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Jack dragged his newest 'victim' across the floor, rising a whine from Carrie. "Come on! I need to check them!" Let's see.. A wolf, a tiger, a puppy, a panther, an evil bunny, a squeaky turtle, a panda, and a pig. That was eight, right? Wait, seven. Where'd the bunny go? With a dominant grunt, the boy continued to drag the blue thing across the carpet by an ear, gurgling something over the fabric as he went.


It hadn't been as hard of a task as she had thought, Jack could be picky sometimes. But apparently, all of these toys were... Tasty, when covered in BBQ sauce. That was his latest drug, kept him docile for oh.. Ten minutes. Even ten minutes was long enough with him though, shoot, ten seconds would be long enough. Any break was good. She sighed, all right, all eight were here, well, he had the last one, but he was close enough. But what could he possibly need eight animal toys for?

"The tables have turned Jackie," Cassidy cooed, propping her elbows up on the side of his playpen, The toddler started to growl, baring his teeth at the older girl, "I'm not scared of you." He could speak well for a toddler, perhaps that had some relation to his slow development. "I'm bigger than you now, even if you've grown, I'm still much bigger." She reminded him, showing her own, almost sharper, fangs. She was only older than him in a sense, and it was the fact that she was so much bigger that annoyed him more than anything else. To think that not that long ago he could pin her down when they fought, and now she could toss him around like a stuffed animal. As if trying to express that frustration, he stopped growling, gave her a blank stare, and said quietly, "So what?" Alright, so he wasn't the most agreeable child. "What should we do today Jackie? Should we go swimming? Oh no no, of course not, that would be out in the sun, we'd both get sunburns. You wouldn't like that, would you Jackie?" Her smile said it all, she knew he despised being called Jackie nearly as much as he despised her. This was revenge, it was war, and it would last a long, long while. Jack showed his own sharp teeth more, trying to best her. Even if he couldn't beat her in a fight, or get out of this stupid pen, he could still win in a tooth fight, "I hate you."

The days had been getting steadily harder and harder for the family, and they were spending less and less time together as a result. Teagan usually spent his time weight training in his room or in the basement, Liang was busy with her calligraphy, Tangia had been wandering the house in a sort of trance, the twins were trying to find their niche, and Jack had declared himself Lord of the Gophers. The boarish toddler had been getting worse instead of better. The jaded calm that had settled over him when he first became a toddler had all but vanished, leaving behind a startlingly violent soul that no one had tried save. He had the most malformed sense of right and wrong, and his lack of social interaction wasn't doing much to help the situation. There was a reason his mother had rarely let him play with other children, aside from the possibility of lawsuits. He thrived off of an audience. When it was just one person he knew and he wasn't really riled up, he was alright, but give him any sort of audience and he could be a sort of sadistic nightmare that no one liked to believe existed. His aunt however, was not aware of this, and readily let him off to entertain himself.

On this particular occasion, his audience was the dogs, loyal creatures he assumed would cheer him on no matter what he did. And his victims? The gophers that tunneled in and around the pastures. The dogs probably would have run had they not been penned up, and their fear of him was understandable. The toddler stood caked in mud and naked but for his knife's sheath strung up on a loincloth-like swatch of gopher skin. His hat had been left up on a fence post so he wouldn't get it dirty, and with good reason. Every so often the boy would scream, grab his knife with his left hand, and plunge his right arm shoulder deep into a gopher hole, pulling one of the creatures out by its head. Before the gopher could even try to wriggle and escape, he would swing his knife across the front and cut its throat. He held them for a while as they died, his enjoyment of the sight, feel, smell, and taste of its death obvious from the crooked smile on his face. When it was finally out of its misery, he would toss it into the pile he had made out of his previous victims and go after another.

About an hour into his "task", covered in the animals' blood from head to toe, Jack was still going strong. Without his knowledge though, another person had joined his audience. Tangia had followed him outside and for the past hour, she had been watching his grotesque actions through wistful pink eyes. Her frilly clothing was draped in careful layers around her, set perfectly without so much as a wrinkle. She seemed to emit a soothing aura, though she usually scared people with her almost ghostlike quality. "Jack," she whispered, drawing his attention away from the squirming critter he currently held. He let it drop to the ground and scamper away before turning to her with his teeth bared angrily. They were both well spoken for their age, having to do with the long times they each had been spent 'trapped' in their infancy, though Jack still had a tendency to slur words while Tangia pronounced them clearly and carefully. "Waddaya want?" he growled, trying to scare her off. Tangia, because of her traumatic past, was not easily phased. Instead of looking frightened, she squared her shoulders and locked her empty eyes with his own baby blues. "You shouldn't be doing that," she warned, gesturing to the pile of gopher corpses. He flashed a snide smile, "You gonna try an stop me?" She nodded, not looking away from him as she walked boldly closer and closer, "I am not going to try. I am going to stop you." He shook his head, waving his knife with the point toward her, "You're not gonna take another step."

Ignoring his brutish warning, she kept going, and found herself with her stomach pressed against the tip of the blade. His hand was shaking, though whether from fear or excitement he didn't know. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Girls were supposed to be afraid of boys, especially prissy girls like her. And more than that, everyone was supposed to be afraid of someone with a knife. He pressed it forward a bit, penetrating a layer of her dress, but Tangia didn't flinch. Her bloodstained ears fell onto his hands as she looked down, but left with the same tickling sensation as she looked back up. Her eyes remained blank as he pushed it through her slip, even as the blade brushed against her skin, leaving a patch of little cuts and scratches. With a steady voice, she placed her hands on top of his on the hilt and spoke, "Are you going to kill me?" He looked stunned by the question, but more so by the touch, "Why not?" She closed her eyes, letting one hand leave his to fiddle with the crucifix around her neck, "I have no reason you should spare me, even if I haven't done anything to harm you. I simple do not want you to spend eternity in Hell for ending a life like mine."

Like hers? What made her any different than him? He puffed out his chest, but hesitated at pushing the knife any further, "Hell ain't real." She sighed, opening her eyes again to look at him, "You don't really believe that. And even if you did, how could you be sure? You've never died." As she spoke she pushed the knife back, eventually taking it from his grasp. He was stunned into silence, both anger and a higher, stranger, almost eternal fear settling over his mind. Tossing the knife away she forced him into a hug, and told him that he still had a chance to redeem himself, to be forgiven. None of this would set though, it wasn't who he was. He was still shaking as she started to dig little graves for the gophers, and even still later on when Aunt Ul told him she had hired a therapist to talk to him about his impulses. The therapist would also be talking with Tangia about her depression, she had said. He didn't really believe that the bunny girl was depressed, just a much older, wiser person trapped in a toddler's body. But all of that was a story for another day. For now, he had just learned a very important lesson. He needed to find a way to avoid going to Hell.