From Murder to Dust

ATE - 8 - Ink

The crowd seemed very unsettled when my name was mentioned. They became even more unsettled when I was forced onto the stage by a couple high ranks who held my arms tightly. Ink looked happy; I was not. 

"Our techniques for today will be quite simple: crowd control and civilian punishment." Ink turned to me. "As always with civilians, they shouldn't be able to move or dodge, hence the restraints. Now we begin."

Ink started to go through different techniques to properly control citizens, all of which were painful; I expected that. From kicking repeatedly to properly placed bone attacks, he cracked my bones and made the guards feel sorry for me; they had to watch this. After three hours of techniques, Ink stopped; everybody knew it wasn't over, though. He looked at my crying, shaking figure with glee; some of the lower ranks were crying as well. Everything was silent for over a minute; I honestly wondered if he was finished - I hoped he was..but I knew he wasn't. Even the crowd's crying slowed..until he said a simple phrase. The crying increased the second he said it, and even the higher ranks holding me seemed a bit tense about it; he wasn't joking.

"Now.." He said. "Execution techniques."

Ink grinned at me as he approached; I prepared for what was about to happen.

"This is fairly simple." Ink summoned a sharp bone. "If a civilian is getting out of hand too much, they deserve the most painful death possible, if they aren't sent to the compound for torturing, of course. The soul should be showing outside of the body, like this." My soul was pulled out. "A sharp object, knife, bone, anything, really, should be used. A death with less pain would be straightforward; we don't want that. Run the point across these spots on the soul, making sure not to hit anything important, and in general, just making them scream out. When you complete this path, jab straight in and twist. The victim will have regretted being born, and if they ever are brought back to life, they'll remember. Now, watch this demonstration of the tactic closely."

Ink brought the point of the bone across the path he specified earlier on my soul, making me scream in pain; the audience was mostly in tears, and the ones who weren't were passing out. Ink had a way of doing that, and my screaming was just a way to prove that his tactics worked, unfortunately. When he finished the first step in his technique, he drove the bone into my soul and twisted it, with my heightened screaming proving the effectiveness of his sadistic tactics. When he twisted for the last time, I died once more, and the hold of a reset took control instead. The pain was gone, thankfully, when I woke up in my bed, but it was a pretty gruesome experience while it lasted; I just had to forget about it and move on. I started my usual routine when I died, heading straight for the guard station in the forest; I had to know what Papyrus had been up to recently - he's the best! There was only one guard in the station when I got there, and he was in tears; he had obviously been watching. After a quick comforting hug, the guard led me to the table where my brother's achievements were kept; there were four more pages than last time, and they included more of my awesome brother's rescue attempts and other missions!

I spent twenty minutes looking at Paps's missions before saying goodbye to the guard and heading to Grillby's; I had an extra hour today, and I wasn't going to waste it! When I reached the restaurant, I took my usual seat and started talking to Grillby and some others; they hadn't heard about the events of the day, which I counted as a good thing, because I didn't want to talk about it. We talked about multiverse happenings and other events that were coming up, but the conversation eventually drifted to the past..when Ink wasn't in control. There was a lot of laughter, and smiling was present.