“Hey!”
Helena turned around and Daphne slammed her against the wall, squeezing her breast brutally hard. She cried out in pain and tried to push Daphne off her, both girls naked.
“Ah! What the hell are you doing?!”
“Stay away from Xavier, you bitch! He’s mine!”
Helena’s eyes widened. “What did you just say?”
“I’m going to be his queen, not you! I’ll show you what happens when you get in my way! If Xavier hasn’t popped your cherry, I’ll break you in for him!”
Daphne began working her fingers into Helena, and at that moment, every cell in her body seemed to line up, making her feel like she was made of Kevlar.
“Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you ever touch me!”
Pulling back her arm, she punched Daphne in the face as hard as she could, sending her sprawling back with a broken nose. Pushing off against the wall, Helena hurled herself at her long-time nemesis and began beating her wildly with her fists. Hitting the opposing wall of the shower room, Daphne ducked to the side to dodge Helena’s punch.
Helena stood over her, cracking her knuckles. “Of all the girls in this school to pick a fight with, you picked the wrong one.”
Daphne’s eyes became black with unholy energy. “Right back at you.”
She tackled Helena, knocking her to the slippery ground and sitting on top of her. Helena shifted her head to the side, barely dodging a downward punch. Daphne’s fist smashed the concrete floor like it was Styrofoam.
‘Oh my god, she’s not human! What did Xavier do to make her like this?!’
Grabbing her arm, Helena pushed against Daphne’s elbow to force her to roll off to the side. Helena got to her feet and spun around on the slick floor to deliver a kick to Daphne’s jaw, sending her staggering out of the shower and crashing one of the benches. She stood up, her body rippling as the dark power began to destabilize from her rage. Her face contorted, her teeth becoming like needles and her cheeks disappearing. She sent her arm rocketing towards Helena, the limb stretching like rubber with claws at the tips of her fingers. Helena ducked out of the way, gaining a large cut across the shoulder but otherwise avoiding damage.
With blood running down her chest, she bolted up and charged towards Daphne. Any normal human would run or be utterly petrified, but Helena was too pissed off to feel anything but the ravenous desire to beat her opponent. She had known since the night Xavier enslaved her that she would have to fight a battle like this someday, so there was no point in feeling fear. Her mind had become as focused as a laser, blocking out the pain in her shoulder and the absence of her clothes. She saw only openings in Daphne’s transforming body and variables in the locker room: slippery floors, hard lockers, and benches occupying space.
“You’re not Xavier, but you’ll do! I’ll purge this school of your unholy existence!”
She sent her fist rocketing towards Daphne and struck her in the eye.
The mutating girl shook off the injury. “I’LL KILL YOU, YOU STUPID CUNT!”
Grabbing Helena by the arm, she picked her up and tossed her at the nearby row of sinks. Helena nearly blacked out from the impact and could feel the mirrors shattering against her back. Daphne charged and delivered a wall-crunching punch, but avoiding the strike, Helena lashed out and slammed a handful of mirror shards into Daphne’s face, blinding her in one eye. Staggering back, Daphne gave an inhuman cry of pain, and taking advantage of the opening, Helena unleashed another barrage of punches, striking Daphne over and over again with her bleeding fists.
After the sixth punch, Daphne swung her arm and delivered five cuts across Helena’s stomach, almost deep enough to rip open her torso cavity. This was an injury that Helena could not ignore, and distracted by the pain, she could not stop Daphne from again grabbing her and hurling her across the room, this time into a row of lockers. The metal crumpled easily against her body, but Helena was spitting up blood when she hit the ground. One of the lockers opened up and something fell out, landing on her back and making her wince in pain. Wait, it was a floor hockey club!
Feeling her second wind coming on, Helena got to her feet with the club in her hand. Daphne lunged with a monstrous scream, but Helena knocked aside her mutating arm and struck her upside the head with the club, hitting her so hard that the hooked end broke off. Undeterred, Helena spun the broken end around in her hand and stabbed Daphne in the side of the neck with the broken end. A kick to the stomach sent the she-beast back, but the wounds inflicted were meaning less and less with each passing second as the darkness within her continued to twist her body into an abomination.
Screaming like a banshee, Daphne leapt across the room towards Helena, but before she could deliver her strike, an invisible power slammed her against the wall with enough force to crush half her skeleton. Xavier was standing in the doorway of the locker room, his coat now a curtain of black flames surging around him.
“DAPHNE!” he snarled.
He strode over to her, the pathetic retch raising a hand and begging him to mercy. His eyes dark with cruelty, he kicked her arm aside and began stomping on her. “How dare you lay so much as a finger on her?! I warned you! I told you what she meant to me! A rabid bitch like you isn’t worthy to be my servant!”
The black flames around him then vanished as Helena tackled him, clutching his arm for support while in her injured state. “No! Don’t kill her!”
He looked down at her, confused. “After what she did to you? I can’t allow anyone who would hurt you to live.”
Tears were streaming down her bloodied face. “She was always mean, but you’re the one who made her into a monster!”
Xavier sighed. “As you wish.”
He snapped his fingers and Daphne’s body began to return to normal, the dark powers he had given her stabilizing while he healed her body. He then turned to Helena. “I swear to you, I never wanted this to happen. I never wanted you to be harmed.”
She glared at him with indescribable fury. “Yeah, well, even you can’t always get what you want, especially when you pull shit like this!”
Swallowing her pride, Helena reluctantly allowed Xavier to heal her, at which point, she got dressed and left the locker room without so much as a glance or word to him. Having told Helena he wouldn’t kill Daphne, he gave her one last chance and allowed her to resume being his servant. For the next few days, things continued on like this. Daphne continued on causing trouble around the school and around Thane, and Helena performed every trial Xavier assigned her, though he did give her the gift of space.
Standing at his desk in his dorm room, Thane looked through the hundreds of pictures he had taken, collecting all of the shots with the dark figure. Ever since he had started photographing the school, a lot of accidents had been occurring, and there was plenty of variance among the victims and the locations. One morning, an elementary school student could accidentally lose a finger to the paper cutter, and in that same afternoon, a college student could fall off a ladder in the university library. The largest percentage of victims was the high school students, and those accidents often occurred when he was nearby.