by I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
On the crowded underground level of the Royal Crown Tower, Grimm waited for Phil Smith, M'xy and Grissom Montag to arrive. He figured they would arrive before him, but several minutes had passed since he got there.
Finally, after waiting for a while, Phil and Grissom appeared out of nowhere.
"Hey! Where were you?" Grimm said.
"Not where, when..." Grissom replied.
"What?" Grimm asked.
"We asked M'xy to take us here in no time, and he took us to a plane superposed to ours, where time doesn't apply..." Grissom answered. "We explained what we meant and he took us back here, but in January."
"Last January?" Grimm asked, confused.
"Next January," Grissom answered. "It was quite an experience."
"Wow. He can do that? Phil?"
"Don't ask me. I don't know what the hell just happened," Phil said. "And I was starting to think I was getting used to all this."
"So, where is he now?" Grimm asked.
"I don't know," Grissom said. "He got lost somewhere in the middle. I'm surprised Phil and I didn't end up in the Middle Ages."
"Well, looks like we're not gonna need him, anyway. The building looks safe enough, and all these people should be safe here," Grimm said.
"Actually..." Grissom said as he examined the cracks on the wall next to him. "I don't like the way this wall looks. It could be dangerous."
Grissom followed the cracks through the wall with his eyes, to see how long they went, and saw they continued until the ceiling, then across it, and then onto the other walls.
"God..." he said, "...these bloody cracks are all over the place! We have to get these people out of here! Anything could make the roof fall on us!"
"I hope M'xy gets here soon, then!" Phil said.
At that moment, a loud explosion of light in front of the three men announced M'xy's arrival. Before anyone could say anything, the sound of the explosion echoed across the room, and was followed first by a big CRACK and then by the falling of some pieces of the ceiling.
Meanwhile, at the apartment complex, Daniela of the PSI-Unit looked at the winged bear coming to her with disbelief. She was about to scream, but he beat her to it by opening his snout and yelling, "VAMPIRE!" as he prepared his claws to cut the girl in half.
Uncle Otto knew a vampire when he saw one. This wasn't the first time he encountered one. Before he came to La Perdita, he had visited many places and did many things, but that was a tale for another occasion. What was important now was that he had learned to recognize a vampire, even if it wasn't a normal one.
And the girl in front of him, the girl inside the ruins of the building where his niece Shirley had been when he last spoke to her, was one.
She looked like a cute and innocent teenage girl -- she even looked lost and confused -- but he wasn't going to let looks deceive him. She was a vampire. He could smell it.
Daniela saw the flying bear with large claws coming to her in slow motion, but she didn't have time to move or even scream. As he got closer, he pointed at her with his claws, and when he reached her, he inserted them in her stomach.
Daniela felt the claws go into her.
Needless to say, it hurt like hell. At this moment, her pain -- both physical and mental -- had reached its climax. She could feel the claws inside her destroying her organs. She thought about Stefano during what she thought was the last moment of her life.
And, then, suddenly, the pain stopped.
At first she thought she was dead, but she felt so incredibly cold that she didn't think that was possible. She saw the winged bear withdraw his claws from her abdomen.
Daniela didn't feel her claws go outside her.
And then she understood. She really was dead. The feelings that were suddenly flooding her head at first repulsed her, but soon she realized how good it felt to just let herself go.
She raised her arms and looked at the half-destroyed ceiling, and as she did that, the bear who was standing close to her was hit by a strong telekinetic blast.
"I'm... I'm... free!" Daniela said. "For the first time in my life," she continued, slowly levitating as she spoke, "I'm completely free! My mind has been freed!" She looked down and noticed she was floating. "And therefore, my powers have been freed," she said with a cold smile as she made pieces of fallen ceiling gravitate around her. "I've been holding them back all these years without even knowing!"
She turned her head to look at Otto. "And it's all thanks to you," she said. Otto, lying against a wall, noticed that her eyes looked different, a little yellow, a little red.
She descended until her feet touched the ground, and then she started slowly moving toward Otto, but without moving her legs at all, as if she was on a platform.
"Of course, it was the vampire I met before who bit me... I can see that now," she said, getting closer and closer. "But it was you who completed the transformation. If it wasn't for you, God knows how long it would have taken me to realize what I am now."
The psychic vampire stood in front of him and asked, "Who are you, little bear?" Otto tried to move, but soon realized there was something holding him back. "Otto? Is that your name? Otto? I had always struggled with trying to read minds before, but it looks like now I can. Neat, huh? Shirley? Who's Shirley? You're worried about her? Ah, but you're glad I had never heard of her. It means I didn't kill her, but it doesn't mean that I still won't. I mean, I guess that's what I should do now that I'm, you know... I guess I should kill people and stuff.
"What? Worrying about Shirley again? God, you really love her, don't you? She's your only family. Your only family that doesn't treat you like, well, a bear." Daniela giggled a bit. "You know, I used to love someone, too. He's splattered on the sidewalk out there. Wanna see him?"
Otto had a flash of Stefano's dead body splattered over the sidewalk.
"Oooooh, cool! I didn't know I could do that! Let's see what else I can do. Hmm... Wanna see how Shirley would look like if she was in Stefano's place?"
Otto had another flash, this time of Shirley's dead body splattered over the sidewalk. He winced.
"Nice, huh? Y'know, I used to avoid talking like this... Like, I just said y'know, but before I would have said you know, y'know? I tried to sound British or something, or talk like a cartoon superhero... I think we all did. But what I really wanted to do was to tell them all to FUCK OFF! Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee..." Daniela started laughing hysterically as tears flowed down her pale cheeks.
"What?" she said, stopping her laughter suddenly. "No, I'm not gonna kill you. We're gonna have some fun first! Let's find out what else I can do, shall we?"