need to see more of this match up. if Jabber is your guy to "bring out the real colors" out of people according to Zodyl, if he brings Riyo's too that'd be lovely - but with a twist because i want her to actually win the fight against him.
usually when we see them fight they BOTH tend to be holding back against human opponents. Riyo - to keep from killing them and Jabber - to keep from killing them too quickly, prolonging his fun time
The words echo in your skull like sonar pulses, steady and sharp. You’re underwater before your eyes even open, the cool weight of the ocean surrounding you like a second skin. You don’t need air. You don’t need sound. All you need is the mission.
You glide through the depths in silence, your body an extension of the water itself. Your skin is sleek, every muscle tuned for efficiency. You don’t swim—you move. Faster than anything that belongs here. You don’t disturb the current. You are the current.
Above you, the red light of the facility bleeds through reinforced glass. A research outpost, hidden in the Mariana Trench. Unauthorized. Unmonitored. Their mistake.
There are twelve operatives inside. You’ve already memorized the floor plan. You can feel the water moving through the pipes, the condensation gathering along the vents. You can hear the shift in pressure every time someone exhales. Their hearts beat like drums.
You’re already inside.
With a subtle twitch of your fingers, the water bends to your will. It slips into cracks, creeps along metal seams, gathers in rivulets, then forms something sharper. You rise silently from the moon pool, feet barely touching the slick floor. No splash. No sound. The only thing left behind is the faint steam off your skin.
Eliminate.
The first man is standing at a console, checking readings, oblivious. You flick your wrist. A thin stream of water snaps up from a nearby grate and hardens mid-air, slicing through his neck with a clean, wet hiss. Blood spills out in a beautiful red arc, dissolving into the water that cradles the floor. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t have time.
You’re already gone.
Two more down the hall. You don’t creep—you stalk. The lights overhead flicker. You step into view and let them see you, just for a second. That moment of fear is valuable.
“Who the—?”
You raise your hand, and they rise from the floor. Not your hands. Not you. The water. It grabs them by the throats like a vice, hoisting them upward. Their boots kick against the walls as the pressure increases. You narrow your eyes.
Pop.
Two broken necks. The water drops their bodies at your feet like discarded meat.
You keep moving.
Extract.
Room seventeen. Target acquired. Female, mid-thirties. Cryogenics specialist. Originally slated to join the Project, but disappeared two years ago. You open the door without touching the keypad—just enough water in the lock to short it from the inside.
She’s awake when you step inside. Of course she is. The emergency alarms are still off, but the scent of blood and brine has begun to spread.
Her eyes widen when she sees you. “Please… please, I’m not—”
You tilt your head slightly. Not interested. Not sympathetic.
Your fingers curl slowly.
The water in the pipes groans. You don’t touch her. You don’t need to. You raise your palm and she collapses, gasping, her lungs filling with saltwater from the inside. You’re precise. You don’t want her dead. Just silent.
You cross the room as she writhes on the floor, eyes bulging, arms weakly flailing. You lean down and press your hand to her forehead.
A swirl of water lifts her unconscious body, wrapping her like silk in fluid strands. She hovers behind you as you exit the room, weightless. Carried by your will alone.
Submerge.
You return to the pool. The blood-slick hallway behind you sings with silence. They never even got a signal out.
You don’t just dive—you plunge. Your body is swallowed by the water in a single smooth arc, the stolen specialist following behind like a tethered doll. You descend rapidly, past steel beams and concrete, into open blue nothingness.
And then—release.
You stop holding her. The body sinks into the depths, cradled by the ocean. Still breathing. Alive, but barely. Exactly how you want her.
You hover above her, suspended in the darkness. Alone in the silence. Your eyes open fully.
———
Your body jerks upright with a strangled cry, lungs burning, air tearing in and out of you in ragged bursts. Your throat is raw, like you’ve been screaming underwater. Sweat slicks your skin, cold and clinging, like the ocean never let go. Your chest heaves. Your hands claw at the sheets like they might still be chains.
You blink, hard—once, twice.
You’re not in the tank. You’re not in the facility.
You’re not her anymore.
But your body doesn’t know that. Your heart hammers like it’s still on mission, still running red. Your fingers curl into fists and shake. Your back aches where the scars stretch—phantom pain from the blade that took your fin. A reminder: they wanted you to pass as human. But you were never meant to be human.
You were built to kill. Built to obey.
You were never given a choice.
Eliminate. Extract. Submerge.
You hear it again—like a mantra, like a curse.
You press the heels of your hands to your eyes, hard, as if that could block it all out. But it’s still there. Her face. The way her body convulsed. The silence after. Dozens of memories like it. Hundreds. Missions blurred together into a symphony of precision, of power, of obedience.
And now?
Now you’re free.
Free to make your own choices. To be something more than a weapon. But all you can feel is the weight of what you were forced to do before freedom ever touched you.
You start to cry—not loud, not dramatic. Just quietly. Shamefully. The kind of crying that comes from too much silence and too many ghosts. Your shoulders tremble. Your breath hitches. You press a hand to your chest like you’re trying to hold something inside that’s desperate to spill out.
You don’t cry because you’re scared.
You cry because you remember. Because you didn’t want to be that thing. That creature. That tool in their hands. You didn’t get to be soft, or kind, or unsure. You were designed to be perfect. Efficient. Ruthless.
You cry because they succeeded.
And now you have to carry it.
The lives you ended. The ones who never saw you coming. The people who begged. The ones who didn’t. It doesn’t matter. They’re all there, in your head, lingering just beneath the surface. Haunting you like the aftertaste of saltwater in your mouth.
You sit on the edge of the bed, curling in on yourself, face in your hands. You try to remember who you are now. You try to breathe through it.
But the guilt is a storm.
Thick and endless and drowning.
You whisper to yourself in the dark, not because anyone can hear you, but because the silence is worse. “I didn’t choose it. I didn’t choose any of it.” Your voice breaks around the edges. “I never got to choose.”
But now you do.
And that’s the part that hurts the most.
Because now that the choice is yours, you don’t know what to do with it. Not when your hands still feel stained. Not when the water still listens like it remembers the weapon you were.
You lift your head, staring at the wall across from you, jaw clenched, eyes shining. The tears slow, but they don’t stop.
You whisper again. Quieter this time. “I don’t want to be her.”
But she’s in you. She is you. No matter how far you run. No matter who holds your hand now. No matter how much light you find.
Has any LA Guns fans seen Killing Machine live 1994 or something that intro where a cool lady in handcuffs introduced the band and said they put her up to this. It just randomly popped in my head. I’m pretty sure it was sleazy Tracii who put her up to that as a joke. If he put me up to it I’d do it and say it was his ass! Kinda funny and cool!
