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Malodore would have loved it here.

She remembered the last thing they'd been planning, just before everything had gone wrong. They were going to infiltrate this very island, come in and sabotage all they could in order to cripple the weaponization process, and then -

And then.

They'd never had a chance to make a contingency plan for their 'thens'. Somehow, the future seemed so much more open, then.

She missed those days, for a moment. Then the enemy showed their faces, two of them, blurred enough in her eyes to look merely like blood bags - and she had no time to miss anything, anymore.

She should have known that was too easy. She was crouching down on the bodies, checking them for pulses and souvenirs, when something shifted behind her quietly. She stilled, and watched for the shadow of something looming over her as it turned the shiny pools of blood at her feet dark.

She could feel it moving. Her tentacles lashed out as she whipped around, digging themselves into the shadowy body behind her. It knocked her away after she'd buried herself into it, but she kept a hefty chunk of it for herself.

When the Hunter finally fell at her feet, Riley put her foot on its chest, and reached down to grab at what she assumed had to be hair. It was so hard to focus on the creature underneath her. So hard to see detail. So hard to make herself care.

Say hello to Sinclaire for me, won't you. She hissed into its mind, before tearing out its throat.

I've had just about enough of mirrors for one lifetime.

She stared at it, hands firm at her waist, and immediately attempted to shatter the damn thing with a sharp stab of tentacle. When it rebuilt itself, she did not look surprised.

Amityville. The school was once her home, but now, as this illusion transforms the vision into a cage, she found that a rather fitting metaphor. That was all it would be, if she ever returned. A cage.

A prison.

The mirror might be all that's left to figure her way out, but there was no chance in hell she was going to try to get back to Amity. Maybe this world - a world that gives her Hunters to kill freely at her whim - was a better option, after all.

His voice made her swivel hard to face him, narrowing her glowing white eyes thin as they took him in. She knew this man, or - thought she knew him, it was difficult to tell. Everything she could see was hidden in shadows that only just barely left her with his impression. Still, she was sure she knew this man. She was sure she'd fought him, one upon a time.

Her featureless expression lifted, the muscles underneath stretching the smooth expanse of skin in lieu of a smile.

This world is kind to drop such interesting life in my hands. Kind, to me. She tsked, flaring out the crystals in her wings and batting them forward to hurl their pointed edges at his shield. Cruel, to you.

Damage: 18 not that it's going to matter rip

It became very clear to Riley very quickly (although not quickly enough, dying twice before even registering that she was in trouble), that this would not end in her favor. She would have attempted some sort of diplomatic solution, had his consistent dissipation of her body not triggered flashbacks of her reformation at Sinclaire's hand.

She screamed, a terrible wail of thought as her body reformed again, and her eyes pinched and filled in with red.

Then we dance forever, Hunter. You and I, locked in this cage, picking each other apart for eternity. Your fate is as sealed as mine.

Peace?

She lashed out with her claws, digging deep into his body.

PEACE?

He felt no different from the others. The dozens. The hundreds who bleed into her hands.

I have not known peace for AGES. I am not here because I crave your peace. I crave war. I crave death. I crave destruction.

She could feel another excruciating death coming for her. She hung on tight and deep, as far in as she could go. She refused to let up.

Peace was lost to me the day your kind turned me to stone. Have you never spoken to your Sinclaire of me? Do you think the promise of death unending could actually frighten me enough to have me on my knees? Do I seem so eager to beg?

She twisted her tentacles into where her hands had dug in. Every movement she made was meant to hurt. I am not so easy to subdue. My dear.

Riley's cry as she reformed sounded pathetic even to her own ears. It transformed into a stubborn growl, as she threw herself at the Hunter again.

I ALREADY HAD A NAME. She roared at him, her rage turning unstable and unpredictable. She had little control, now; and it was getting worse with each death. You and your kind will never take that, or anything else, away from me. EVER AGAIN.