CLOAK	DAGGER

“You smell that?” Tandy asked, her nose flaring as she took in the scents around them. Ty stopped, the pleats of his cloak fluttering around him, reaching into the air and bending as though they were animals, rearing up and searching for something.

“What?” Cloak looked around, his own nostrils opening to allow more scent to fill them.

“Smells like... I don't know. It's horrid,” she said, her hand glowing absent-mindedly, as though she were trying to protect herself. She glanced back at Cloak who put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don't worry, Dagger, we will be fine.”

Tandy shook her head and let her energy die down a little.

“I know that, Ty. I'm more worried about the people around here.” Tandy glanced up at him, and he offered her a sly smile. She shook her head and followed her nose.

Ever since her secondary mutation*, Tandy had found that navigating the Darkness encompassed world became easier almost with every step she took. She could see better in the dark now then she ever could during the daylight hours. Her footfalls were light and cautious, as though she thought carefully about every step.

(*See last issue)

Cloak knew, however, that her footfalls were so silent because she was designed for stealth and poise and grace. He knew by watching her that she was less in control of her breathing than she was of her movements. She was incredible to watch, poised and perfect, like a coiled animal waiting to spring and react to any possible movement.

“Here?” Cloak asked, looking up at the tower block before them. Tandy nodded slowly, pausing in her movements to look back at him.

“Smells of Death, Ty,” she said, biting her lip in concern. Ty nodded slowly, his Cloak reacting to his trepidation by forming tiny spikes of cloth at his feet. He didn't want to be near this any more than Tandy did, but it was their job to at least investigate it.

Their steps were slow at first, pushing against the door of the apartment block. It was several stories high, and as the door opened, it stank to high heaven. Tandy pulled away immediately, holding her nose and swearing under her breath. Something that Ty hadn't heard her do for quite some time.

“Tandy?” he asked softly, trying to gauge her reaction. She coughed and held up a hand, her fist covering her mouth as she tried desperately to stop herself from vomiting and making any sound from her lungs rebelling against her.

She waved at him, a dismissive gesture to settle his mind.

“Let's just go inside,” she whispered, pointing to the door before them. The door led to a long stairway, made from bland concrete. A metal rail spiralled its way up towards the ceiling. Tandy gulped as she followed Cloak in. The smell was stronger inside, as though it were dripping from the walls.

Tandy closed her eyes for a moment and steadied herself against the wall, as the world started to spin on its own. Her vertigo was shaken from her as she pulled her hand away from the wall. It was wet.

She looked down at her palm, and moved the liquid around against the surface of her skin with her other finger. Whatever it was, it was viscous. She couldn't tell exactly; her new vision could allow her to see in Darkness, but it wasn't able to distinguish colour. For all she knew that could have been glow in the dark purple.
They continued up the stairs, firing each other worried looks. The smell appeared to be coming from the top floor, with every door on the first level open.

“Hello?” Tandy called softly.

Her voice was met with nothing but silence. Cloak shook his head at her, a silent reprimand. They had no idea what could be living in the building, what could be causing the smell. It could be something similar to the situation they'd faced recently, where there were no signs of the culprit, simply a smear of blood that led nowhere.

Tandy sighed, leaning past the doorway of the third room from the corridor. They were dirty, dingy little places. The walls looked like they were peeling, and she could smell dry rot slightly just over the stench from above. The heart-breaking thing that caught Tandy's eye were the toys that appeared to have been flung to either side of the room.

Toy cars and action figures with broken limbs lay lifeless on the floor. A soft toy that appeared to have been ripped to pieces. She let her head hang, aand Cloak gently put his hands on her shoulders, giving them a little squeeze.

“Tandy...” he whispered. “This isn't the time for mourning. We don't know what did this... and for all we know they could have just left in a hurry.”

Tandy turned to look at Cloak, her eyes moist and full.

“We both know that's not the case here, Ty. I appreciate the sentiment, but don't.”

Cloak removed his hands slowly, and the pair turned around, walking down the corridor to investigate. The remaining rooms were similar in a lot of respects.

Previously lived in. Dinners on the table, cold where they had been left, signs of life were everywhere. Even pets, wandering around, calling for their owners in terrified, tiny voices. Tandy looked up at Cloak at the weak form of a cat, emaciated, laying on its side, mewling for its owner.

“Ty....”

“Tandy, we can't just...”

“We can. That's what we're here for.”

She raided her way through the cupboards, finding a wet packet of food, and tearing it open, pushing its contents onto the ground next to the cat's head. She waited for a moment as the animal licked at the gravy. Turning away, Tandy filled a small bowl with water and set it down next to the animal.

“That might be the only-” she stopped herself, and looked away from Ty. He knew what she was going to say. Judging from the smell, the cat would be the only thing that they saved today.

They made their way back to the stairs, repeating the same process of scouting in silence through all the rooms and flats in the building until they reached the top floor, where the stench was the strongest. Cloak pushed ahead, his cloak billowing out behind him to prevent Tandy from seeing what was ahead.

“God,” he said in a quiet voice, intended for Tandy not to hear, but she already knew what he saw. She could smell it, and see glimpses of it between the fringes of his cloak. Dead people. Women, children, men, laying, semi-consumed at his feet. Ty turned his head almost a complete 360 to see Tandy sneaking behind him, catching glimpses here and there.

“Tandy, stop,” he said, his expression turning to anger.

“No, YOU stop, Ty,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “We've both seen enough of this to stop treating me like a damn child. I don't LIKE death, but that doesn't mean I've not seen it before.”

Her body flared with light energy, and Ty covered his eyes with his forearm.

“Tandy, this isn't like anything we've encountered before,” he began, before pausing, sure he heard something like footfalls upon wooden floors.

“I'm aware of that, Ty. Don't you think I know that?” she hissed back at him. He shook his head and let his cloak fall down next to him, exposing Tandy to the full extent of the horror that lay before them.

Bodies, piled on top of each other, with ichor dripping from semi-digested limbs and bones held in place only by the remnants of vascular tissue and putrid looking tendons. Skulls of children whose hair hung lifelessly from their heads, their skin stretched over their bones like paper.

“God, Ty it's....”

“Awful. I know, I told you,” Ty said with a matter-of-fact tone. He slid over the floor towards her, placing an arm around her shoulder.

“There are things that you should never see, Tandy. These are those things,” he whispered, gently, his head bobbing up to look for the source of the noise again. Boots against wood.

“Did you hear that?” Tandy asked, looking up at Cloak with concern. He nodded, slowly letting go of Dagger as he got himself to his feet, moving over the dead slowly, and with respect.

“What do you think it is?” Tandy persisted, her hands beginning to glow, manifesting her light daggers between her fingers. Ty said nothing, putting a black finger against his lips.

She nodded silently, as they rounded the corner to the final room.

“CHRIST!” Ty yelled, as something hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him against the wall and rolling with him against the surface, and through the open door of the room opposite.

“TY?!” Dagger yelled, leaping over the dead bodies and skidding to a halt in the doorway, almost losing her balance in the blood and gore. Before her was one of the most disturbing things she'd ever seen in her life.

It was clear to her now that the Darkforce had been using her and Ty as templates. Or at least, that's what her rational mind was trying to form. Clustered together like ants in a nest were horrific beetle men. Corpses of some of the men of the building, some naked, some clothed underneath all the hardened darkness. Their brittle bodies were currently folded up into spheres, as though they were horrid pea-bugs curled into a protective foetal position.

The one closest to her uncurled, its body broken into sections of Darkforce containing cloth, each section's tattered tendrils becoming claws and hooks of Darkforce, scuttling limbs of hatred and cold that powered the length of the now-stretched body towards Tandy. She let loose a little scream and hurled her daggers towards the creature.

It blistered against the touch of light, sections of bloated, necrotic flesh exploding with trapped gasses, and Darkforce sections of sloth hissing out of existence.

“God,” Tandy said to herself, as the centipede dark-form scuttled backwards, its body sending tendrils of steam into the air, as it retreated back to its slowly unfurling brothers and sisters. She gasped and covered her mouth in shock. They hung from the ceiling, suspended by the guts and innards of humans, slowly engulfing digestive tracts, and brains that hung from the dark hooks they called limbs. She bit back against the urge to purge the contents of her stomach and forced a steely resolve on her face, even though she could barely stand.

“Ty...”

A sword of light, five foot in length, slowly began to manifest itself in her right hand. Anger boiled the blood in her veins as she stepped forwards, lunging and driving the glowing point of the blade into the dark hole of the creatures face.

Teeth clattered to the floor, along with loud hisses and screams of pain from the creature. This was an entity that did not want to die, and it did not want to let loose its host.

She swung her arm backwards, slicing through the head of the creature, sending Darkforce spatters against the ceiling.

“RAAAGHH!” Tandy screamed, leaping through the air as Light spikes and daggers manifested all over her body. Horns grew from her head, stretching and curling towards the ceiling, as she let loose her new powers. The horns bridged from the front of her head, rising through the hair, as smaller horns grew down the sides of her head, breaking up her pure white glowing hair. Daggers exploded from her skin, scatter shooting the room with violence.

The creatures screamed and launched themselves at her, two of the black beasts hitting her in the chest, and ploughing her through the dilapidated foundations of the building. She crashed through, falling down through the layers of the building to the floor below, landing heavily on concrete.

“UGH!” she yelped, her sword dissipating as one of the beasts gored her shoulder. She let loose a piercing scream as blood seeped from the wound. She grit her teeth as a Dagger rose from between her breasts and impaled the creature, transforming itself into a trident to keep the black beast from her body.

Her hands gripped the trident and she pulled it from her body, giving her enough space to move herself out from underneath it. She coughed a little. She was pretty sure she'd broken at least a few ribs, if not all of them. Her breathing was erratic.

“I hate you,” she said, her anger taking hold. She used all of her strength to the throw the trident and the creature off, sending it onto its side where it squealed and fizzed in pain.

“Why do you have to kill everything?” she screamed, swords growing from her hands as she drove them into either side of the second creature's head, her bottom lip loose and dripping with saliva from the effort of her scream and her movements. She was pinning herself upright with the blades lodged in the creature's head.

“Why do you have to make me feel so bad? Why couldn't we save them?” she asked, looking at the corpse of an old man, which the Darkforce centipede had turned into its host.

“Why couldn't I save you?” she whispered, pulling the blades out, and falling onto her bottom, breathing heavily and wiping her lips with the back of her hand, smearing spittle over her costume.

“TANDY!” Cloak screamed, as another two beasts dropped through the hole. Cloak had been torn at, she could see from her vantage point; his costume had been almost shredded, but he had won. The creature that had attacked him was hanging, dead, by a few limbs bunched together in Cloak's hand. It appeared as though he was having a much tougher time with the creatures than she was.

She pulled herself onto her knees as another creature rushed her, hitting her outstretched arms and knocking her down the stairs. She rolled and held the creature on top of her, trying to use it to take the brunt of the force, although it wasn't working well.

“TY!” she yelped, as she hit the wall on a small landing between stairwells. She formed a dagger on the back of her hand and repeatedly stabbed the creature anywhere she could find. She felt Darkforce dribble onto her body, and sizzle off immediately. The Light was burning it away.

“Off of me!” she yelled, throwing the creature off onto its side. Her breathing was heavy, as she could barely contain the power inside her lungs. The second creature started at her. Dagger took a gulp of air, barely able to contain the bursting heart inside her chest.

Rolling onto her side, she tried to pull herself up to her feet, gasping.

“You're not going to get me,” she said, pushing some of her light energy into her chest. She felt herself feeling better, her breathing becoming just a little bit more bearable. A little bit less laboured. Her eyebrows raised as she realised that by recycling her Light, she could heal herself.

“Incredible.”

The creature stayed where it was, as Cloak came hurtling through the hole in the ceiling, feet first and a Darkforce ram underneath his feet.

“Tandy!” he yelled, as he smashed into the creature, exploding the bloated corpse over the walls and over Dagger herself, crushing any living Darkness underneath his power.

“Ty?” She looked up at him, as he shot over to her, his arms lifting her up to her feet.

“Two of them have escaped, Tandy. I'm sorry I couldn't defeat them as easily as you could.” He looked over his shoulder, already the creature was beginning to reassemble itself, its spindly limbs inching back towards the main body.

She sighed, and pulled herself away from Ty.

“I can heal myself,” she said, matter-of-fact. Ty's face receded a little, taken aback with not only her confidence but also with her statement. Since when could she do that?

She manifested daggers in between her fingers and threw them towards the severed legs of the creature, one by one, pinning them to the ground.

“Tandy…?” Ty said. This was a mean streak, or at least what he perceived as a mean streak, that he'd not seen in Tandy before.

“No, Ty,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. “Look what they've done. Look at what they've done to this building and these people.” She threw another dagger into the beast's midsection.

“They've killed and eaten women and children, and for what?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him. “I don't understand why they've done it.”

Ty shook his head.

“Tandy, please...”

“Ty, the Darkforce is perverting everything. It's using the bodies of people for god sakes, it's using them as engines.”

“Tandy, you think I don't kn-”

“Ty, kids died because of this stuff!” she yelled. He narrowed his eyes and turned away from her.

“YOU think I don't know that?” he screamed back at her, heading down the stairs away from the shocked-looking girl.

“Ty?” she asked, ramming a light sword through the head of the suffering creature and following him down the stairs.

“Ty,” Tandy said, grabbing his hand preventing him from moving away from her. “I'm Sorry. You know I didn't mean it, right?”

Cloak said nothing, looking away from Tandy and back towards the Darkforce constructs, spreading out from their prey as though they were blood seeping from a mortal wound. His lips curled into a snarl as he tried to repress his anger. This was his fault. How could he feel anything other than guilt and anger and responsibility?

“Ty?” Tandy asked, pulling him closer still. He responded by pulling his hand free and throwing it to his side, his cloak wrapping itself around him as though he were trying to keep himself in, a thin spire of man, with only a face emerging from the blue and black pleats of cloth.

She shook her head, little beads of Light dropping from the ends of her blonde hair as she gently tried to reassure her partner.

“Ty... this isn't all your fault.” She looked up at him, as he turned his face from her. “I said some stupid things but I didn't mean that it was you. That it was your fault.”

“Sometimes, I wonder if there's a reason that I'm cursed this way?” he asked, not really asking anyone in general, simply speaking his mind to Tandy.

“It's hardly a curse it, Ty?” Tandy said, her smile beaming up to him in the darkness.

“It's not a boon, either, Tandy. How could being made from darkness and eating light be conducive to happiness?” he asked, looking down at her, reaching himself higher into the sky, his cloak acting as a platform.

Tandy let her smile drop, until it simply tugged at the corner of her closed mouth.

“Sometimes I wonder how you can be so dumb, when you're so book smart,” she said, crossed her arms over her chest in a mock pout. Ty looked down, confused by her words.

“Book smart?” he said, moving down a little from his fabric construct.

“Yeah, you can read through books and learn it all. Memorise it. Bet when you did go to school you got decent enough grades even if you tell me you didn't. Me? I'm a dancer, I don't do book smarts. I can't remember quotes, or maths, or science. I don't care. I like feelings,” she said, her Light beginning to kick up, illuminating an inch around her. Ty's eyes narrowed, giving him time to adjust to the change.

“Feelings? Tandy...” Ty began, she waved a finger at him.

“You're so stupid, Ty.” She tugged on his cloak, trying to pull him down to her level. “You're up there telling me that you're cursed, and that you're stuck and guilty and full of anger, and what do you do? You lock yourself down like you're some island nation, or something.” She shrugged. The Analogy was poor, but she got across her point.

“You need to either let it out, or get over it. Because not everyone sees things from your point of view. Not everyone can live in the Darkness all the time,” she said, as he pulled away from her, his cloak acting as a bending tube of protection.

“Get over it? Tandy... I released this on the city...” he said, looking down at the ground ashamed.

“No, someone else made you release it, Ty. You can't live this way, and neither can I. You are what you make of yourself,” she said, grabbing hold of the top of his cloak and letting loose a burst of Light in his face, stunning him a little.

“Just because your power is Darkness, doesn't mean you have to be dark, Ty. You can just be you and use your powers. What are you going to define yourself as?” she asked, grabbing the sides of his face as his cloak loosened and billowed around her.

“I want to be... better, Tandy. I want to not be so... down and dark, but it's hard. I feel like I'm death to Light.” He looked down at her, his eyes full of sadness.

“Why?” she asked, looking up at him, her expression soft.

“Because I eat it, Tandy. I take Light and I make it go away. I am death to Light and happiness.”

Tandy sighed, and shook her head, a smile creeping over her face.

“Then I guess I should be sad too.” She looked away from him, barely able to hide her smile. Ty's eyebrow creaked upwards.

“Why, Tandy?”

“Because I am death to chicken, and potatoes. I am death to Coke, and also to oranges.” Her smile was massive as she turned back to him.

“It's the same thing, Ty! You eat Light, I eat chicken! It's not murdering an entire concept because I eat some drumsticks time-to-time. It doesn't make me an evil Bird-Murderer because sometimes I have hot-wings when we've had a nice evening and beaten up some bad guys!”

She smiled, and pulled his face close to hers, her lips centimetres from his. “We're the same as we ever were, Ty. We're just Tandy and Tyrone and sometimes we fight evil, and sometimes you eat Light. We're just Tandy and Ty.” She kissed him, looping her arm around his neck and pulling him in. He resisted initially, but soon his arms were around her waist, as they shared a moment among the corpses of the Darkforce constructs.

Next Issue: Encounters, Part 2!