NO ARMS NOCHE.

1777, APRIL 03rd, SUNDAY 10:10pm.

A bucketful of blood splattered on the ground as Noche struggled to stand.

"Te vas a morir," she mumbled.

Her left arm fizzled and glitched as she stared at her two opponents. She didn't have long before exhaustion would take her. All she had to do was touch them once – then she'd win. Noche made a dash for Blue and as she did so she purposefully left herself wide open for Red.

He took the bait, appeared at her side with his shovel in hand, and swung at Noche's arm. The blonde didn't try to block or dodge – severing the limb. The instance he cut it off a pure white claw of corruption emerged from where her arm once was. She had sacrificed it for this opportunity.

It reached out and scratched Red's clothing – he vanished and reappeared ten feet away from her. Corruption ate away at his cloak, but he ripped it off before the white fire spread any further. She was so close, she had managed to make contact, but nowhere vital.

A bead of sweat trailed down Red's face as the white fire at his feet cooled into black tar. Noche, who now had two corruption arms, glared at him. He turned to his brother and nodded; they both took out a pair of spiked knuckles and put them on. Noche raised both fake arms into a boxing stance and got ready.

The pain of her severed limb was intense, but it wasn't anything she hadn't experienced before. Now she was accustomed to pain and could tolerate it. No matter how extreme. Her rage and focus were too sharp to pay mind to the throbbing, mind-numbing wound.

For a moment they all stood at a standstill, then both brothers vanished. They moved faster than she could see but she was expecting that. Noche spun causing white fire to surround her in a ring – Red appeared just outside the white barrier, but Blue ducked under it and landed a punch to her chest.

The impact caused some ribs to stick out of her skin as a part of her torso caved in. She clawed at him, but he jumped back in time; skin and muscle dangled like loose red threads from the spikes on his knuckle dusters. Before she could react Red grabbed her severed arm off the floor and slapped her with it.

Out of reflex, Noche raised her new corruption arm and destroyed her old body part. For a brief moment, she realized what she had just done. It was erased from existence and now both of her limbs were gone forever. That slight distraction was enough for Red to kick at her knee – snapping it.

Noche crumpled to the ground as bits of bone jutted out from her leg. It was a miracle she was still conscious with how she was being broken like a bag of glass. Her pupil was dilated, her teeth cracked, and she constantly wore a snarl. Rage flared within her as she endured being crippled.

She struggled to stand just before Red landed a punch in the same spot Blue had moments ago. The shock of the impact staggered her and as he pulled the knuckles out red strings connected the spikes to Noche's torso like they came from a tangled ball of yarn.

Her corruption arms flickered and disappeared for a moment as Noche briefly lost consciousness. When her vision cleared she lunged her head forward and tried to bite at Red's throat. However, he jumped back and Noche fell to the floor.

The Grave brothers watched as the blonde squirmed on the ground. She had a few drivemetal spikes impaled in her body, bones sticking out of multiple wounds, and no arms but she still struggled. Red appeared behind her and brought his foot down — her spine snapped like a dried tree branch.

Her legs fell motionless; she was unable to move. Despite her formidable willpower, her body was broken. Corruption arms clawed at the ground, erasing the floor around her, but unable to physically interact with anything. She was trapped. All she could do was writhe her torso like a worm as the metal floor was replaced by the sands of that desert.

"Fuck you! I'll kill you!" Noche shouted.

The Grave brothers smiled as they watched Noche, but they stood back a few feet away from her corruption arms. Then Red's eyes widened, and his grin split his face.

"Do you remember Cherries? Your dear friend Cherries?" He cooed. "We never liked Cherries. His talk of peace. He was so much like Medusa. Like Ezekiel before her."

Red took a few steps towards Noche.

"What the world needs now isn't another generation seeking peace. It needs create's freedom," he said. "That's why when DeathTech declared war, we made sure he was assigned to the front lines."

She stopped her struggling and stared at him.

"We were hoping with him at the forefront he would suffer an accident. But to be put in a coma by his best friend? Oh the irony was too delicious."

The blonde gnashed her teeth as she glared daggers into him; Red's smile only broadened. He turned to his brother who shared in his sadistic glee. All before facing the blonde with a chuckle on his lips.

"He's dead."

Noche's expression went slack. Her eye widened as her skin paled.

"That's right – Cherries is dead."

The blonde was too stunned to react; Red lunged forward and ripped the choker off her neck. As her eye lingered on this sight everything stopped. The deafening winds died, the world went still, and for an eternity all she could do was stare at her most precious possession being held in Red's hand.

"Before we started your torture, we had to strip you naked. At the time you took this off and threw it aside in a fit of rage," he said. "And yet despite that, even after all this time, you remembered it laying in the corner of the room before you began your escape."

He was right. She only did that because it was too important to her. Noche couldn't have let them destroy it like they did with all her other clothes. So she tricked them.

"This must be awfully dear to you."

The memory of a small navy-blue velvet box with a tiny silver anchor on its cover flitted before her eyes.

"Cherries it's beautiful!" She had shouted.

"I thought it would be nice to have something to keep the hair out of your eyes... And to hide..."

Cherries pointed to his neck. Noche raised her hand to her neck and ran her fingers along the groove of the scar.

"Its.... Really a nasty looking thing... Isn't it?" Noche's voice fluttered as she spoke.

"It looks pretty fresh. Probably a year or two old." Cherries said, "Might be related to why you were comatose."

"Well... At least I can hide it now." She said, "... Thank you."

"No," she muttered.

The one word was all the confirmation Red needed. If his grin could grow any wider it would split his face.

"Yes," he purred. "We remember how upset you got when Hectare damaged it in the Cross entrance exam."

Her mind came racing back to that fight. How the knife cut her neck, the faint clink of metal meeting concrete, and looking down to see Hectare's boot stepping on her most cherished possession.

She snapped after that – she beat him to a bloody pulp. Punching his face over and over again. Hitting him until the concrete cracked. Until dust fell from the rafters above. Until the blood coated her arms to her elbows. All because he damaged her choker.

Red walked to the edge of the floor. The wind whipped the choker in his hand so much that it looked like it threatened to rip it out of his grip at any moment.

"W-What are you doing?" Noche blanched. "Stop! STOP!"

She tried to move, but she had no arms, her legs wouldn't work. All she could do was wiggle the upper part of her torso and neck. She dug her chin into the ground and willed her head to have enough strength to drag her forward. The blonde managed to crawl forward an inch and all the while there was glee on Red's countenance.

"Not my choker – anything but my choker" her thoughts raced.

"With Cherries gone, this must be the only thing you have to remember him by," he said. "It must mean the world to you."

He had no idea how true that was. It meant everything to her.

They had already taken so much from her, they couldn't take this too. Not this. Anything but this. All other thoughts had shut down. Even her desire for revenge was a distant memory. The only thing that mattered was her choker.

Her eye was locked onto Red's hand. As if reading her thoughts, his grin turned sinister. He opened his hand and the choker slipped from his grasp. It fell into the sea of clouds, tumbled past hurricane winds and shredding rain, before crashing into the black ocean. It sunk into the depths of the dark abyss far below.

All Noche could do was watch.

She couldn't react. Couldn't move. All the feeling in her body drained from her like water through a sieve. It was the one thing she wanted to protect above all else and she couldn't even do that.

Elsewhere, in a black realm surrounded by faint golden specks of light, there was a floating white orb with a huge crack on its surface. The orb shuddered as the crack widened large enough to cover a quarter of the sphere's surface. Noche's sole remaining eye turned solid black.

The blonde was motionless and bit by bit the grin slid from Red's face. He turned to Blue who shrugged, before both brothers were alerted by the loud snap. Noche's head moved closer, but the rest of her body didn't. The flesh on her neck ripped as her spine slid out of her skin like a snake shedding its skin.

Her head danced in the air as her spine extended further and further. Bones crunched and snapped as a change happened within her body. Her torso convulsed on the floor as a million eels writhed within her rib cage. She started to grow.

Pop after pop occurred as each rib burst out of her skin and wriggled like millipede legs. Her chest ripped open to reveal her beating heart. Spines and a dorsal fin tore out of her back. Crow feathers grew sporadically all over her flesh.

A new right arm regenerated in the span of a few seconds; her fingers and toes were webbed and ended in claws. Her eye sockets were both concaved into utter blackness and an anglerfish antenna grew out of her forehead. Her teeth grew into long needles that extended out of her mouth.

By the time her transformation had ended, she was twice her original size. The Grave brothers both stared slack-jawed – for a moment Noche's face resembled the carving on the moon. For the brief instance, goosebumps arose on their flesh and even they couldn't control the sleight tremble in their limbs.

The monster that was once Noche turned to the Grave brothers and attacked.