[Life is Good] Chapter 64

The drums in my head beat a ragged rhythm of madness, but even they couldn’t drown out that soft, indifferent little girl’s voice: “Too late.” One short word slammed pain straight through me, sharp and deep.

Rage. Focus. Urgency. And a whole damn horde of obstacles in the way. These… soft ones... irritate me. Piss me off. I hate them.

A snarl and a burst forward toward the next group of terrified prey— A swipe sends the nearest female’s weapon flying. A sweep of my tail, then I slam down on her upper limb with a crack. Her scream of pain brings a flicker of cruel satisfaction.

The drums are pounding out a melody of punishment, and that voice whispers again, cold as death: “Not a real Hero.”

I growl and surge forward. A fist to the next one’s knee—crack, scream, satisfaction. The third? Gotta let off steam. My left hand grabs her skull. The right rips off her jaw with a wet pop. Blood and spit mix. Bits of dangling flesh. That stupid little tongue still twitching in what’s left of her mouth. Eyes wide in horror. And that hilarious burble-screech she makes. A mocking thought flashes across my mind, tinged with disgust and pleasure: installation piece. I toss the soon-to-be corpse aside—let the ones chasing us get a good look.

I turn to the last one and grimace. The stench of piss and shit hits me hard. Disgusting. That’s why I don’t like gutting people—hate the smell. This one’s turning ghost-white, hair and all. Kinda pretty, if you ignore the stench.

There’s a pause in the chaos inside my head. Just long enough to appreciate the weird beauty of it. Her eyes roll back as she starts to collapse. I catch her gently and lay her in the blood. White on red—pretty. I like it—and I hate it. I glance one last time at the scene and let out a low, satisfied clicking from my throat.

The drums resume, rough and fast, snapping me out of it.

“Why didn’t you help… when they took my heart?”

That voice again. Soft, sweet, and not even accusing. Which makes it so much worse.

I shriek—can’t help it—and tear open the chest of the one whose jaw I took.

Had to hold back. Can’t rip the rest apart—the broken ones and the white-haired girl are payment for the vamps. That’s the deal. The deal matters. I—we—know that. The fanged freaks trying to keep up with us from behind break the tension a little. Their slowness adds a drop of irony, even if it can’t silence the voice. Or the drums.

More doors. More corners. Colorful, vibrant energy around me. Behind some doors, soft ones tremble in fear. Too bad—we’re in a rush.

The kin… and their kids… are close. I don’t want to see more dead children's eyes staring at me.

“Eyes that will never grow up,” the voice reminds me calmly, and my tail lashes out, slashing a jagged gash in a steel door. Screams inside. But I don’t stop. Can’t be late again. Unacceptable.

Another bulkhead drops in front of us. Idiots. I—we—launch a bolide of Hellfire, leaping straight through. Metal shards explode like shards of ancient, blood-red lakes I’ve never seen. The ones behind the door don’t stand a chance. Screams, panic. I help one of them put out the flames—by caving in her chest with my tail.

Nice fountain of blood. Gross-beautiful. The others? Just broken bones. We keep them alive. I—we—don’t want our girls blamed for breach of contract. So we only take part of the lives.

Rage. It’s normal for me—us. But we can’t fully control ourselves yet. So I lead us. We’ll adapt. Later. We’ll get used to being together. I—we.

I snort mockingly in the face of one who’s barely injured. Soft, helpless, terrified. She should be afraid. I’m drained, I need to feed… I open my jaws wide and, staring into her blown-wide pupils, drive a claw through her skull.

Satisfaction. Disgust.

Life surges into me, no tricks needed. Didn’t even have to bite. It just… soaks in. Handy.

I feel something ahead in a big room. Soft ones. And someone else. Odd. A kin maybe?

Drums thunder.

“She could’ve been on the slab with us,” the voice says, and I let out a growl-whimper.

Gotta move. Help. Save them. I charge, tail-checking one last survivor, smashing her knee with the flat of my blade-stinger. Behind me, the screaming and gurgling intensifies. Music-nightmare, echoing in our ears.

I burst out into a hailstorm of lead. Odd—the maybe-kin is attacking me too. Confused flashes in my head—they must’ve controlled one of ours before. Hot and cold at once. Harsh but protective. I get why she’s attacking.

Drums hammer.

“Can you save her?”

Yes. I snarl. Fury sears through me in a fiery wave. Hatred pours out in a bestial roar, and I leap toward the soft ones who dared enslave a kindred. The bullets melt on contact, my bone armor drinks them in. Energy blasts? Useless. Just fuel.

Idiots. Feeding me your ammo. Morons.

They’re wearing full-body metal suits. I laugh—we laugh. Loud, wicked clicking fills the room. I melt through armor with burning claws, searing the metal into their skin. They scream, trapped in their walking coffins. They won’t die. But their screams will echo… Maybe loud enough to drown out her voice. Maybe.

Free meat for the vamps. Crispy. Bloody. Canned.

My maybe-kin bolts. Fast—but I’m faster. Two leaps, I’m there. I lower her temperature, sweep her legs, gently scoop her up by the scruff. She pokes me in the forehead. Then punches me in the face.

Strong. Head snapped back.

Not soft. Not normal.

Definitely one of mine. Kin.

We snarl in frustration—not because it hurt, but because she could've hurt herself slamming into our armored face. We-I didn’t come here to injure our own. We-I came with kin and bloodsuckers to save them from the soft ones.

She reeks of fear, aggression, rage. Don’t be afraid, little female. We don’t want to harm you. Gently, we catch her arms with a free hand, wrapping her in our tail—surprised to see no bruises or cuts on her delicate, slender wrists—and carry her toward the metal wall. We’ll immobilize you. Then we’ll punish the ones who enslaved you. The ones who made you so angry.

While we’re securing her, she fights back—again and again—each strike stoking the fire of our hatred toward the fuckers who dared do this to her. She even kicks us between the legs, and we let out a low series of pissed-off clicks, rewarding her with a quick slap across the ass using the flat of our tail-blade. That was precious. We-I haven’t even sired any offspring yet. And leaving an enraged, mind-fucked relative behind? No way. Kin are coming. They could hurt her. Or she could hurt them. This is safer.

We glance back at the pinned little female—just in time to flinch at the cold, detached voice cutting clean through the roar of the drums:

"They could be dying while you’re wasting time."

“Fucking hell,” Kimura muttered, eyes locked on the thing as it vanished into the corridor. “What was that?”

She jerked against the metal wrapping her up like a cocoon—only her head and legs left exposed—but didn’t budge an inch. The squad in experimental armor lay scattered nearby, charred and moaning, pain thick in the air. Help wasn’t coming.

“God, I hope he’s not saving me for later.” A chill crept over her. Sure, she trusted her abilities, but that didn’t mean much when you were stuck. Invulnerable skin didn’t mean shit if you couldn’t breathe.

“Well, Rice is totally fucked at least,” she snorted, thinking about the bitch who’d sent her charging at that monster.

Kimura hadn’t been thrilled about pushing forward, but the emergency exit had been locked—and even Rice’s access card and personal code hadn’t opened it. Worse, the whole rail system was down. No train out. That thing was fast—insanely fast—and faced with the choice between dying in a tight, dark tunnel or throwing down in a wide-open room with some well-armed troops, she’d picked the latter.

Now? Hard to say if she regretted that decision or not.

Too bad Rice hadn’t sent that little mutt along—maybe those claws could’ve scratched the beast. Her own partial intangibility hadn’t done jack shit, and that both pissed and baffled Kimura.

“Shit,” she breathed, eyes darting to the newcomers flooding into the room. She recognized Deadpool and Sabretooth right away. The first could be bought. The second? Once she figured out what Kimura had done to the pup…

Fucking mutants.

Running. Running. Running. The pounding drums under our bone-plated skull. Sometimes we drop to all fours. The tail helps with turns, with braking. The scraps of cloth we used to wear—long gone. All that’s left is the belt, reinforced by Angry Flame. The weapon in the holster bounces, untouched. We don’t need it.

Almost there. We see-feel kin. And soft ones. Children and adults. We must kill the soft ones—clean and quick—without harming the ones we need to save.

Gunfire. We speed up, bursting into the room, the exit sealed by a massive steel door that looks like someone tried to carve through it with knives.

Two groups. First—kin and a single soft one, huddled beneath a shimmering, silver-tinged dome. Second—soft ones. Half in white coats, the rest armed, shooting at the shield and at a girl near the door. There are three bodies on the ground beside her.

We see the spray of blood from her body. The way her thin frame jerks with each bullet. Her flesh blackening from energy blasts.

"Too late," says the voice again—calm, indifferent—amplified by the furious thunder of our internal drums. Rage—already at critical mass—ignites into supernova. Normal vision blinks out. Only sound and energy remain.

From the scream that erupts from us, one might just barely make out a long, drawn-out, “KILL.”

We charge the soft ones. And we kill. Nothing fancy—just kill fast. Claws across throats. Tail-blade through hearts. Stomping in ribcages. Burn by touch. Ignite just by passing by.

The soldiers die first. The lab coats try to run. Too late. That cold little girl’s voice—“Useless Hero”—rips through our mind like razors. We scream in fury and grief and slaughter. Tear off heads. Rip torsos. Snap limbs like twigs.

One of them smashes something against our bone-plated chest right before we peel her scalp off—along with her face. A claw slashes down, cleaving her ribcage. A pull to either side, and now she looks like a grotesque, crimson butterfly. Beautiful-grotesque. And we-I agree: the soft ones earned this.

A half-charred coat still twitches. We slam our tail down, silencing her groans. Is that it?

We look around. The field of slaughter is… beautiful-horrific. A sea of blood, spattered with artistic chunks of meat. Some parts still twitch, pumping scarlet little fountains.

We-I don’t understand art, but I-we are impressed. First real massacre in our conscious life. Only the bitterness spoils it.

We spot the girl’s body.

And that’s when we snap.

We launch at the soft one bending over her. Mid-air, we glimpse a younger kin under the dome lift her hands—opening a disk. A portal?

Dr. Kinney stared at the closed portal, her ears still ringing with the monstrous, unhinged scream that had echoed moments before—raw hatred and helplessness tangled together. The thing that had torn through soldiers and colleagues alike in seconds… was gone.

She barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before a group of… people? No—mutants, she corrected herself—burst into the evacuation room.

She recognized the lunatic merc—Deadpool—and the infamous radical Sabretooth.

‘It can’t get any worse,’ Kinney thought, surprisingly calm, as she gently laid her regenerating daughter’s head in her lap. The girl drew in a shaky breath, blinked her eyes open, and looked up at her mother’s face.

“Just lie still, sweetheart. It’s over now, Laura.”

 The scientist softly brushed her daughter’s hair back with trembling fingers.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Deadpool whistled, running into the room with something that could only be described as horrified awe. “Blood, guts, gore, shit! We’re such a good match. Where’s my sexy beast?”

Lily-Rose, standing nearby, grimaced at the mix of burnt meat, blood, and… bodily fluids. That combo definitely wasn’t her favorite—totally ruined the taste of the meat.

“He was here thirty seconds ago,” the red-eyed girl muttered, scanning the room. “Then just… vanished.”

One corner of the room was occupied by a huddled bunch of greenish people in hospital gowns—mutants, most likely. Their bare asses were hanging out, and the smell of fear and vomit was practically a wall. A small electric transport train, a sealed (and partially slashed) emergency tunnel door, and a nice pile of corpses—scientists and soldiers. Nothing unexpected. The vamps had already bagged more than they needed. These would've ended up dead anyway.

“Fuck,” Sabretooth muttered grimly, making a beeline for the cluster of mutants. “Hey, you lot! Our guy was here—where the hell did he go?”

While Victoria interrogated the wide-eyed survivors—who looked damn near ready to cry in relief—Oyama stood silently, surveying her student's "work."

“Acceptable,” she said at last, as if evaluating an art project.

“Acceptable?” Castle, standing beside her with a twisted grimace, looked like she might hurl. “Your guy snapped. He went full massacre—didn’t spare anyone.”

“Not everyone,” Oyama replied coolly, nodding toward the terrified mutants. “Onryo remembered the point of the mission.”

“He even left some for us to eat,” Lily-Rose added. “Looks like Blood Madness in fledgling chicks… just selective.”

“And you’re one to talk,” Deadpool piped up, giving Castle a side-eye. “Didn’t you shove one of your ‘clients’ through an industrial shredder and livestream her death last time?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Francine grunted, jaw clenched. Fucking mutants. Fucking vampires. Fucking monsters. “If your boy ran off, that’s on you.”

“Of course,” Oyama nodded, her voice utterly neutral. “You’ll get your payment as agreed. Pool—about yo—”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, ‘I DON’T KNOW’?!” Sabretooth barked at one of the younger mutants. “Where the fuck did you send him?!”

Red-orange sky. Dark crimson clouds. A tiny, mean-looking red sun. The wasteland stretched out in all directions, painted in shades of purple, dotted with crags and dying shrubs. On a small hill stood a figure—still and silent—only vaguely human.

Thick legs bent at the wrong joints ended in clawed paws. Four toes up front, one massive talon rising from the heel. Arms too long to be human, hands hanging down to its knees. A long, segmented tail, sheathed in bone or chitin, stretched over two meters, ending in a wide, bladed stinger. The whole body—lean to the point of grotesque, all muscle and sinew—was armored in patches of natural plate.

One breastplate bore a burned-in sigil: a skull beneath a hood. Whatever the hell that meant.

And then the head. Oh, the head.

It was armored like a tank. No nose, just slits for nostrils, sucking in air like the creature was hunting something. Hollow pits where ears should be. Eyes… black, pure black. No whites. No pupils. Just endless void. And the mouth—Jesus. A maw stretched ear to ear, no lips to hide the rows of daggered teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was a threat.

The creature sniffed the air, silently turning its head. Then it bent down, scooped a handful of dirt in fingers that looked human except for how long they were—and the claws. It crushed a rock like it was chalk, growled, and flicked its tail hard enough to make the air whistle.

“…Bumfuck… nowhere,” it rasped in a voice like rocks grinding underwater. It snorted, flinging the dirt aside in disgust.

Author’s Note (real author):

I know this chapter is a bit controversial—I’ve already read the comments from folks upset about the MC’s mental breakdowns—but there’s not much I can do about it. I’ll be honest: I really enjoy reading about transmigrators who are powerful, unstoppable, and don’t wrestle with guilt, moral dilemmas, or psychological issues. I love that stuff.

But I’m always surprised when former everyday nobodies suddenly start mowing people down by the dozens without suffering any consequences or mental recoil.

If the MC is ex-military, special forces, etc.—no questions asked. But a guy like Vasya/Ivan/John the programmer/student/waiter turning into a cheerful killing machine between massacres? That’s… well, let’s say it raises an eyebrow.

So yeah, folks. Our protagonist is not okay in the head—as I hope is already clear. I mentioned in the story that Xavier worked with him, and I’ve dropped plenty of hints, but the constant “yo but why is he acting like this” comments are getting a bit tiring. So let me spell it out:

He was triggered by the girl in the morgue—clear enough?
He’s tormented by guilt for not saving Sandy—also clear?
I even consulted a psychiatrist friend about this and got this answer:

“The human brain is capable of all kinds of weird shit.”

Comrade Den Ordo summed it up really well on FB (Ficbook):

“The MC has psychological trauma. It’s tied to a small, dead, red-haired girl. The trigger hit, and he snapped. It’s entirely possible that if the corpses were adults, boys, or just not redheads, he wouldn’t have lost it like that.”

And I’ll just add this: the MC has a little sister—a red-haired girl, around ten or eleven years old.