Author's Note
Okay, so I got into Phighting and I got a little too excited and I made too many spreadsheets on it so now I have too much lore that I need to do something with. No big long spiel this time, just writing.
Uh-- and enjoy I guess.
Scythe had no capacity for being good.
Her whole life was built on doing bad things. She'd been branded as a serial killer, a thief, and overall a pretty unlikable person. And she didn't mind flaunting it like a medal of honor.
She knew people whispered her name for fear of somehow summoning her out of nowhere. She knew she was flashing on the news once in a while, where the reporter went 'Scythe did this' and 'Scythe did that' and people talked about how much they didn't like her.
To be honest, it wasn't even hard to let the comments just bounce off. Scythe was making a living, and she was famous. That was all that mattered.
And watching the Inphinity try and grapple at straws in an attempt to figure her out was somewhat cathartic.
Scythe propped her feet up on a crate, her boots dripping water onto the smooth tiled floor. A leak in the corner of the room steadily filled a bucket of water as the dripping sound rippled through the room. Scythe mimicked it, doing the thing where she pursed her lips and flicked her cheek to make a similar sound as she studied the small, bright screen of a television.
The credits had just started rolling at the end of her favorite program—a documentary on a small Phighting arena somewhere near the Thieves' Den. She frowned, fumbling for the remote and changing the channel.
The next program struggled through static, the grainy noise reverberating off the walls, before the television clunked and died altogether. Scythe muttered under her breath and pulled herself out of her armchair, giving the TV a good smack on the side. Nothing happened.
"Oi, Broker!" she yelled, opening the door and wandering out. More leaks had appeared in the long, winding hallway, making small puddles on the green marble. The hallway was more of a tunnel than a room, twisting through stone and connecting the few small caverns making up her base.
"Broker!" she called again, removing her large fedora and propping it on a small hook jutting from the stone wall.
No reply.
"Good one," she murmured, tramping down the hallway. The lights seemed to jolt and flicker the further she went, and then when she was almost to the exit they shut off.
It took a hot second to open the hatch. Scythe insisted that the small hatch in the side of the wall should have three locks, two puzzles, and five switches. It sounded like an acceptable and reasonable number. And it meant that she had plenty of time to quickly plan what she was going to do if she were going to be out working.
Scythe found it difficult to sort out the puzzles and locks in the dark, but eventually she felt her way through it and kicked the hatch open, climbing out into the damp, dreary world above.