Kodoku 蠱毒

It’s another late night for a person going by the username ‘Junko Kodoku’ on a set few forums, real name Jean Elizora Langley, messaging some acquaintances. She leans back in her chair, a neat brandy finished. “10 years ago to the day, huh.”

“I’m good with my current setup” “Girlie it’s from the 2050s, my house is younger than that,” “What do you expect? I’m one of the first infected!” “Ooh let’s get you to bed then granny!” “Oh shush, you. You’d be a 70 year old man by now yourself, Kris!” “Hehe, yeah, but you’d be a skeleton by now, miss 264~” “Oh don’t you ruffle my feathers too, Frankie! Honestly the lot of you were practically babies when infected, now you act so, well, bold.” “Did you seriously make that pun, granny? Damn you really are old to be making ‘mom’ type jokes like thaaat.” “Damn, Kris, ease off her wouldja?” “Thank you Amelie,” “Jeez, I’ve been in Jean’s place 10 minutes making a stew for all of us and Kris is being a pain again huuuh~? Did you get you ass half-beaten or something by a Demon Hunter, buddy~?′ A collective ‘Ooooh’ is said between everyone else in the group chat.

‘You seeing this, Jean? Blake calling Kris buddy again, another marital dispuuute~’ Frankie states in text, where she’d be kicking her feet if elsewhere, but is instead currently happily skipping along on a sidewalk with Kris walking grumpily in tow. “Ugh, Blake is gonna be so pouty at Jean’s place. You’d think he and I weren’t engaged, with the way he’s upset with me so ofteeen,” “Bahh it’s your own faault~ Always teasing Jean about her age when you got your ass beat by someone, when you’re an old man too~” “HEY! I didn’t see you disagreeing! God damn bastard,” “Heyy is that any way to talk to me, huh? We’re the only family we’ve go-o-ot.” “Aside from Jean” “Aside from Jean- HEYY! That doesn’t count yet, we’re not married,” “Sure thing sis. Just watch out for Iris-”

“Why?” Iris says from the shadows. “AH! IRIS! It’s just that you might wife up Jean first is all, if Frankie’s not careful.” “True,” Iris confirms without a hint of doubt, “WHAAT?! NO!” “No, huh? Don’t worry you’ll be the bridesmaid of course,” “NUuuuoOO!” Frankie howls, but soon stops when she, Iris and Kris sense someone.

Smash cut back to Jean’s apartment, when this memory takes place, Amelie is sat diagonally across from Jean on the blue-gray, L-unit couch. It’s soft, felt material to it and plump cushioning makes for comfortable leisure hours between the group of friends.

“What do you supposes’ takin’ Kris, Frankie n Iris so long to get here?” She asks Jean. “Eh, there’s probably bickering about how Blake is upset at Kris, when it’s Kris’ own fault. Maybe, another back and forth between Frankie and Iris about whatever makes them such passionate yet yielding rivals.” Jean explained with a false but believable confidence. An icy feeling ran down the back of her neck, but not from her own doing or Blake’s. She can sense something’s wrong, as her eyes narrow at a picture frame on a desk.

“Hmm. Just in case, does one of you want to go check? If it’s you Blake, please try to just drag them here if they’re in a full scuffle.” Blake comes into the room with an air of disturbed peace, taking off his apron as he sighs, “Yeah, it feels like even Kris is involved in a scuffle this time. Amelie, please come with?” “Will do!” “Right, thanks. Jean I know it’s your late birthday celebration but you’ll have to watch the food for the 5 minutes it’ll take for us to get my future hubby and in-law here.” Jean smiles. “Oh? Not going to bring Iris back here?” She asks, in a completely unserious tone.

“Are you kidding? She’s the level-headed one of us! Besides, if she’s the one that’s lost her temper, I do not want the smoke with her Wrath Emblem.” “You know what, totally understand actually! In that event here, have the 2nd doll.” Jean states, snapping up the opportunity just a bit too quickly.

Jean summons a small humanoid doll, resembling a homunculus with it’s hands clutching at a small piece of rock with static charge all around it. Blake, the more caring sort that he is, is unnerved by how willing Jean is to send this form of ‘back up’ for them. “Oh, yeah, that. Seems a bit excessive though.” Realising she’s been found out, Jean hastily justifies with “Hey, Frankie and Iris are my only 2. The rest of you are Elites, having 5 people each as your-” “Alright, I get it Jean, I was just worried is all. I know you don’t like people being delayed” Blake partially lied, trying to assess Jean’s mind, without telepathically invading. Blake picks up the tiny humanoid, that’s clinging to its weird mineral tightly, letting him know how worried Jean really is.

Making haste to the door, Blake states “This’ll take 3 minutes, tops.” Amelie, already by him attempts to backs this up with “Yeah, worst case we can use the homunculus! Byyee,” before both make a rapidly accelerating pace to where they feel their friends.

3 minutes later.

5 minutes later. The food’s already done, even cooling on a metal rack, it’s a chocolate and butterscotch cake. Assisted by the cold atmosphere Jean is producing out of anxiousness.

‘I gotta go see them’ she thinks, already stood up, hand ready to motion her 2nd homunculus into activation, when she gets a voice message from Kris “I’m sorry, Aunty” before sounds of audio distortion take it over, followed by it cutting off. Jean immediately teleports to the homunculus.

It’s not a nanometre short of a massacre.

Reddish pink slush diligently decorates every paving slab in the street, evening every dip between the brickwork. To add to this, Jean can almost recognise her allies’ eyeballs, now taken the form of several slack cubes of meat, her only recognition by eye colour. Looking down by her boot, she spots a chunk Kris’ phone, disassembled in the same way: cut into 96, neat cubes.

The magnitude of the horror and terror, Jean runs over to what remains of Iris and Frankie who have seemingly been specifically targeted by whoever, with extra malice with whatever dismantled everyone else, being used on them several times over, with their heads and upper neck left semi-intact. Sloppy words carved into them with whatever talons or claws their assailant has.

That same assailant has however turned back towards this crime scene of zombie versus zombie violence. Gleefully skipping about, mocking how Frankie did. All with a small crew of similarly walking individuals, repeating everything Jean’s friends said.

“‘No, HuH? dOn’t wOrRy yOu’lL Be tHe bRiDeSmAiD Of cOuRsE,’ HAHA!” “‘nUuUuOoO!’ HAHAHA!”

Jean can hear every word of this.

She was already planning to shoot what little power she had, to freeze them down to the bone. That was until,she felt movement. Among the corpses of her friends, one of them was still clinging to life, just barely able to twitch.

“IRIS!” Jean yelped, as she knelt down by her friend’s broken body. “Quickly, drink my blood. You’ll be freed from being my thrall- you’ll be instantly upgraded into a-a false noble,” She urged, already slicing her wrist as she drew it near what remains of Iris’ mouth. An ice spear still forming above her general person by Jean.

Then the person make themselves known with an obnoxious “HUH?! TWO OF ’EM STILL ALIVE?!” following which, is their hurried claws digging into any surface to propel them forward. But they’re halted mid air right before they could slash with their arms outstretched, full of motion and tension. All by an unseen force.

“Well, well, well. Long time no see ‘Shnookums.’”

Instantly, Jean’s entire demeanour changes. From bleeding as much as she can into Iris’ mouth, to forming a tall ice wall that spans the street, the second she hears this mystery’s apparently familiar voice.

The air feels to all, as if it came to a standstill. In truth all the moisture was taken out of it, for what Jean, plans to try to do next. “Oh nono, don’t go try trapping me in an ice ball again bitch. We both know it doesn’t work anyway,” To this Jean, becomes simply irate. “Who said it’s a ball?” She demands, with seething, spreading wrath and indignity. “Oho, look at you getting all angry, that’s unlike you!” “Tends to happen when people I actually care about are disposed of like meat and mocked by pale monkeys.” The two that were held up by Jean’s enemy, now are released from their block, “You heard her, boys. She thinks you’re monkeys.”

With this the two resume their motions, with complete abandon for their safety to the degree of tearing apart their muscular-skeletal system with their lunged swing, of their arms. Ripping out their own ribs, forearms, and surrounding muscles with an attempted slash.

All only to meet and have a very intimate introduction to the ice spear Jean was brewing, hitting them both and into the ice wall she’d made. Had it been any more of an introduction, the two ‘monkeys’ might’ve proposed to the spear. The real horror, is when they also discover this new intricate insertion of ice, has also flash frozen their bodies to about −300 °F. Just ice, where their was water inside them.

It’s at this realization to them, that Jean then grabs a fallen chunk of brick wall and jumps at these two and smashes it into their bodies until they much resemble her own friends. “My my, I knew you had a cruel streak, but this? I’m just proud of you frankly ‘Shnookums’. Care to dance again~?” This entity asks, phrasing it like a demand, becoming a much, much more human form in the process. “Like old times,” they continue on. Opening arms, with the thinly veiled, vehemently malicious, peacock strut that they’re human and/or non-threatening. Jean clicks her fingers, for another ice spear to be launched their way.

The shocking, or not so shocking, is the entity not dodging it or stopping it, but letting it hit. Flash freezing half their torso, losing an arm and exposing their internal mass the moment they try to move. “HAHAHAHA! Oh that STINGS! Someone woke up in a bad way~” “You killed my family, then had those goons laughing like hyenas about it knowing I’m here- you can sense my presence after all, older flame.” “Well gee, you got me there Jeeaan! I’m just so frustrated after learning they were your friends n whatnot y’know? After,that time, I just can’t stand the idea of you being happy~” To this response, Jean’s fury becomes several layers deeper and more potent.

“Evalyn, I broke up with you 245 years ago, so now you kill anyone who’s even remotely friendly with me and brutalise people who’re close to me.” “YUP! HAHAHAA! Isn’t it so villainous of me?” “I’m going to-!” Jean begins to say, before Evalyn appears instantly before here half an inch before her face while levitating. “YEAH?! YOU GONNA KILL ME?! Pleasetell me you’re going to finally try that.” To this Jean slams her palms into either side of Evalyn’s face, “Oooh frosty hands as always ‘Shnookums,’ want a warm hug? Hehehehe,” Jean draws in the partially broken ice wall, the spear and spirals them around Evalyn. “No not this trick agaaain, you cheap BITCH!” Trying to break free, Evalyn continually tries at punching holes through Jean, only for ice needles to pierce her and spread their flash freezing effect.

Evalyn’s struggling furiously, but being frozen deeply and breaking apart, then trying to reform and regenerate is becoming increasingly taxing to her, among other things. Seconds pass, she’s frozen to the core, just about to move her eyes, her body frozen as a statue, at least adding something to her appearance; all to just temporarily stop her moving.

Jean then lifts the ice sculpture, lumps it together with the icy remains of her goons in a new layer on top, from more of the wall, before she then starts to spin to hammer thrown Evalyn’s frozen self all the way to Arkansas. Immediately upon Evalyn’s removal from the location, she slumps to the ground. “That fucking bastard... All of this just makes me remember breaking up with her,” Jean sighs disappointedly. “At least she didn’t repeat the transphobic rhetoric.”

Looking at her mutilated found family and massacred street, Jean can only weep and weep. Her phone, then plays one Kris’ final message once more: “I’m sorry Aunty. Please drink all of our blood when you arrive,” following which all the others weakly agree “Same” while Evalyn can be heard shouting something in the background, as her 2 goons laugh maniacally much closer to the phone.

Jean drinks the blood of her fallen. With their consent, Jean will suffer no ill effects, like those she clears out in ’Nests. A portion of their strengths join hers, as their memories flood her brain.

In doing so, in this moment she gains 1 iota of hope, via shared vision: Iris is still just very barely alive. “Iris...” Jean archaically laments, as she goes to pick up the few remaining pieces of her only remaining ‘person’ in this world. Iris only being a head and spine and some organs, Jean gives Iris a bit more of her blood, as she activates the same ability that teleported her here. Upon entering her home, she reaches a bag of blood, tipping the whole bag to go into Iris’ mouth, allowing her to regenerate into a fully humanoid state once more.

But her eyes don’t open. Jean tries and fails to stir her, but can tell she’s ‘alive’ or whatever passes for that in their state of being/existence.

Back in the present day, Jean’s face is sour as she puts down the full tumbler of whisky. Sighing that “Iris is still in a coma, 10 years later... At least she’s still ‘here.’ But damn it’s lonely, with the quiet, empty days.” However, that’s all about to change, as a few thuds pound against the roof of the apartment building.

“Who the hell’s up there are this time? So close to the morning,” Jean wonders, already standing up, sobering up as she stretches after being sat in one position the whole night, clicking and cracking joints and bones with every movement and twitch. But something changes in the air.

“This doesn’t feel good...” She observes while preparing to ascend to the roof, before exiting out the open window, morphing into a dark, partially liquid, serpentine form up the pipes to the gutters, staying silent the whole little trip up 14ft.

Scoping it out to where she hears the noise, she notices someone being cornered 3 v 1. The 3 bear a mark on their hands, that Jean recognises with rampant hatred, while the 1 also has a mark resembling it while a slash or mark covering/defacing it. ’Hm. So this girl tried to leave out of the basic ‘camp’ of it and all that.′ Jean thinks to herself, slowly raising up, shapeshifting once more into something, larger. Though she makes sure the whole roof’s new guests are frozen in place, before freezing them in fear.

They all notice the dark, angrily writing form rising up from the side of the roof nearby in apprehension. “More monkeys arriving on my roof once more hm?” She says, making sure her voice has a surround sound effect. “WH-WHO’RE YOU?! SHOULDN’T YOU BE WITH US, AS AN UNDEAD?!” The 3 shout. Jean shoots an ice spear through all 3 of them, “No~” she answers sadistically, as the freezing effect now spreads through their entire bodies. “I’m an enemy of that cunt you call an Overlord,” “YOU PIECE OF SHIT HOW DARE-!” Jean backhands off that person’s jaw. “Evalyn is lowly scum, given demonic godhood. Don’t defend her infested, infected self. Now, you, smaller one. Who’re you to these clowns?” The 1 person, is shaking in fear themselves. Reasonable considering the power display.

“By the obscured mark on your hand, you’re at least not with these pigshits, right?” Jean demands, to the person’s nodding. “Right, well, no need for these to be conscious then.” The icy floor, recedes from the one person and swallows the other 3 whole. The one falls onto their butt.

Jean pulls out a phone, after calling someone answers “Hey bestie, its Jean~ I got 3 more for you to get information out of~ Yep. Right on my roof, yeah. See you soon~” She says in this upbeat, yet sickly sweet way, reeking of sadism before glancing over at the remaining person. “So, what do you want to do?”

“W-w-what?” They stutter. “It’s close to morning, you’re an escapee of what I assume to be these monkey’s camp or initiation into being an undead. Where do you want to go now? I’m not going to attack you, these 3 pursued you onto my roof after all.” “But... But you?” “But me? Is there a language barrier here? You ok?” “You’re the big bad to the Overlord- everyone in the camp said to steer clear of you.” “Well that’s hilarious. She’s been nothing but a bitch to me, since before we were undead, when she and I were still human.”

Jean shifts back to her human form, stretching a bit more, before calmly approaching this person. They back up instantly at the roof’s edge, which makes them stop on the spot. “Ah, I see, breed hate of me until it’s on-sight, huh. Hmph. Less than monkey business. Look, you, I’d advise finding shelter soon. Sun’s going to be up in about 20 minutes, and I can tell you’re not far enough as an undead to be just weakened by sunlight, or holy things. There’s plenty of empty apartments below, seeing as the entire place is abandoned but maintained.” The person looks beyond confused, to which Jean takes note and just walks away.

“Wait, where are you going? You just said-” “Yeah, I’m just weakened a bit, can’t shapeshift like you just saw in sunlight, but I can still at least bring the arctic.” “Y-you’re a false noble??” “Yeah? Why?” “But... you fought the Overlord,” “Yeah, I fought smart: freeze the bitch while her guard’s down then practically throw her to space all the way back to Arkansas.” “But...BUT! Agh, she’s invincible though!” To this Jean begins to laugh.

“WHAT?! It’s not funny it’s true! She kills TITLED hunters all the time!” Jean continues to laugh for a bit, then stating “I was a basic undead when I caught her with that, HAHAHAHA! Oh this is too funny,” Hearing this, the person begins to just stare at the ground, zoning out. “You should have killed me by now. Why haven’t you? You’re supposed to be merciless, I don’t...”

Jean takes on a serious demeanour at this, “I’m only merciless against pieces of shit that kill my friends/new found family right outside my fucking apartment. Especially when the monkeys mock their last words purposefully for me to hear them.” The sheer intensity of the malice behind the statement, scares the ‘living daylights’ out of this person. They pass out, nearly falling off the roof’s edge before Jean swipes over to catch them, scoop them up and assesses their condition up close.

“Huh, I was right, basic. Oh well, howdy neighbour.” Jean says, before realising she can’t hear her. She sighs, then brings this person into the apartment complex and sits her in the stairwell leading up to the doors, out of any path of sunlight: in the small room that’s directedly built on the landing of the stairs, directly facing the exit onto the roof. She plops the lass down in there, hands her a blood bag, closes the door behind her and leaves.

Several minutes later, she arrives at a small hospital, gives a nod to one of the staff and goes through to one of the wards, after hand sanitising her hands. It’s Iris room.

Here she lays, motionless as ever, as wires are drip feeding her human blood every few seconds. “Hello dear,” Jean says, taking off her coat, placing down some flowers she picked up. “I bought you some blue moonflowers, your favourites.” She continues, putting them in a flower pot ever so delicately. “It’s been a long decade, eh? No comment? Figures as much, always the strong, beautiful, quieter type.” Jean sighs.