Period Piece

You are the Warrior.

And God himself would damn you for being anything less.

The words spewed out in an electric shout, backed and amplified by the force of an outrageous dubstep beat. It is widely considered that the best transition samples in electronic music are short outbursts of genuine rage, and, in her current state, Jacqui had plenty of that to spare.

"Come now, Jacqui," Specter replied reasonably, moving to make an automatic hand gesture before remembering the Heqet between their hands. "I know you know what kind of villainous fiend I am. You know I won't simply abandon her just because you can shout at me in a very loud voice."

"Yeah? That's not all I can do to you," Jacqui threatened, dead serious. "...you alright, Heqet?"

"Well, I'm admittedly confused over how I apparently just blinked out of existence earlier, only to end up sandwiched between my sworn enemy's fingers now!" Heqet answered, cheerfully as ever. "And while my corporeal body is apparently experiencing tremendous crushing pain, I suppose there are worse ways to exist, am I right? Ha ha!"

"You're hurting her!" Jacqui shouted at the sworn enemy, taking a menacing step closer. "Drop her before I bash your fucking skull in!"

"It's always refreshing to hear that violence is still your top priority," Specter replied, squeezing Heqet a bit tighter just to be a dick about it, "...but let's be honest, Jacqui. You surely know by now that you'd never succeed at inflicting any on me."

Immediately following those words, Specter side-stepped left to avoid a meaty right hook from Jacqui. She swore under her breath, having hoped the attack would at least knock a few gleaming teeth out of that smug shadow's smile. Lesson learned, Specter was QUICK.

"How fortunate, then, that you're still so easy to read," Specter added, slowly walking a wide circle around Jacqui as the banter continued. "I know how highly you prize your combat prowess, but banking everything on sheer skill alone is an unsustainable strategy against a devil like me."

Jacqui didn't respond, not just yet anyway. Her brain was buzzing with available attack patterns and phantom possibilities and snappy one-liners, but Specter was probably right. This won't be an easy fight like the rest. Specter's a much bigger deal than all the other stereotype wackjobs I've fought tonight. This is a BOSS BATTLE. And while all good boss battles have a pattern to them, I have no idea what I'm up against with this one. I need time to analyze...

She followed suit and began walking the counter-circle in hopes of buying herself some.

"Now, I already know what your answer will be, but I'll ask again anyway," Specter intoned, voice dropping back into the octave of sexy evil villains. "Do not try engaging me in combat, and return to your position at the cave. I need you ALIVE and bleeding for this ritual, and I can't guarantee both should you choose to fight me."

"Jacqui, don't let this self-aggrandized demon tell you what you are or aren't already going to do!" Heqet shouted encouragingly, words muffled from between the hands of darkness. "You're ALREADY alive and bleeding, you can make as many variations on that theme as you so desire! If violence is what it takes for you to overcome your foes, then you do you!"

Jacqui wanted to nod in acknowledgement, let her spirit guide know how great it was to have her back, and how much she appreciated the cheerleading. But, per epic showdown rules, her eyes were immovably locked onto the invisible face of her enemy. She could feel the second set of eyes inside her mind darting left and right, counting steps, calculating speed and angle and body measurements, providing her with an entire college mathematics thesis worth of battle strategy to potentially act upon...

But she couldn't take that first step forward...not yet. Not until Heqet was safe.

"I don't have time for this futile nonsense," Specter rejoined with a sigh. "Mere minutes remain for me to splay this problematic creature out on the altar and carve out her corporeal little heart before I lose my opportunity until the next blood sunrise...and frankly, I doubt I'll be able to keep you entertained long enough for that part to come to fruition. So Jacqui, if you really won't take your place at the waterfall's peak and complete this ritual for me, I suppose I'll just have to take my leave now, and extend your...ahem, 'dream', to try again later. 'Them's the breaks', as they say...".

Without breaking contact, without breaking intensity, Jacqui stared Specter right back in the not-face and shot back, "FUCK. THAT."

She imagined Specter blinking asynchronously in response.

"I am BEYOND done with your bullshit," she continued hotly. "I hope for your sake you're serious about what a mistake it is trying to fight you, cause I intend to punt your scrawny little ass across this field, rescue my friend, and ollie the fuck outta here. The less I have to look at your stupid fucking face, the happier a life I'm gonna live."

"I'm crushed, Jacqui..." Specter replied in mock shock, "...but as usual, unsurprised. The curse of us troublemakers is that in the end, all we inevitably accomplish is encouraging violence upon ourselves. I had really hoped it wouldn't come to this, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected any less from someone like you. In my quest to make trouble, the two of you have gone and made unmitigated trouble for ME. Ah ha, the irony is just delicious...".

The tightening air closed around Jacqui's fingers, shaping them into fists.

"I suppose my little sacrifice was doomed to failure from the start," Specter added, glancing once again in disappointment at all the fallen Hooded faces on the ground. "And I also suppose that if I want to eliminate this frog, this horrible little gremlin running around undoing all the trouble I'm working so hard to create for you...then I'll just have to eliminate you both. I'm sure that's what you're thinking, isn't it, Jacqui?"

Steam flared from her nostrils.

"You don't HAVE to think that, by the way!" Heqet piped up again, wriggling forward to get her lips through the black gloved fingers and to make her voice heard. "As a firm believer in the cycle of reincarnation - mostly since I've already experienced it first-hand, ha ha! - my death here would only result in returning to the ethereal winds of spiritdom that flow throughout the finest atoms of the universe! I'm a goddess, Jacqui! I can't 'die' like you can! So I'd really rather you NOT stake your own life in exchange for the one I'm living right--"

"Heqet," Jacqui replied, in a new voice she had never used before, a voice summoned up from the burning pits of her lungs, from that very place where the breath of righteous fury and immutable resolve comes from, where only the words of the world's most epic and transcendent heroes can be formed, "...shut the fuck up."

There was a pause - the length of which might only be measurable by the processor of the world's most powerful supercomputer - before Heqet replied, "...yes ma'am, I'm on it!"

"I'll be honest, you dapper devil," Jacqui continued, glaring up at Specter, who had no right being that sexy while also that infuriating. "...after fighting every single jackass who's crossed my path tonight, fighting is starting to get more than a little stale."

"Why Jacqui, I'm shocked--"

"And I'm TIRED," she cut in, not about to be bantered over. Her eyes closed as her breathing grew heavier. "My body's in pain. My patience is thin. I hate this fucking forest. I hate your smug-ass shadow face. I hate this big-picture God bullshit I've been tasked with. I've been trying to wake up for HOURS now. It's long past time for this piece of shit 'dream' to just end already...".

She opened her eyes again. "...but lately I've been feeling like maybe you were right, Heqet."

The sound of a thought bubble carrying a question mark inside could be heard emanating from the frog's location.

"...this really ISN'T a dream at all, is it?"

And then she turned her gaze back to Specter. "...which brings me back to YOU."

The horrible shining grin slowly reemerged, glinting pinpricks of sunrise reflecting back at her. "Why, the honor is all mine, Jacqui...".

"Oh get off your own dick already," she snapped back, throwing out her hands to gesture at the world. "This...ALL of this...dream, afterlife, horrible computer simulation run by unethical gaming journalists, whatever all this is...YOU'RE responsible for it, aren't you?"

Specter didn't answer, and may have been frowning beneath that aura of darkness enshrouding their face. Heqet burbled quietly in their hands.

"It's obvious," Jacqui continued, no longer worried whether or not what she thought was obvious actually made sense at all anymore. "Everything about this 'dreamworld' is either fake, or inconsistent, or straight-up bullshit...this place wouldn't know logic if you rammed it up its ass. It's not even a dream about ME. I just live here."

It was her turn to drop her voice, but instead of the sexy villainous octave, she chose the octave of the unholy gravedigger. "And other than my jacked up uterus, you and Heqet are the only constants. Heqet exists only to help me, you exist only to fuck my shit up. So unless there really is a 'God' somewhere in this hot mess of an equation...".

Her smoky topaz eyes gleamed as she locked them on target. "...that makes YOU my final boss."

Even over the sounds of Heqet offering up exuberant praise while pretending not to be in severe pain, Specter still seemed unresponsive, likely calculating a verbal response in the same way Jacqui had been planning physical ones.

"...so yeah, I'll fight you," she concluded, taking another step forward. "And if I beat you, maybe the end credits'll finally start rolling. And if I CAN'T beat you...well, I can think of worse places to die. But if I don't fight you now, and you go off and 'extend the dream', as you suggest, then I'm gonna be stuck here for the rest of my life...or whatever you call this. So yeah, I say we get this over with and throw the fuck down."

Confidence shaped her body now. She stood upright and alert, like she wasn't even standing in a forest beside a waterfall in the misty morning sunrise. She was at home. She was in her element. She was in the dojo, ready to take on a new sparring partner who just MIGHT be better than she was...

Not that that mattered. Once you entered the ring, honor and blind pride demanded you stay inside it until someone emerged victorious. Confidence like that comes only from the honor of a fair fight, and in the ring, Jacqui was nothing if not stuffed with honor.

Specter, on the other hand, seemed to prefer cheap theatrics and an unhealthy dose of psychological debilitation. Grinning conceitedly, they finally spoke up again: "Jacqui, you incendiary little rascal, you...you can't be THAT stupid, can you?"

Her brow twitched and she sniffed. "...wanna bet?"

"Whatever made you think that I want to KILL you?" Specter asked, gently placing Heqet atop the stone altar and keeping one hand on her back. "Murder isn't the least bit conducive to the whole troublemaker schtick, now, is it?"

Whatever psychology Specter was employing, it might have been working. "...it'd probably be a little inconvenient."

"Jacqui, my entire character revolves around making your LIFE miserable," they clarified, fishing around in the front breast pocket of the suit Jacqui hadn't even realized they'd changed into. "There's nothing at all miserable about death. Even this annoyingly meddlesome frog understands that."

"Excuse me?" Heqet cut in. "Maybe you ought to look before you make leaps of logic like that! I know I have a big mouth, but that's no excuse to shove words into it without my consent!"

Specter leaned in close, pressing the shroud of darkness face-to-face with the frog's golden eyes. "Listen, I would very much appreciate it if you would quit damming up the flow of dialogue with your entirely unhelpful quips."

"And I would very much appreciate it if you would go and get struck by a meteor!" she replied, charmingly.

Specter sighed and reluctantly resumed composure. "Anyway, I suppose my point, dear Jacqui, is that yes, you're right. Whatever you call this place, you ARE stuck here, with me, forever. And regardless of what YOU decide to do, fight me, ignore me, romance me, whatever...MY first and only goal is always going to be making trouble for you."

Not even batting an eye at the one suggestion unlike the others, Jacqui threw her hands up in frustration. "So quit your stalling and FIGHT ME already, you pretentious little fuck! Put your hard-on for pissing me off back in your pants and let's fuckin' GO! Stop acting like making trouble for me gets you anything other than wet!"

"I've explained this already," Specter replied, pulling out the familiar black phone and tapping it to life with their free hand. "Making trouble is my PURPOSE. And who doesn't derive great pleasure from fulfilling their purpose? I just love being who I am."

"A pathetic little dipshit with an empty, unrewarding life and no friends?" she sneered.

"Good one, Jacqui!" Heqet put in, if only to feel included.

"Well, with friends like you, who needs enemies?" Specter paused to look up from the phone and grin. "Ah yes, speaking of which...".

With an oddly fancy tap of the thumb, Specter prompted a sharp edge of light-energy to emerge from the top of the phone's case, like some kind of...well, not exactly a lightsaber, but more like a light-boxcutter. "I'm afraid there's still one too many guests at this party. I'm going to have to insist that one of you leave...and it's certainly not YOU I'm asking, Jacqui."

In the second it took for her eyes to flash hot white and her foot to take another step forward, Specter flipped the phone over, cutter-side down.

And in the second that followed, as one hand pressed down on Heqet's back, and the other raised the phone up like a butcher's cleaver, Jacqui leaned forward, her own hand shoveling up a stone from beside the flowing creek.

And in the next second that followed, the stone flew forth from Jacqui's fingers like a baseball going for world record speed.

And in one more following second, Specter's head suddenly snapped to attention and Jacqui watched them deftly step to the right...but stop on the left.

...what?

She blinked, normally this time. She swore she had seen Specter strafe right, but they were clearly standing over to the left now. No way the demon could be THAT fast...

Her eyes narrowed as they quickly re-swept the scene. A mild hint of frozen rubber drifted into her smell radar.

That's when she saw it. A very slim vertical black line hung suspended in the air where Specter had dodged the stone…and there, an identical line just beside their position now. Two lines, one movement.

And, she assumed, a guilty smile on Specter's invisible, negative face.

"A teleporter..." Jacqui remarked, unimpressed but resignedly so. "Un-fuckin'-believable."

"You should hardly be surprised at this point," Specter dismissed, tugging a sleeve back into place and retracting the light-boxcutter back into the phone. "I DID say you'd never succeed at inflicting any violence on me...".

"Ohh, well teleportation would certainly explain a lot!" Heqet agreed in a voice painted with the constricted sounds of someone trying to ignore a very severe measurement of pain. "Wow, is this what physical pain is like for humans all the time? Now I can see how this would quickly graduate from irritating to excruciating if left untended, ha ha!"

"What the...Heqet, are you alright?!"

"Ah, now's probably not the time to worry about it, Jacqui!" she chirped, chipper as she could. "I think one of my legs might be severed, but I'm still here, and there's still a demon that needs vanquishing!"

At the mere suggestion of any damage worse than a papercut, Jacqui's eyes sparked up in a blaze of anger, and the tingling arousal of testosterone and adrenaline could be felt pumping through her veins.

"...or do worry, I guess!" Heqet amended, giving her an approving smile. "Do whatever gives you the focus and strength you need to overcome your inner demon and finish out this quest! If avenging my assault gives you the strength of ten Jacquis, then by all means, worry about me and my possible dismemberment!"

"Ahem," Specter interrupted, ever as polite as chaos incarnate can manage to be, "...just to clarify, we ARE still going to engage in combat?"

"Oh you bet your flat fuckin' tits we are," Jacqui replied, swallowing back the abdominal cramp creeping its way to the surface. "You done fucked up now, kid."

Specter's head turned to eye her coyly. "Only just now? Maybe I haven't been as thorough with my work as I've assumed...".

"I'm gonna enjoy beating the shit outta you," she continued, almost surprised at how seriously she meant it. "You're just the type of punk-ass bitch I've always dreamed of getting my hands on."

"Oh? I have a 'type' now?" Specter repeated, rudely browsing the phone in mid-conversation.

"Yeah...you're nothing but a goddamn troll." She spit the word out with a certain acidic bile, as if there might not be another known word in her language as awful and devaluing as that one when applied to another human.

"...a troll?" Heqet almost corrected her gross misuse of cryptozoology before Jacqui cut her off to continue.

"Your entire schtick is to make trouble for me," she explained, shaking her head at how obvious it should have been. "You exist for no other purpose than to piss me off for shits and giggles. You hide behind an anonymous mask to make yourself feel big and important and mysterious. And when real, physical danger comes a-knockin', you just poof yourself across the world with your little teleportation bullshit. Classic, bonafide troll...".

Incredibly, Specter paused for a moment to look up from the phone. "...and I take it that among humans, these traits are considered...dishonorable? Petty?"

"Among me, these traits are considered acceptable grounds to knock your fucking teeth out."

"Well, self-righteous as that may be, words mean nothing if they are not acted upon," Specter conceded, adjusting the derby and taking a fighting stance. "Honor and pride are but luxuries to me. My ends already justify my means; it's results that truly matter."

Jacqui snorted. "You getting to a point anytime soon, or do you just like to hear yourself prattle?"

"You really have no respect for drama and theatrics, do you?" Specter sighed, sparkling grin adorning their face once more as they finally stopped scrolling on the phone. "I suppose what I'm saying is...".

Tap.

"...I don't give a damn about my bad reputation."

"...God. FUCKING. Dammit, with this 80s BULLSHIT!"

The silence of the picturesque backwoods waterfall found itself abruptly pierced and shredded by a vicious floor tom beat and muddy blasts of electric guitar. Specter laid the phone atop the altar beside the incapacitated Heqet, revelling in their impeccable choice of fight scene music, then turned to Jacqui, taunting her with a wave of two fingers.

It was a trap. Any idiot could see it was a trap. She'd grown up on superhero movies and video games, this was just standard procedure for teleport trolls. She'd rush forward, lash out, and then Specter would teleport behind her, arrogantly smacking her in the back of the head like it was some applaudable spectacle of skill and talent. Classic troll bullshit.

...but what other option do I have? If Specter's gonna fight like a dirty rotten cheater, then I'm boned either way, right? It's either take the bait like a scrub and wait for them to get cocky so I can get a shot in edgewise, or lie down and let the troll murder my spirit guide right in front of my face.

...fuck it.

She exhaled, then plunged forward at full speed.

And, as predicted, at the moment just before impact could be heard a loud scratch, like fingernails on velcro. Jacqui watched Specter sidestep into a hovering black line, emerging behind her with a backhanded fist against her skull. She pitched forward, but caught herself, tucking into a roll and quickly throwing herself back upright. Planning saves lives, kids.

"Did you not believe me earlier?" Specter jeered back at her, again, as she'd expected. "Your world-famous brute violence won't save you this time. If you're going to fight me, you may want to try fighting smarter."

"Don't listen, Jacqui!" Heqet called out from the sidelines, head inexplicably bobbing to the beat. "You're the best violence-inflicter I know! If anyone can do this, it's YOU!"

She didn't answer. She might not even have been listening. Her mind was entirely preoccupied, taking careful note of the two black lines still hovering in the air where Specter had made the jump. The portals didn't close up on their own. Hmm...

She made another dash forward.

This time, Specter's legs split apart and they slid down into the earth, emerging from just above Jacqui's head, one foot landing squarely in the center of her back. She tried to land in a roll again, but hit the ground hard on her side, sending pain shooting through her nerves, down into every limb.

...fuck, they hit hard. C'mon Jacqui, back up and at it. Keep usin' that brain while your body does the heavy lifting...

"Tsk, tsk, Jacqui, it's not like you to repeat your failures..." Specter crooned, brushing the dust from their sleeve. "I've come to expect so much better from you. What's wrong?"

She wanted so badly to reply in time with the music, 'a girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do', but...no! No distractions!

...no distractions...?

"And PLEASE, don't dawdle," her unfairly-advantaged enemy added, impatiently. "Either destroy me like you said you would, or say your final goodbyes to this petulant little frog as I slice her body into sandwich-sized servings."

That certainly got her on her feet again.

"...why?"

Specter pulled a black glove back into place. "Be specific, Jacqui."

Her fingers clenched tightly as she approached. "WHY the fuck are you so intent on killing Heqet?"

"I don't like repeating myself..." Specter sighed, disappointed. "This tiny interloper has become too large a detriment to my Business, and must be eliminated so I may continue to thrive."

"Your 'business'," Jacqui repeated disgustedly, taking a swing as Specter stepped backwards into a portal and appeared behind her with an elbow jab into her spine. "The business of pissing me off, right?"

Specter blocked her counterpunch from the left, slipped into a rift on the right, and again emerged from behind, delivering a swift kick to Jacqui's rear. "You're falling behind, Jacqui. I really thought we were on the same page here."

"That's not a fucking answer!" Jacqui pressed, spinning around into a high kick as Specter dipped low into the earth again, reappearing a few feet further away. "Is it because Heqet is BAD for business? ...or is killing her just 'business as usual'?"

There was only a microfraction of a second before Specter responded, but it was a microfraction that hadn't been there before. "...you're being vague again, Jacqui."

"WHAT'S THE FUCKING MOTIVE?!" Jacqui demanded, marching forward. "What IS the end that justifies your means? Is your goal just to troll me, or is it to kill Heqet because she's makin' it HARD to troll me?"

Another pause. This one would have been just long enough for Jacqui's right hook to clip Specter on the jaw if they hadn't leapt back at the very last possible millisecond into another portal. "...Jacqui, I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive, do you?"

"You're stalling!" she insisted, digging her heels into the ground as she fought back the twisting pain below in tandem with the twisting pain above. "If you really wanted Heqet dead, you'd have teleported over and killed her HOURS ago! You're keeping her alive so you can use her as leverage while you dick around with me, but what you've FAILED to establish, despite all your overblown, idiot theatrics, is WHY."

And there was still yet another pause; a pause occupied by the silence of mental recalculation, the awkward tension of second-guessing, and the consigned sigh of arrogant bravado. Surrounded by thin black cracks in the universe, each spewing an unearthly chill and a weird nasty smell, Specter's toothy gleam flashed back eerily at her. "...I'm Chaos, Jacqui. Plain and simple Chaos in a world of Order. Where Order exists, I knock it over. My entire existence hinges on unbalancing all that is neatly stacked and minutely orchestrated. ALL means justify my ends!"

And Jacqui, no stranger to knocking over things that got too neatly stacked, snorted and crossed her arms, eyeing the demon defiantly. "...so why ME?"

Specter's head tilted, mouth opened to reply, but Jacqui cut it short.

"Who the fuck AM I to you?" she screamed, carefully watching Specter's fingers twitch in anticipation. "What makes ME so goddamn special to YOU, the Anonymous Little Bitch-Ass Chaos Troll, that you're willing to spend all your fucking chaos magic on ME, the Ass-Kicking Black Girl Dwarf With A Bleeding Vagina? Of all the fucking neat and orderly people in the universe, why the fuck are you so fixated on ME?!"

A light bulb flickered on overhead.

"...and why are you so eager to hook me up with God?"

Specter had better have counted their blessings to be in possession of a face shrouded in darkness. Without a discernible emotion on their face, there was no tattletale body language to give away exactly WHY the demon had paused just then. Not that the reason really mattered, though. The pause itself was what Jacqui wanted.

She lashed out in a wild arc, fingers clipping the edge of Specter's sleeve just closely enough that she was able to pull them off balance and throw them to the ground. But as she moved to follow up with a stomp, Specter disappeared through a crack in the earth below, then tumbled through a hole up in the sky and into another one, and another, and another, rolling and contorting all the while until finally flipping themselves upright again, and stepping out casually back onto the tattered battlefield. They brushed the dust from the front of the suit with an infuriating nonchalance.

"Color me impressed..." Specter grumbled reluctantly as the background music at last faded away. "I'm almost glad to be proven wrong about your predictability. A stirring round of applause for your unparalleled accomplishment in inflicted violence just now...".

"No more bullshit," Jacqui replied, still eyeing the thin black tears in the fabric of spacetime all around them. "This is the part where the REAL battle begins."

Specter's hands folded together and the index fingers steepled after. "Were we only practicing just now? If so, I'd still contest that this 'final boss battle' looks pretty grim for you...".

"Don't you air quote me, you little shit," she called back, cracking her knuckles confidently as her brain worked double-time to maintain that manufactured confidence. "I got your number now. I KNOW you're the final boss. Why else would you waste all this time dicking me over? Startin' fights and siccin' minions on me before you teleport away like the little bitch you are...you've shown every single classic villain symptom since the first second I met you, it's practically written on your stupid invisible forehead at this point. You even blame everything on God, just like all the other wackjobs I've met tonight."

A sharp chill ran through the air as Specter whispered back, "...do I really?"

"You sure as fuck do," Jacqui replied, forcibly ignoring the creepy ambience and focusing solely on her defensive posture. "Even MORE than they do. You made me believe God was the one who trapped me in this dream-not-a-dream living hell. You led me on the world's wildest goose chase, looking for an idea that you made me think was a person. And you even had the balls - or not, I don't even CARE what's down your pants at this point - to blame all my pain and my problems and my periods on, you guessed it, God. All the more proof you're nothin' but a scummy-ass troll."

"Ooh, listen to my girl over here, unleashing the blinding fury of the almighty Truth!" Heqet cheered proudly, doting on Jacqui's every word in spite of both their pain.

The demon waited patiently for her to make a point, hands still folded and steepled.

Now it was finally Jacqui's turn to break out the wicked grin. "I may be slow, but I'm not an idiot. I came into this world with a Quest: to go find God and kick him in the dick. You're the one who got me started on it...but it's YOU I've been chasing this whole time, isn't it?"

Specter might have raised an eyebrow.

"...YOU'RE God, aren't you?"

Boom.

In that moment, everything felt legendary. It was a scene straight out of an epic poem that artists would be sure to immortalize on the walls of an ancient palace in the distant future. Sunlight drilled down in bright, piercing spears of orange and pink across the sky. The roar of the waterfall mingled with the rush of the dramatic breeze that had picked up behind her and the meadow filled with the thick smell of frozen rubber from the broken scars of sliced-up spacetime all around them. And a faint taste of blood hovered upon Jacqui's tongue.

And no rendition of the moment would be complete without the sound of Heqet's victory gloat beside them, ringing out with pride for her young charge's breakthrough discovery with a booming sound like, "OOOOHHHHHHHH!!!"

Taking her hard-earned moment to breathe in and back out, Jacqui settled back into her stance, staring Specter right in the spot where she assumed their two eyes were. "...let's finish this. Once I beat you, I'm clocking out of this world and taking my life back."

"That's the spirit, Jacqui! Nail 'em!"

With a nod, Jacqui extended a hand and beckoned her enemy forward for the final rematch.

Neither a slow head shake, a sigh, a shrug, nor a snicker was a response she'd expected, and Specter did all four. "...you're very bold, Jacqui. If nothing else, I will concede that you are bold. Very well, if it's still a fight you so badly want, then I suppose I - the, ahem, 'God' of Chaos - should so oblige you!"

A sharp glint of light flared out from one eye.

"...you're wrong, by the way."

In the moment it took for Jacqui to question it with a single word, "...what?", Specter vanished backward into a tear and rammed her hard in the spine with an elbow from behind. With a pained roar, she whipped around for a counter-kick, only to see a shiny black shoe leaving through another tear as a pair of hands bludgeoned her against the back of the head. And before she could even catch her balance, an uppercut from below found itself embedded in her stomach, throwing her aside like a sack of trash.

...jesus fuck, it's comin' out thick now, she grimaced to herself. Gotta act fast...c'mon brain, I need a quick, decisive victory here...even a cheap gimmick will do...

"Jacqui, your left!"

Instinctively, she rolled to the right as the velcro sound of another portal tore open beside her, a hand thrusting sharply upward from within. Then she rolled right back as another rip sounded from the left, and instinctively split her legs at the sound of a third. Heh, the old one-two-crotch-a-roo, just like in the movies...

Pushing right through the searing pain in her stomach, she thrust herself forward, clawing desperately at the grass to regain her traction as more tears sounded off behind her. The air was rapidly filling up with black lines, like an action panel in a Japanese manga. Each one remained suspended in its place, oozing a cold breeze that carried the same awful, thick smell.

The distant part of her brain she'd been talking to earlier stirred within her, jotting this down as important for some reason.

"Where is your violence now, Jacqui?!" came one voice from twelve directions. "You can't defeat Chaos with more Chaos! You're powerless against me!"

Run, she told her legs. And keep running. Don't stop for anything. Jump, weave, whatever you have to do to buy me just a little more time.

More and more tears formed in the air around her, faster than any human, god, or not-a-dream being should be able to move. Now Jacqui was the one contorting, twisting, lunging her way across the field toward the stone altar.

Heqet...

She jumped as a light came on upstairs.

...the Position Arrow! That might work!

She slid under an outstretched arm, leapt backwards to avoid a follow-up, then continued dashing toward the altar.

Or it might just take me around in circles again. Magic isn't an exact science...

She nearly gagged on blast of frozen rubber smell, halting just in time to miss another blow.

God is everywhere...Specter is God...teleportation...it all adds up, doesn't it? How could I be "wrong" about that? No...it's gotta be another trick. Trolling at its finest...

The altar was feet away.

God is everywhere...

She could see Heqet crawling toward her on her broken little frog legs.

...teleportation...

She reached out her hands.

..."pocket dimension"...?

RIP.

All in one fell swoop, as if Specter had not only trespassed spacetime but also dammed it down to a trickle so that every single moment could be felt simultaneously, Jacqui snatched up Heqet's leathery body, tripped on a fist from the tear beneath her, and felt the fancy wooden sole of an expensive pleated shoe jab vigorously into the cushion of her bottom, tossing her face-first toward the ground.

She clutched Heqet close against her chest and shut her eyes tight, bracing for the skull-cracking impact.

And when it came, she hit the portal-scarred ground...

...so hard...

...that she fell right through it...

...out of the world...

...and into the frozen-rubber smell of the void beneath.