killed that Spencer Slick kid was a brutal hardass, she was nothing compared to the... thing standing before you. It happened in only about half an hour- but what? What on Earth was done to your baby cousin- what the fuck did your baby cousin do?
“Well, so-rree that I like to have a drink after work, dad,” you say, sniggering to hide your pants-shitting terror. “And before, and during. Maybe if you hadn’t killed all my friends, I’d have someone to hang out with so I wouldn’t be doing that.”
“Your friends killed themselves,” whispers the monster. “Dirk went to fight Caliborn, knowing he couldn’t win, to protect Jane. Jake went to hold off Damara, knowing he’d die, to protect you and Jane. Jane shot herself, knowing it’d kill her, to give you a better chance of winning. Calliope dropped her guard, knowing she’d die, to let you kill her. Each chose death, and you chose life. All I did was facilitate the choice. Rose... she made the same decision, didn’t you, dear?”
“Yes,” says Rose glassily. “There is not a soul on this planet I would not kill if it meant I would live. It’s why I won- it’s why PM won, and why you won, Miss Lalonde.”
“But Roxy, you erred,” says the monster. “You were in contact with a certain rebellious group not long ago, weren’t you?”
Your breath catches in your throat. “No, but I let some guy in a leather jacket I met in a bar plow me, if that counts.” You had wondered if physical satisfaction could lead to any sort of fulfillment. It was nice in the moment, but you didn’t feel any less empty- you felt sticky.
But you think you’re going to die in pain soon- the hungry look in the eyes of the monster tells you that. Any good memory, even meaningless pleasure like that, is worth recalling.
“Such a funny girl. Isn’t she funny, Rose?”
“Hilarious,” says Rose blankly. “Miss Lalonde, you were in contact with a rebellious group- one of their members offered to help you find me. He was intending to try to recruit you to their purposes, as this particular group has taken an interest in Program winners. Or, at least, they took an interest.” She looked down, something almost like a smile creeping at the corners of her mouth. “I personally executed their leader three days ago, and his entire family the day before that. He wept like a child at the sight of their bodies.”
“And in Rose’s successful deconstruction of this resistance group, your name came up.” The monster grins, showing off his massive and horrible yellow teeth. “You were looking for her, so here she is.”
He reaches into his coat and produces something- a machete. He skitters it across the ground and it ends at your feet. Almost instinctively, you snatch it and hold it up.
Rose draws her sword. “Rose,” says the monster, “Kill her.”
