Content Warning: Seriously grotesque descriptions. Dismemberment. Etc.
With a jerk and a pained gasp, Toga managed to wrench herself free of the machete lodged in her chest. A weak spray of blood splattered from the wound as the teen staggered backward, one of her hands reaching up to uselessly grasp at the gaping tear in her flesh. Her fingers came away wet, skin stained with a lovely shade of deep crimson, and her face blanched at the sight.
Strangely enough, though, her injury didn’t feel like a stab wound at all. She would know, after all! Brows furrowing, Toga prodded at the gash a bit more, and found something that chilled her to the bone: five identical puncture marks, embedded deep between her ribs. Almost like—
Eyes widening, Toga’s gaze snapped up to the clown. Watching in sick fascination, she observed as the machete in Its grasp just...
melted, the glinting, silvery metal reshaping into an array of wickedly-sharp claws.
At the look on her face, Its painted visage split into a wide grin, a pair of burning yellow eyes lazily tracking the teenager’s movements.
“Toga Himiko,” It croaked, the gravelly syllables sounding like they’d been dredged up from the filthiest depths of a sewer drain. “What an interesting little girl you are. I’ve heard so much about you, yes, I have! An interesting girl with a
nasty little quirk...” the creature’s words pitched into a growl, cherry red lips parting to reveal a flash of shark-like teeth.
“Ah. You know about that?” Toga asked, voice barren of all emotion, forcing her expression into a perfect mask of calm. She took another step backward, eyes darting around as she attempted to beat a hasty retreat.
If it was at all possible, Pennywise’s grin widened further. Slowly, deliberately, It began to slink forward, clearly telegraphing Its movements. Its great big clown shoes padded feather-light over the floor, eating up the distance between them.
“Oh, yes. I know all about you. Eyes everywhere, y’see…” the clown’s voice trailed off, a long, thin string of drool dripping from Its slack bottom lip. It glanced around the gory chamber, the pupils of Its eyes drifting off to point in polar opposite directions, bouncing around like a game of Pong inside Its eyeballs.
“Private Himiko…” the Nameless Woman ground out, every muscle in her body bristling with tension. She’d noticed the clown’s advance, slow as it was, and didn’t trust the almost…
genial tone Pennywise had adopted for this conversation.
But it was like Toga hadn’t heard her at all. Instead, her eyes remained fixed straight ahead, locked on the bizarre, loping form of the creature before her. Tucked securely behind her back, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the handle of a large kitchen knife concealed inside a compartment of her armor.
Abruptly, Pennywise’s eyes snapped forward, irises burning into the girl’s face. Its pupils sprang into focus, pinpricks of black void that seemed to suck all light from the room, each one surrounded by a thin, flickering ring of fiery orange.
Toga froze, certain that she’d been caught out, but was surprised when the clown just… giggled. Actually
giggled, Its head canting unnaturally to the side as It looked at her, candy red lips quivering with mirth.
“Yes, yes. I have eyes everywhere, as I’m sure your little
friends are learning right about now!” It crowed, crouching down so that It was at eye level with her. “But you won’t need to worry about any of that anymore, Little Buddy, because I’ll let you in on a little secret… you and I, we’re very alike. So alone, so…
hungry. Aren’t you tired of all this fighting? The fear, the destruction? Don’t you want to just let it all… float away?”
Toga’s cat-like eyes narrowed. Shaking her head, the teen’s grip tightened around her knife, the metal glinting as it shifted within her trembling grasp. “I already have a boyfriend, so you can buzz off, Bozo! Your little scare act isn’t going to work on
me.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to be
scared,” It whispered, now only several paces away despite Toga’s best efforts to put some distance between them. The creature’s oily voice hissed between Its fanged teeth, becoming increasingly distorted, rotten,
otherworldly. “I want you... to be… absolutely PETRIFIED!”
The clown lunged, a flurry of frilled ruffles and serrated teeth flying straight at Toga’s face. The teen scarcely had time to blink before a blur of metal went whirling past her head, smashing right through the clown’s skull. Bizarrely, the creature dissipated in a wisp of smoke just as the Nameless Woman’s hammer made contact.
It all happened so fast that it took the soldiers a minute to realize what had happened— the clown had been a fuckin’ illusion!
“
Fuck that,” Bandit spat, staggering with the momentum of her swing, the engine built into her massive hammer guttering a cloud of thick black smoke as it slammed against the floor. She righted herself soon enough, sneering as her head swiveled around to search for the Unmade Commander. “Now, where the hell is it? Where’s the fucking clown?!”
Her young companion’s mouth opened, about to respond, when her eyes snagged on a flicker of movement over the woman’s shoulder.
One of the trophies mounted on the wall, his green armor cracked with blood and guts spilling out like an egg’s yolk, was
moving.
“H-h...hhh...” the Hell Diver scout gurgled, reaching out for her with grasping, blood-stained fingers. He couldn’t reach far enough, a thick metal stake effectively pinning him to the wall by his stomach, but he fought to reach her all the same. “Help me…”
Another one of the Unmade’s grisly trophies stirred, dressed in blue fatigues this time and utterly
headless. Yet, even though this trophy’s head was nothing more than a gory stump, a few words bubbled out from the remnants of their bleeding, shredded throat: “Help us!”
It was like a dam breaking. All of a sudden, the chamber was alive with movement, a chorus of pleas and agonized screams ringing around the room at a deafening volume. Dead soldiers in various states of decay and dismemberment writhed against the wall, a curtain of shredded meat begging for help that was far, far too late in coming.
“Why did you do this to us?”
“Why did you send us here?”
“We died because of you!”
“Oh, fuck,” the lieutenant breathed, grabbing hold of Toga’s wrist and tugging her in close, just out of reach of the clawing hands. The two Hell Divers stared in abject horror at the macabre scene unfolding around them, forced to cover their ears as the unholy refrain hit fever pitch.