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Killer was talking to himself again.
Or, more accurately, themselves. Nightmare mused silently as he observed his henchmen with his single, cyan eye light.
The Sans was sitting on the corner of his Boss’ desk, his bandaged arms trembling and wrapped tightly around his knees; which were pulled up to his chest. There was a single, faint eyelight in his right socket; tears falling from only that side. The Determination trailed heavily from the bigger socket, the empty one.
Both were unfocused, looking into nowhere. Nightmare couldn’t see his subordinate’s SOUL from his curled up position, but due to the muted emotions the spirit could sense and the look of lost confusion on Killer’s face — even as the younger creature kept speaking — Nightmare suspected that it was still in Stage 2.
“I don’t want to be here,” Killer — or one of them, at least — whispered in a shaking voice, drawing Nightmare out of his pondering.
His voice came out weak and rather pathetic, and the Guardian of Negativity knew that this was Stage 1 speaking. The goop covered monster didn’t reply, waiting for the response that would come.
“I do not care what you want.” Killer replies, his voice came out firm and stern. And true to his words, Nightmare could sense no concern or regret coming from the creature lurking near him. The Determination dripping from every word was easily felt, powerful and without compromise. “I’ve entertained your weakness for decades. But I will not allow you to kill us.”
Nightmare’s eye light flickered over towards the closed doors of his office, where a puddle of blood and faint remnants of dust stained his floors. At first, Nightmare had assumed that his henchmen had gone and made a mess of himself on his latest mission. It was a gamble if the mess was the result of Killer — Stage 2, that was— not realizing that he had made a mess of himself in the first place.
(The creature was oddly detached from the broken body he inhabited. The God of Negativity had learned rather quickly that Killer didn’t understand his own body, and so he didn’t care for it. And that was on the good days. On the bad days, he seemed to dispise the body; often throwing away his usual grace in order to purposely throw it into walls or corners, scratching open old wounds or re breaking bones. He blamed it for not allowing him to experience the sensations that others seemingly could.)
Or if it was the target souled creature’s
usual rebellious streak. Killer knew how to rebel in a way that allowed him credible deniability. Despite what he allowed others to think of him, Killer was not stupid. He knew how to play the game. Which game? Nightmare couldn’t really say. The younger one seemed to know how to play a lot of games, and he never seemed to stop playing them.