Celine Krokodil had been hired to kill Thomas Finn for failing to kill his mark and getting himself arrested, posing a liability to the organization that employed him. This is what she was going to do, as she was an actual competent employee, but she had a second goal in mind. Her father was being held in a pod at the very prison her mark had gotten himself trapped in. Celine hadn’t even had time to wash the blood off her shirt after killing that bastard who threatened to stand in her way, instead heading straight to the prison located in a cavern not far off from the main city. She had skulked around the back of the caves, maneuvering through the stalagmites that dotted the outside, before finding herself at the back of the prison, where she saw a large cylindrical pod that was connected to the drab, concrete main building. She also saw a bloody purple hand poking through a hole in the siding. “Did he really? No, that’s impossible, there’s no way he’d make it so easy. This is the easiest my job has ever been!” Celine cackled, walking over to the bloody hand.

“PLEASE! ANYBODY!” Thomas screamed, waving his hand all over the outside, attempting to attract attention to it. Then, he felt it stop, and three bullet-sized holes appeared in it. “OKAY, NEVER MIND. MAYBE NOT ANYBODY!” Thomas shrieked again, looking around the inside of the pod again. He could see Piotr bleeding out a few feet away from him. “PIOTR! Cyrille, you fucking bastard! PHANTRANA!” he yelled, and several patches of phantom skin were wrapped around Piotr’s wounds. Except Thomas had somehow cocooned him in the stuff, and his own skin was boiling and sizzling in agony as he stared at his friend who he had somehow turned into a skin butterfly. Meanwhile, Celine was slowly pulling Thomas’s arm through the hole, slicing it open. Thomas was able to create enough phantom to sustain him this long, but it was quickly starting to boil. “Piotr, I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this fight, and I could use some help!”

“MOVE THE HEADSTONES” Piotr shouted, sending projectiles out of the skin cocoon and into the pod wall, contorting and widening the hole that Thomas had trapped himself in enough that he could fall through. As Thomas fell out of that death cage, he saw that Piotr had used his own teeth as projectiles to save his life.

“Well, well, well, Thomas. Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Celine said calmly and clinically, as though she was diagnosing him with “completely fucked.” Thomas stood up. His knees buckled together, and his back arched in pain, blood dripping from his torn orange prison uniform. “Don’t try to fight me, Thomas. I already tried this once today with someone who attempted to investigate the person you failed to kill. Almost burned me with her Civ too.”

Thomas struggled to speak. “WHAT?” he finally managed, Thomas’s tone had gone from terrified to furious.

“Mmmhmmm. But she’s gone now, crushed under a train. I didn’t feel all that great about killing her to be honest, since it wasn’t my job. I even told her not to move, which I say to everyone, but honestly, I encourage you to move as much as you can.” she smirked. Not only was Thomas unable to move, but he’d also be killed if he tried to. He couldn’t stop thinking about Piotr, who had ripped out his own teeth to save him. And Blair, who was crushed by a train after a fight with something she couldn’t see or understand. It made his blood boil even more. And it gave him an idea. But he needed Celine to look away. “Why is my shirt starting to melt? Thomas what are you doing, why is my hair melting?!” Celine shouted, taking her eyes off Thomas to focus on the thing that was melting through her skin.

That’ll do.

As Celine returned to look at Thomas, she felt two incredibly sharp objects bury themselves in her eyes, too small for her to see as they tore through her retinas but somehow sharp enough to rip through them. Celine clutched her eyes in horror as she screamed and screamed.

“Do whatever you want to me, Celine. I somewhat deserve it, but don’t ever, EVER fuck with my friends!” Thomas shouted, showing his two front teeth, which had been shaved down to thin and broken shards by the repeated damage to his pale face. Too thin to easily see, and sharp enough to tear through Celine’s eyes.

Celine opened her eyes despite the damage, blood streaming out of them and down her face like red tears. Her expression had become manic and feral. “Thomas Finn you’re fucking finished!” she shouted, somehow retaining vision as she pulled out a heat gun and Thomas felt himself unable to move as he watched the top of Celine’s head melt. Then an engine. And Celine turned her head just in time to see a figure on a motorcycle collide with her and be sent flying twenty feet into the air before crashing back down to the ground, breaking her neck and leaving her facedown in a pool of blood.

Blair Aureo took off her helmet. “You really thought a train could kill me? I melted through the bottom of the tracks and returned it to a previous state, burying myself alive for just long enough for the train to pass and for me to tail you on my rad-as-fuck bike. Never taking the train again. And that’s my boiling blood, by the way. Can’t believe you didn’t figure that out, and you thought you were so fucking smart.” Blair spat on Celine’s body, panting as she got off her motorcycle.

Thomas had quickly created a mass of phantom nerves to find and pull Piotr out of the death cage with Cyrille, collapsing onto the rock as Blair cauterized their wounds.

* * *

Thomas woke up surrounded by cats. He was lying on a couch that was covered in cat fur, draped in a blanket that had two dark cats lying on it as he slept on his back. A cream-coloured one was investigating his hair as he stared up at it.

“You’ve been asleep for a few days, Thomas,” Blair said, walking over to him, wearing the T-shirt for a band he didn’t recognize and carrying a cup of coffee in her hand.

Thomas stretched his hand out nervously to grasp it and took a sip. Thomas struggled to mouth the word where as he sipped his coffee.

“You’re at my apartment! Isn’t it adorable?” Blair asked in her best cutesy voice as she picked up a particular chubby cat from off the ground and began swinging it in her arms. “So, I have to ask, who’s that big guy? Is he your dad or something because I feel like I kind of missed some important plot. Also, what do we do now?”

“Oh. Piotr? He’s cool. We can trust him. And now . . .” Thomas paused. “I nap, but later . . .” Thomas paused once more, furrowing his brow with great intensity. “We hunt down the Krokodil Crime Family.”

* * *

“She’ll make a full recovery. I’m sure of it.” A female figure was leaning over Celine’s dead body, her bubbly voice filling the night air. It was a few minutes after Thomas, Blair, and Piotr had left the facility, and their blood was still wet on the ground.

“Is that some kind of fucking joke? She’s dead,” another responded, her derision and frustration towards the other palpable in the darkness. She had walked forward and stepped into the pitch-black pod, lighting her flashlight as she stepped inside. She scanned the pod, eventually looking upwards and seeing Cyrille Krokodil chained to the ceiling. "Hey Dad."