There's a sickening wind passing through the group, whispering... no, singing of danger.

A sense of seriousness and panic grips the group. The portal is opened to white abyss.

But do they really go through?

The group does not hesitate. Each one jumping upon their their chosen steed. They ignore the warning signs and enter not a HELL of BLUE.

But an ABYSS of WHITE.

Something was trailing them. A sword flies through the ABYSS. Cutting it in two.

Chantecler is killed.

Sweetie the gale attempts to dive down!

And just barely catches Buckingblort! But now it's too heavy and is falling itself!

Bobo slashes into the wandettle, but instead of it dying, he causes it to begin to transform!!!

THE WANDETTLE HATCHES INTO AN ADULT! It loses [Extreme Pacifist] and gains [Flight]!

Epitaph, the wandettle screeches as it shoots across HELL and takes aim at Elizabeth! Seven is shoved off in the meantime!

Elizabeth is stricken for 9HP! (11/20)

The wandettle races into the air, exiting the VOID of WHITE. O-5 escapes!

There's a moment of sickly stillness as Amy fell from miles above. When she hit the tiny platform of BLUE below, her bones cracked, her skin ripped.....

.....and yet she did not die. That would be a mercy, and the universe did not want that for Amy.

It hopped across the small destroyed world. Its blood trailing behind. A stark contract to the little BLUE that existed.

Everyone felt as if they were going to be killed. As if it was waiting for an opening.

Could this be the DEVIL of BLUE?

Amy is killed.

..................

But she is not.

The first couple of days after she had woken up as her own burrisk had been by far the worst.



Assaulted by unrecognizable and horrible new sensations, all she could do was twitch and tremble on the floor. Being an intruder in her own body, she didn't know how to move. She didn't know how to use her anomalous nervous system to get up. She didn't know how to walk, or how to blink. She didn't know how to breathe, but thankfully, as an immortal canine she didn't particularly need to.

After what felt like an unimaginably long time had passed, she finally slowly began to acclimate. Between bouts of consciousness, she'd parse through each and every sensation this new body brought to her.


She felt disgusting to herself. Always grimy. Always oily. Fur in split ends. Like bugs were constantly crawling all along her skin, just slightly underneath that thick layer of fur.


She'd try to vomit, but as a burrisk that fed on its own grief, there wasn't particularly anything to chuck up, so she'd helplessly dry heave instead. By feeling herself instinctually choke to sheer exhaustion, she would figure out how to breathe. By breathing she would finally be able to get some semblance of control. By getting some semblance of control she could finally start to even begin to understand what had happened.

The next few years or so were hard as well, but in a sense, manageable. Mostly due to the fact it was relatively easy to hold on to hope this early on.



A yellow burrisk would meander throughout the universe, looking for ways to escape her body, or what she at the time liked to call it, her prison. People would feel intense disgust and hatred just looking at her. She'd get thrown into pounds multiple times despite the fact she was clearly capable of speech, so she'd get herself a collar to make people back off. Humiliating, but what can you do? In her mind it was all going to be over soon. Eventually, she would wake up from the nightmare.

She'd walk up to gurus, she'd walk up to scientists, she'd walk up to self proclaimed magicians, all in the vague hope that someone could help her. Holding unto the possibility, small as it may be, that someone, anyone, whoever, could get her a hint as to how to proceed, a light to follow in the darkness.

...Of course, nobody really could do much for her.

Desperate for release, of any kind, she began experimenting on her own. Knives were terrifying at first, so she opted for gunshot. When those holes inevitably healed, she'd opt for fire. When those burn scars inevitably healed, she'd drown herself. When she realized she didn't need to breathe, she'd freeze herself. When she realized she hadn't stopped being able to think, she'd jump off from the mountain she had just climbed towards a chunky splatter. When she rebounded, almost like a fucking rubber ball, from the cold, hard ground at the bottom of that mountain, she started tearing into herself raw.

She'd bite her own leg and tear it off with great difficulty while stifling the pain and dealing with the tears.

She'd slam her head into the sharpest rock she could find multiple times until she could feel her eyes slide out of her skull.

She'd try in vain to mangle herself beyond any and all recognition, and then gore herself again the moment she started to heal.

Days into her tantrum she was forced to face the facts.

Nothing would change.

Nothing would be achieved.

Nothing would be gained.


If killing burrisks had been that easy, she would've just mauled that yellow piece of shit the moment it spawned in.

So what's left? What now? It can't be over. This can't just be the rest of her life.


...Well, she realizes. There is, one singular method left to die available. Just one. One she had never considered before. One she had almost forgotten was an option.

Starvation can kill burrisks, can't it?

For being such a simple answer, soul searching had turned out to be unimaginably hard. What grief even was fueling her, exactly? She had spent so much time trying so desperately to bury it deep underneath, she barely even remembered how any of this had began. Had it been that dog from that.... Uh... Q class, whose name she couldn't even remember anymore? Or had that dog had just been the last straw? She couldn't remember. Surely, it was just the peak of the iceberg. Surely there was still something she could do. She needed to find out.

No therapist would accept her. The only religions who could stomach her were those who saw her disgusting and abhorrent form as a trial to endure. Any friends she made online would always inevitably find something about her somewhere and cease all contact immediately, often with very particular parting words.

So she'd set out to find out on her own.

The hours of contemplation would turn into days.
The days of contemplation would turn into months.
Those months would eventually turn into years, and the years into a satisfactory answer.

And then, perhaps in denial, perhaps because she ran out of possibilities, she arrived at an answer.

"Ah."

"The one I am grieving, is myself."

"That hopeful version of future me I believed in as a kid is gone."


"I trampled on those pure and genuine dreams I held myself, with my own two feet."


"I pushed everyone I loved, friends and family, away from myself, with my own two hands."


"I murdered what could have been, and then acted as if what was didn't hurt."

"I purposefully blinded myself. I distracted myself by picking up and dropping hobbies. By abusing drugs. By abusing alcohol. By getting into relationships with the express purpose of throwing the other party away after using them. By drowning in money, by breathing in fame, by feeling not just heads and shoulders, but legs above everyone else."

"Stooping to murder had just been my breaking point. My limit, before I could no longer take any more."

Trying to heal, turned out, to be far harder than trying to hurt.

The fact becoming happy, accepting herself, presumably would only result in her death, didn't help, in a way.



They'd try to remember how one was supposed to apply makeup. They'd try to figure out how one was supposed to tint their own hair. They'd try to figure out how to feel comfortable in a dog's body, despite the grime, despite the oil, despite the nonexistent bugs, despite not having hands or psychic power to make any of it easy.

They'd buy clothing. A lot of it. None of it would ever feel right, so they'd settle on fishnet, something that got in contact with as little of their fur as was possible. The fact it was legwear they had used numerous times before felt simultaneously nostalgic and tragic.

They'd try to make friends online, being careful to completely scrub any and all trace of who they were offline.

They'd try to get back into music, despite paws making it hard to play.



But it never quite made her happy. It never clicked. Nothing worked.

Something more grandiose then! Redemption! Clearly, she would never feel happy, never feel satisfied, without redeeming every wrong she's ever made!


She'd donate millions of leftover points from her time as a star to charity anonymously!

She'd go to warzones and feed the starving by hand, err, paw!

When someone inevitably felt disgusted by her, when someone lashed out, she'd simply turn the other cheek!

She'd find that Q class whose dog she killed and well, uhm, uh, ok, she never actually found that Q class because she couldn't remember what they looked like or what the fuck their name was at all, but she sure did try! S-she, she really did try! She tried hard! It tore into her that she couldn't find him!

She'd remunerate the people who she abused, emotionally or otherwise, during her time as a star!



She'd visit the family of her group's drummer, o-only to find out he had overdosed on the drugs she had gotten him into...!




They'd, uh, visit the family of her group's bassist, only to find out she had killed herself shortly after they had stolen their love...!

They'd, well, uh...

She would...

Err, Amy would...!

...

She'd send an anonymous letter to her own family that read "I'm sorry I was ever born."

To atone.



...

Turns out, the person they had once dreamt of becoming, the happy version of them, the myself they could be proud of, had been buried six feet under. Deep enough to where no wild mutt could smell it and then dig back up.

The floor is cold and hard.

You feel grimey.

You feel oily.

An indescribable sensation of bugs running underneath your fur clings to even the slightest movement.

Welcome to the place where hope comes to die.