I'M YOUR PUPPET; invincible

chapter 5

[act one; chapter five     -     a fine line]

    She was thirteen the first time Cecil needed her for a mission. It was kept quiet, hidden even from the Guardian's. From her father. It would be that day that she learned the true difference between good and bad. Hero and villain.

    She didn't know which she was, really. Not anymore. Not since then.

    Cecil had looked at her sternly before she left that day. He had told her, "Just finish the job. I don't care how you do it, just get it done."

    She did. She got the job finished, but she had left bloodied. Dripping from her body, hair no longer its normal brunette, but dark red. She hadn't recognized herself after that night. Not when she stumbled into her home, only glad for her father's nightly absence at that moment.

    When she stood in front of the mirror, looking at her body, she felt as though she were a foreign being. A ghost in her own body, unable to fully accompany her physical self in her mind. As if they were two separate entities. Lightwalker and Loren became two people that day. Separate.

    As she got older, though, she began to question it. To doubt it. More and more, she felt as though they were one. No longer did she avidly separate one life from the other. The names were different, yes, but not in meaning. Loren was Lightwalker. Lightwalker was Loren.

    It was another night that Cecil had needed her to sacrifice any ounce of humanity in her. To set it aside, to become the foreign being that she was. To become something akin to a monster.

    She despised it. She did, really. But after a time, when glancing in the mirror, she could not separate the hero from the monster. Soon, monster became hero. No longer could they be parted.

    She cut through them, these nameless beings. She had not been told who they were, just her job. To get rid of them in no particular terms. No prison. Just...gone.

    She knew what that meant. She had known it since she was thirteen. Now, five years later, those words meant one thing to her.

    Death.

    She dropped down, narrowly avoiding the swinging arm of one of her targets. Pushing off of her heel, she wrapped her arms around their waist. Standing to her full height, Lightwalker pressed her hand under their chin and pushed. She pushed hard enough that she heard bones snap. Crack and break under the pressure. A moment later, head tore from body.

    Her father's head and body were no longer one.

    She pushed aside the thoughts creeping in. The doubt. Every ounce of her screamed, crying out, though she did not know for what. To stop or to not think. She wasn't sure anymore.