The Anima Complex

[Anonymous]

Stiphos the Experimenter was his name.
He was balding, wore thick glasses with many interchangable lens, and had no legs, thus making him bound to an invention that he called a 'wheelchair'. He owned a medium-sized house in Zantaric that looked unassuming on the outside, but was an incomprehensible mess of a laboratory on the inside. He feverishly tapped into the secrets of life and the material world, and he was unrepentantly unscrupulous in his unending thirst for knowledge.
He sat in his wheelchair outside of his house, the front door wide open, looking up at the starry and cloudless night sky. He smoked his favorite drug, Maja Reed, which he believed had 'positive' effects on his thought processes, and blew a puff of smoke out of his nose and mouth.
He held the letter in his hand, and waited. He had been waiting for several hours outside of his house, and there was no telling when she would show. Sometimes she was punctual, sometimes she was not.
Stiphos didn't need to wait much longer, though.
The knife was pressed against the front of his neck, but the wielder was behind him. The whisper curled slyly into his left ear, "Stiphos the Experimenter... guess who."
He chuckled slightly, and the skin of his neck was tickled by the blade. "By any other name, you'd still be the one and only Anima."
Anima smiled in a disturbing way, retracting the knife from the man's neck as he spun his wheelchair around and threw his arms around her waist. She merely glanced down at him with that baleful smile, and did not hug him back.
Despite knowing her intentions for coming already from the letter she sent earlier, Stiphos was nonetheless compelled to ask, "Has the time come? May I become a part of you now, Anima? Shall you dine on my mind and flesh tonight?"
She lifted a finger to his mouth, silencing him while she replied and disengaged from his embrace, "Soon enough, soon enough. But we have a few things to do and a few things to talk about, don't we? You'd best be back inside, Stiphos -- there's work to be done."
"Yes. Yes, of course," said the scientist as he started to comply, wheeling himself back inside of his house. He stopped halfway into the house, noticing something that made him halt his movements. "Your arm..."
Glancing casually down at the bloodstained black cloth wrapped around her left arm, between the elbow and wrist, she grinned widely and looked back at that man. "A parting gift from and for an extraordinary man. I might yet run into him again... there are so many things I want to tell him... to do to him. I'd like to rip his loyalty from his heart, lick it clean, and make it all mine."
Stiphos, understanding what she meant solely on the grounds that he knew roughly what she was like, smiled in an unsettlingly enthusiastic way and said before wheeling himself completely inside of the house, "It's been a while, Anima. I look forward to working with you again."
Anima laughed lightly to herself; Stiphos was so obedient, and such a tool. He was the type that preferred to be the 'means' rather than supplying the 'ends'. It was this usefulness and loyalty that she preyed on, taking advantage of his psychosexual fantasies and extreme knowledge base to further her goals when she needed outside assistance. One day he might lose his usefulness... or one day she might show up at his house much more hungry than usual.
And now she sought him out to help her track down Neseraph, as well as set him up to be perfectly vulnerable and helpless against her.
Anima crossed her arms and glanced around the village, then up at the night sky. She was closing in on him, and that prospect alone made her excited and giddy and even more prone to her random instability and desires.
Her eyes transfixed on a single star out of the many in the sky, and she licked her lips slowly and savoringly.

[Anonymous]

Night was the best time to be a witch really. In the day everything was all bright and cheery and no one really takes dark magic seriously, but at night her spells blended with the shadows, creating fear and malice wherever she went.

That is, when they worked.

Right now Nimue was having trouble just staying airborne. Her magic wasn't very good, as Nim had only just started down the dark path, practicing sorcery and such. She'd thought the dark artefact she'd bought would help, and it had, until yesterday when it had fizzled out.

The damn thing hadn't lasted the week.

By some divine sense of poetry there was a crack and a hiss, a few purple sparks flying out of the gem set into the silver metal claw wrapped around her right index finger. With that gone, her magic weakened, and she started to fall.

The wind whipped at her, tossing her pointed black hat off into the sky, no longer bound magically to her head.

"Damn it you fucking thing work!" she screamed, voice being lost in the howling wind. Not fifty feet above the hard earth did the claw kick in again, letting her some to a shuddering stop. Sitting up and brushing strands of violent pink hair out of her face, Nimue scowled at the little thing.

With a small rustle her hat landed in a tree and she swooped over to get it, broom jerking under her as her magic fluctuated. Bloody useless piece of shit thing.

Hat safely on her head again she shot upwards and towards Zantaric, visible further down the mountain slope. As she reached the zenith of her climb she angled downwards, pointing squarely towards the house of the bastard who'd sold her this junk.

From below she would be just a tiny dot, her pale skin standing out against the sky, getting steadily larger as she approached at unsafe speed.

Her luck held, the claw staying active long enough for her to slow down and come to stop, the brooms bristles brushing along the ground before she dismounted.

There was some woman outside, and Nim peered at her inquisitively before turning her attention to the house. "Stiffy you bastard!" she screeched, hands balling into fists, "You get out here right now! I did everything you told me and this damn stupid thing died!" She waggled her clawed finger at the house accusingly, a deep frown lining her face.

She had done everything too. Stiphos had advised her that the claw was only one thing, and that to improve her power even more she should wear less clothing. It sounded stupid, until he'd shown her books where the evil sorceress always wore barely anything, and she remembered the same from her own books. So, in a tedious balance between trying to remain decent and wear as little clothing as possible, Nim had shed most of her attire. She now wore a single, thin piece of cloth around her breasts, a fingerless glove on her right hand that ran up to her elbow, a thong that was little more than a triangle and some string, and a pair of heeled boots. And her hat, of course. All were black, save the thong which was pink to match her hair.

Even with all of that revealed, her power had stopped working as soon as the claw had died, and she was not happy about it.

[Anonymous]

For a moment, Anima thought she saw the star that had enraptured her gaze move. She tilted her head to the side and raised herself up onto the tips of her toes to change her perspective slightly. To her surprise, the star was still moving, and getting closer as a matter of fact.
Was her responding to her visual beckon? Did it know that she wanted to peel it like an onion, to strip away everything that made it bright and beautiful, and crush its insides in the palm of her hand for the shear enjoyment of simply doing so? Was the star truly resigned to death, and bringing itself willingly to the inevitable?
No. The star was too afraid, too cowardly to place itself at Anima's 'mercy'.
Instead, in the star's place, was a woman. A pale woman, whose skin shone almost as brightly as the cowardly star itself, that was riding a broom. Anima's eyes were now locked obsessively onto the one thing that stood out the most to her: The woman's pink hair.It quickly became apparent that she was one of Stiphos' customers, however.
Stiphos primarily did three things, two of which were experimenting, and then selling the products of his scientific and magical toils to anybody willing to buy them.
The creaky sound of wheels turning signaled his approach, and soon Stiphos rolled out of the door with big, disturbingly happy smile on his face as he eyed Nimue. "I see you took my advice to heart."
And that was the third thing Stiphos did: Revel in his perverted, sexual fantasies.
He wheeled himself over to the disgruntled Nimue, and hugged her around the waist much in the same way he did with Anima only moments before. Disembracing her, he spoke much more genially to her than Anima, "It's good to see you again, Nim. Now then, let me see it."
Stiphos tapped the red lenses on his glasses, and they quickly slid down in front of the clear lenses. He gently took hold of Nim's hand that wore the finger claw and started bobbing his head around some, as if looking at it from different angles.
"Hmm... it does seem to have lost its touch. Maybe it's reacted adversely to your skin type," he postulated. "We could try that if you like, my dear. I have some lotion-"
"You shouldn't do that, Stiphos," Anima interrupted him, still staring at Nimue's hair in an intoxicated sort of way.
Stiphos, looking like he got caught with bright neon red hands, said in a defensively, "Whatever do you mean, Anima?" He hastily took another look at Nimue's finger claw, then came to the quick conclusion of, "Ah! I see the problem, Nim. I do so apologize, but I have erroneously given you a faulty unit. I'll tell you what, though, I'll replace it with a good one free of charge."
After a glance back at Anima beseeching her for her silence, Stiphos wheeled himself around and started back for his house. Before entering it though, he stopped and looked over his shoulder back at Nimue to ask, "Oh yes, Nim, I'm making tea for myself and Anima. Would you like some? And if so, hot or cold?"
Anima jerked her head to the other side randomly, making it crack conspicuously. She remained entranced by Nimue's hair, much like she was with the star just a moment ago, staring at it incessantly as a particular fragrance from the woman permeated her nose.

[Anonymous]

There he was, that legless old prick. He was so damn creepy.

Of course, the thought that she was in a thong purely to satisfy his perverse urges never crossed Nim's mind. She did however recoil as he hugged her, pulling her barely covered crotch towards him while her upper body tries to lean as far back as possible.

When he finally let go she planted one hand on her hip, the other stretching out for him to inspect the artefact. "It just fizzled out," she said impatiently, "I didn't no nothing to it."

Well, the skin thing sounded reasonable. Her skin was awfully pale, but she couldn't help it. Tanning didn't work for Nim, her skin just healed itself right back to pale.

But apparently that wasn't it. She blinked a few times, looking confused as the woman apparently prompted some new discovery about her claw. It was faulty. Well yes, obviously.

"Hmph, damn right you will," she grunted, "Piping." Tea would be nice.

With a sidelong glance at the woman, who she supposed was Anima, and a slight lifting of her eyebrow at the woman, Nim followed Stiphos inside, her buttocks wobbling as she walked.

That Anima was looking at her funny, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. Probably how she was dressed. Men had been ogling her all week, not that she minded really. Back when she was a good little girl she would have blushed at shied away, but she was a witch now. Witches didn't shy away, witches winked and pulled their panties down when the men could see and....stuff.

She was pretty sure that's what witches did anyway.

[Anonymous]

"Of course. The water should be coming to a boil any second now, my dear," said Stiphos as he wheeled himself around the mess of his main living room and into the kitchen.
And an enormous mess his living room was. Not only did it look more like a warehouse/workshop/laboratory more than an actual living room, but it was packed to the brim with all manner of things both magical and technological, as well as riddled with countless papers full of notes on the tables, shelves, walls, and even the ceiling. Most of the things kept on the shelves and tables were in jars, and the jars were all labeled and stacked on top of one another as much as space and 'safety' allowed. The most open space in the room was the area around his horribly cluttered desk, which had a small table and a worn couch nearby, the couch being for guests since Stiphos' seat went with him everywhere.
The walkways of the room were definitely a one-way street, with just little more space than necessary for Stiphos to maneuver his wheelchair around his own house. There were four doorways in the living room: one that lead to the kitchen, one to Stiphos' bedroom, one to his actual experimenting area, and one to the basement.
A long, drawn-out sniff sounded from over Nimue's right shoulder.
Anima had followed Nim shortly after she went inside. She was uncomfortably close to Nim, inhaling the scent of her from the nape of her neck. Leaning closer to Nim from behind, Anima began to speak into the witch's ear, her eyes closed as she visualized the scent in her mind. "You have an interesting fragrance about you, Nim. But... is it your own? Or have you simply taken a flower from the earth, ripped it out from the stem of nature's caring embrace, and stole its pleasant scent from it, making it your own? It's not you, and that might make you a liar..."
Anima opened her eyes and grinned ear-to-ear, showing off her teeth as a overly enthusiastic butcher would show off her cutlery, and whispered slyly, "...like me."
She crossed her arms and slowly paced around to Nim's right side, though not alloted much room by the confines of Stiphos' cluttered house. "If I may though, your scent is slightly offset with the color of your hair and your," she glanced down at Nimue's thong momentarily with a smirk, "'clothes'. It's a bit distracting, but an effective ploy nonetheless if that was your goal. In that case, bravo."
Untangling her crossed arms, Anima clapped lightly several times for Nimue, making eye contact with her then as she did.
"Just a few more minutes!" called Stiphos from through the doorway in the kitchen area.
After Stiphos' update on the beverages, Anima had another question for Nim that she asked in a level tone of voice, "Stiphos... do you trust him?"

[Anonymous]

Stiphos' house wasn't very pleasant. It smelled dusty and looked horrible, letting in almost no light. She hated being in there.

But still, the books and trinkets that crowded his living room intrigued Nim, making her gaze at them in wonder as she followed the legless man. Some of them looked evil, and she liked evil.

Stopping next to the couch, Nimue titled her head. She'd felt Anima following her, felt the presence of someone who was too close but never touched.

A small grin touched her own lips as Anima whispered to her, the feeling of hot breath making her ear tingle pleasantly. She turned to face the woman as Anima came around to her side, her hands planted on her hips and an amused smirk twisting her lips.

As Anima eyed her crotch, Nimue took a step out, planting her feet further apart to give a good view. It felt wrong to be so shameless, it felt evil.

"Actually," she responded in an arrogant tone as Anima finished applauding her, "It's a spell. I made my hair pink, and smell of lavender. Good nose though."

Stiphos' announcement earned the wall between him and her a cold stare. "What?" she said, returning her focus to Anima, "Trust that? Hah! Not in a million darlin', not in a million. He's a toad, but he has his uses."

Nimue did not trust Stiphos, not one bit, other than trusting what he told her of course. That was different in her mind. He'd convinced her of things, like how a witch should behave and dress, and she believed him because he made them make sense, not because she trusted him.

"So what's your deal huh? What do you need the old geezer for?"

[Anonymous]

Anima liked Nimue's revisory answer better than her theory. It was less about the destruction of a beautiful plant, and more about purposeful deception. She made it pink, and she made it smell like lavender. That wasn't her natural look, and that wasn't her true self. She was such a bad girl... and Anima could fully relate to such purposeful deception of one's appearance.
"The very reason that you, yourself, have sought him out," she purred in response to Nimue's question, sauntering around the table to the other side of the couch as she spoke but not even for a second breaking eye contact. "He's a much a toad to me as he is to you. A pet, a plaything, a means to an end. But he willingly throws himself at people of our unique," Anima once again eyed Nim from head-to-toe, then met eyes with her again, "persuasion. He knows what he is, what he does, knows his place, and loves it. There aren't very many people like him in the world, are there? One day though, he will outlive his usefulness, and then, like all playthings, he will need to be discarded. He knows this too, and eagerly awaits that day."
Anima's expression slowly faded into neutrality, and her eyes gradually trailed up from Nim's eyes to her pointy hat. She stood for there a moment, staring at the hat, seemingly looking past it, lost her own little world... with that hat included.
"Here we are, ladies," said Stiphos as the creaky wheels signaled his return into the living room. On his lap was a tray with three cups of tea: Two of which were steaming, and the other which had several large pieces of ice floating in it.
The Experimenter's return brought Anima back to the real world, and her eyes focused again. She smiled wryly at Nim, or possibly just at her hat, then plopped herself unceremoniously on Stiphos' couch, kicking her boots up and resting them on the table.
"For you, Nim," said Stiphos as he placed one of the steaming cups of tea on the table closest to the witch. "And for you, Anima," he said, placing the icey tea by Anima's boots.
He wheeled himself around to the other side of the table across from the couch, taking a sip of his hot tea when he was all set. "Ah... well, allow me to introduce both you to each other. Nimue, this is Anima, a demon. Anima, this is Nimue, a witch," he started, unable to hide the hint of eagerness in his voice.
Anima glanced over at Nim, the tip of her tongue snaking its way out of her mouth and momentarily caressing her upper lip as she once again made eye contact with her. "Hello Nimue. Your skin looks... delectable."
In the remarkable feat of controlling his baser urges while in the presence of two outstanding stimuli, Stiphos managed to keep himself from voicing the descriptions of the images that just crossed his sexually demented mind. His eyes had a mind of their own though, and occasionally wandered wherever they pleased.
He pursued a much more moderate topic of conversation then, "So, Nimue, how have you been since we last met? There's no need to be shy... please, tell me everything that might be on your mind. I care about the well-being of my customers."
Anima took hold of her frosty cup of tea and tested it, taking a tiny sip. She rolled the liquid around in her mouth for a second, then set the cup back down on the table.
It wasn't cold enough yet.

[Anonymous]

"He gave you a shitty artefact too?" she enquired, puzzled. Stiphos was apparently shadier than she'd originally thought when she'd first met him. On that particular morning, early in her days of walking the witchy path, Nimue had desperately needed to pee. Unable to find a toilet, she had asked an old man in a wheeled chair for directions to one. With no toilet within running distance and her bladder ready to pop, Stiphos had kindly shown her an alcove behind a building where she could relieve herself without being seen. Of course, it had never crossed her mind that the nice old man would be peeping through the adjacent fence.

She cocked her head, wondering what Anima was looking at so intently, but before she could turn around to look Stiphos rolled in with the tea. With a spring in her step the witch repositioned herself, walking around to the couch and plopping down next to Anima. In her current attire plopping caused quite the commotion with her wobbly bits.

Her own boots stayed on the floor as she leaned forward to retrieve her tea, taking a long sip of the scalding hot liquid. "Mmm, sageroot. Good boy," she purred at Stiphos, enjoying the very witchy addition to her tea.

"Why thank you Anima," she said, delighted, leaning back to show off as much of her porcelain skin as possible, "It simply won't tan or blemish, it just regenerates back to this."

Grunting through another sip she said to Stiphos, "Oh! Yes, I almost forgot." Transferring her cup to her left hand, Nimue pointed her clawed finger at him. The thing was working, for the moment, and so her magic latched onto his chair. Her hand made a spinning motion, making the chair rotate, then pulled him along around the table, finally beckoning to him seductively to pull the chair close to her. As soon as he was within range her hand lashed out, catching him by the throat. Her grip was that of a girl, not particularly strong, but still effective.

Her face maintained it's perky, cheerful smile even as she hissed angrily at him, "I was my new claw, and I want it now. Furthermore, I want the good one, the one I saw last time but you said was too expensive for me to afford. Well, I want that one.

"Now," she let him to, giving slight push on his neck as she did, "Scamper off. Go! Go get it!"

[Anonymous]

"I remembered," reassured Stiphos when Nim spoke of the sageroot in her tea, punctuating it with a gross smile.
Anima's eyes trailed over Nim's pale skin in the same way one might scrutinize choice cuts of meat at the butcher's shop. The part the rang in her ears continuously and unrelentingly was the word 'regenerates', which she was starting to get the impulsive urge to put it to the test.
Stiphos' tea nearly splashed out onto his lap when his wheelchair took on a mind of its own, guiding itself closer to the witch. "Oh...?" murmured The Experimenter as his chair rolled in next to the couch, and hence, Nim.
The hand whipped out and wrapped itself around his neck, causing Stiphos' eyes to widen exponentially. While Nim made her demands clear, Stiphos was growling out labored breaths -- or perhaps gratifying moans. When Nimue let him go and sent him on his way, he looked slightly disappointed for a second.
His 'genial' demeanor soon returned though, and he lifted a finger as he spoke, "Ah, yes, of course my dear. I know of the one you speak of. A fair exchange. And again, my sincerest apologies, Nimue."
Resting his cup of tea on the tray in his lap, Stiphos wheeled himself around and rolled into his experimenting room.
After the sound of his creaky wheels died down, Nim might have felt the unmistakable feel of cold steel on the arm closest to Anima, up near the shoulder.
Somehow, a scapel had gotten into her hand, and Anima, as if her blade was ice-skating in the rink of Nim's flesh, was lightly painting phantom figure-eights with the tip of the scapel. Her eyes followed the same pattern as her blade, watching it and the skin beneath it as if it were tantalizing her incessantly.
"What marvelous flesh. Perfect by its very nature," Anima whispered with a tone of obsessive adoration. "Is it truly your own?" Her eyes shot up to meet Nim's own suddenly, a subversive grin stretching out on her face, "...or are you lying to the world again? Burying the truth under a sheet of porcelain-hued deception? Truth isn't beautiful -- artifice is, isn't it?"
She took in a deep breath, and let out three short laughs. "Your's or not, we wouldn't want to let it fall into disuse, would we? Such terrible things might happen to your skin if you were negligent to it. Its ability to regenerate such flaws might deteriorate and wane if it hardly gets a chance to practice. Shall we put such an awe-inspiring gift to use, hmm?"

[Anonymous]

"Damn right," she hissed at his retreating form. It had caused her a great amount of trouble when her claw had failed, so it was only right she got the better one. She hadn't been able to afford it the first time, so it was a good deal on her part.

Having been born with powerful regenerative magic, Nim had never really known a fear of death or injury, so the natural reaction to flinch when something touched you unexpectedly was completely absent in her. As such when a tiny something began tracing around on her arm she merely looked down at it with a puzzled expression.

Her eyes followed the arm holding the scalpel up to Anima's face, pondering exactly what the woman was doing. "Oh, no no," she replied brightly, "Everythings natural except the hair."

Anima talked weird. Nim could only quirk an eye at the demon as she spoke, not really getting what she was saying. Alright, so her skin was nice, she could regenerate, and...well actually that was about all Nimue got out of Anima's spiel.

"Oh...you...you want to see me heal yeah?" she asked slowly, the thought still forming as she said it.

Pulling away gently from Anima's blade she reached down to her right boot, sticking out of which was the looped handle of a sacrificial knife. Her fingers wove into the loop, all save her clawed pointer finger which was unable to fit and she drew it up out of her boot.

The blade was steel, but seemed to have an oily darkness to it, and made of a single piece of metal with nothing else adorning it. Flipping it around in her hand so she was holding it point up, Nim pressed it to the same arm Anima had been playing with and made a straight cut across her bicep.

Barely any blood even spilled out, despite the wound being quite deep, before the muscle and skin knotted back together. When she stowed her blade again, Nim ran a thumb down her arm to wipe away some of the blood, showing smooth skin again beneath it.

"See? All good. I barely even notice the pain anymore."

[Anonymous]

"...and the scent," Anima reminded Nim after she affirmed the natural quality of her skin.
She watched Nim intently when she mentioned healing herself, and prepared to show it. Her eyes darted back and forth between the dagger she produced and the figure eight spot on her arm. Once the blade neared Nim's flesh though, her eyes locked onto the point of the incision.
Anima grinned ear-to-ear at the sight of the blood, more so at the sight of the cut on the witch's arm. She was excited... almost enough to forgo everything and simply bite until she had her fill. She continued to watch though, observing as the witch's skin, with remarkable speed she noted, easily undid the magnificent work of the dagger.
It was a demonic quality; though not solely the property of demons, it was nonetheless one of the bigger marks of the infernal -- the ability to autonomously regenerate one's wounds at an accelerated rate (demons certainly needed it, or else they would all be long dead). Anima knew that she lacked that quality in her early stages of life, but somehow, the gift eventually came to her later on. In the back of her mind, she knew why that was so, but she refused to acknowledge it completely.
Then her stomach growled.
Anima made eye contact with Nim again, cooing at her, "Ah, how... exquisite. But, I'm curious. Aren't you? Indulge with me, if you will. How effective is it against, oh I don't know, bites, let's say. We wouldn't want you to run around without knowing the limits of your ability, would we?" She bared her teeth in another wide grin. "Allow us to indulge our curiousity."
The entire upper-half of her body fell towards Nim. She braced herself on the couch and Nim's leg with her hands, and her mouth sought the once-cut spot on Nim's arm hungrily. She would clamp down and arch her head and back away, to rip a mouthful of witch flesh away as well if she were lucky.
Stiphos, having rolled himself back into the room to catch the latter portions of that exchange, commented in a manner much more gratified than anybody should have been in that situation. "Well... you two are getting along quite nicely."
In his lap, next to his cup of tea, rested Nimue's new finger claw. It was shiny and silvery, inscribed with many of the black mystical designs that also filled the books of witchcraft, as well as spiky and imposing to the common man's eye. A lustrous ruby was nestled ominously in the middle of the claw, with countless microscopic words of magical verses adorning its perch.
He wheeled himself back over to Nim's side of the couch, enjoying the spectacle his twisted and perverted imagination made of reality more than the reality itself.

[Anonymous]

"Well I've had dog bites before, so that's nothing new," she replied conversationally, "I pretty much now there are-"

She cut off, shying away from Anima as the woman lunged at her in an almost playful manner. A tingle ran up her leg as Anima's hand grabbed her thigh.

"Uh...?" she started, turning to see Stiphos grinning at them. Before she could further question the demon's advances on her, Nimue's eyes fell to the enchanted claw resting on Stiphos' tray. With a delighted squeal she jumped up, leaving Anima on the couch and dashing over to Stiphos.

Bending at the hip she plucked the claw from his tray, standing up to examine it. The thing was gorgeous, far prettier than her current, plain one. Its gem was much bigger too, and the whole thing seemed to just radiate evil.

Her broken claw was off in a heartbeat, her own increasing rapidly with the anticipation of the new toy.

Tool of untold evil, not a toy, a tool of untold evil.

It slipped on with ease, fitting too perfectly on her finger. Once it was all the way on the room seemed to groan, the lights becoming darker and seeming to pull towards her as if they were about to be sucked in as the claw attuned itself to her.

After a few seconds the effect ceased, the room returning to normal and leaving Nim staring at her new claw with a mad grin. Tossing her old claw to the side she pointed at it, her finger following its arc through the air. A thin black thread lanced out from her fingertip, incinerating the old claw.

Tossing her head back and cackling for a moment, Nim exclaimed with glee, "Wonderful!"

[Anonymous]

Anima's motions froze when the arm her teeth sought eluded her bite. Her eyes trailed back up to Nim's own and she started laughing, keeping her mouth shut to muffle the sound.
Nim moved away for a reason, and Anima's mind raced excitedly to try and explain why she did so. Was it fear? Anxiety? Disgust? Carelessness? Naivete? Shyness? Whatever it was, whatever perfectly rational reason she had, Anima could take it and twist it mercilously, and make it irrational... if it wasn't already.
Maybe. Maybe later.
Anima reclined back into her seat on the couch, scrutinizing Nim almost more than Stiphos when the witch got up to collect her new prize. She smirked when Nim burst out with her satisfied laughter, almost induced to laugh along with her.
She grabbed her tea again, and tested it once more. The liquid was now as cold as the melting ice itself -- just right.
"I'm glad that you like it," said Stiphos when Nim threw her head back, taking the opportunity to allow his eyes to feast on the sight of a few choice spots on her body. "Please, sit down, drink your tea. Allow us to enjoy the pleasure of your company, Nim."
The Experimenter wheeled himself around to the spot he was in before he was summoned to go and fetch the new claw. After taking a sip of his own tea, he asked, "So, Anima, how may I help you? Is there something that you require? Or perhaps-"
She lifted up a gloved finger into the air to silence him, then laid her cup of tea back down on the table. She brought her feet down off of the table to the floor, reaching into her pocket to pull out a cellular phone. She tossed it lightly over to him, and he awkwardly caught it and stared down at it.
"Well now, I've not seen one of these for quite some time," Stiphos spoke as the green lenses slid down to the front of his glasses. "This is a model 78-MPRI, made by Insera Corporation many hundreds of years ago. Basic operation is satellite-based, but these phones were made specifically for their radio-like capability. They usually come in pairs, being set to the same frequency, but additional phones may be added to the channel if necessary."
After his technical rundown of the item, Stiphos glanced back up at Anima and asked curiously, "Where did you get a relic like this?"
Ignoring his question, Anima requested flatly, "I need to be able to find the other phones like this one, using this one."
Stiphos rubbed his chin, stealing a glance at Nim as if for inspiration. He looked back down at the phone while he mused aloud, "Hmm... I suppose all I'd need to do is make a few little tweaks... some static disturbance... some wavelength feedback maybe. I'll see what I can do." He looked back up at Anima then, and took a stab at her motive while wearing a masking smile, "Does the man named Neseraph have the other phone?"
She shook her head, but replied with no lack of enthusiastic glee, "No, but his friends use them. And, if I can't get to him directly, then I can get to them. And if I can get to them, then I can make him come to me. I came close today... I got a little sidetracked, but it wasn't anything I couldn't... improvise. And this'll have to do for a good secondary plan, won't it?"

[Anonymous]

As her laughter faded, Nim waved a hand dismissively at Stiphos. "Yes, yes, whatever."

Taking her seat again, Nimue plucked up her cup of tea and crossed her legs as she began sipping it. She quietly admired her new claw as Anima talked about the little thingy she tossed to Stiphos, not really following what was going on. It was something about a 'core-pour-ate-ion', 'ray-deo' and a 'fone', whatever those were.

Their talk faded into random jibber jabber, making Nim's face go blank as her brain took away the resources dedicated to giving it expressions to try and figure out the jumble of words the two were spouting.

Her kind picked out one thing she understood, making her face light up as she latched onto it. "A man eh Anima? A lover perhaps, or maybe you just want him to be?" she purred, positively loving the teasing.

This sounded like more fun than all that babble before. Love intrigue was always fun.

[Anonymous]

While Stiphos continued to observe the antique phone, Anima rolled her head around to rest on her shoulder, looking at Nim sideways. The question seemed to invigorate her a little, as evidenced by the avid look of her face. She gradually sat up straight and turned her body to face Nim.
"Have you ever... liked something so much, so incredibly much, that you just wanted to grab it with both of your hands like this," Anima started slowly, bringing her gloved hands up and pretending to choke something in front of herself so the witch could see. "and just start squeezing... and squeezing... and squee-zing... and not stop. Just wrenching your hands in tighter and tighter and tighter around it..."
Anima's eyes trailed down to the imaginary figure she had her hands wrapped around, looking at the unseen figure as if it were real while she continued eagerly, "Even if it looks up at you, looks you right in the eyes, and begs and begs and begs for you to let go. Oh, no, no, no. You just tighten your grip, just like this, and you look him back in the eyes and you say to him..."
Anima's hands were interlocked together so hard that they began to shake uncontrollably, making her arms and face quiver feverishly as well. She leaned in closer to the imaginary figure she was staring so intently at in her stranglehold, showing him a crooked smirk through pursed lips, continuing, "'No. No I won't. Because I can't. Sshh... Sshh... I'll never let you go. You're mine now.' And he begs back at me, 'I can't breathe... I can't breathe... Let me go.' And I just keep tightening my hands around him... tighter... and I look into those blue eyes...tighter... those gorgeous blue eyes... tighter... and I tell him..."
Anima suddenly stopped moving for a second, literally froze, until she casually reclined back into her side of the couch. She crossed her arms and smiled balefully at Nim, as if nothing just happened, and said simply, "That's love. That's what I once felt for Neseraph. But it has nothing to do with the reason I need him now."
She narrowed her eyes some, and asked, "Do you want to know why I'm looking for him? Hmm?"

[Anonymous]

Nimue watched Anima's little display calmly. She supposed she aught to be scared, or disturbed by the woman's demented views on love, but it was delightfully evil, and she was a demon after all.

"Mmmmm, no," she replied after a moment's pondering, "but I have liked a few things so much I wanted to squeeze them and squeeze them forever. But I wanted to grab them with both hands like this."

Her hands rose up to her chest height, reaching forward, her fingers tightening as if around two imaginary orbs, then proceeding to massage those orbs and pull at them.

Letting her hands drop, Nim twisted in her seat to face Anima, pulling her knees up onto the couch so her feet dangled off the side. "But still, tell me why you're looking for him."

A wickedly curious grin spread across her face, showing a row of even white teeth behind her plush lips. Even before she was a witch Nimue had been something of a gossip, always wanting to know who everyone liked and who was doing what, or who for that matter.

[Anonymous]

Stiphos rolled himself backward over to his desk to grab some tools for his work on the phone while Nimue and Anima had their conversation. He was distracted for a good minute during and after Nim's statement of the few things she'd like to squeeze, as his mind filled in the imaginary gap his eyes left with perverted phantom images to go in the witch's outstretched hands.
Once the witch's hands were down though, he resigned himself with a slight bit of disappointment to start tinkering with the phone.
Anima held up her finger to Nim for a pause, throwing back her head and inhaling the rest of her tea in one fell swoop. She flickered her wrist holding the cup and the chunks of ice scattered to the floor.
She presented the cup to Nim for show, starting out in a level tone of voice, "Let's say you've known something for your whole life. Picture it in your mind, it could be anything. Then imagine that idea is symbolized by this cup. Okay. You got that?
"You've known that something for so long, that it just becomes natural. You take it for granted. It could be anything. See it? It's always been that way. That's never changed every single time you've seen it. Are you picturing it now, hmm?
"Now, someone comes along, and does this." Anima made a fist out of her hand and crushed the fragile cup in the palm of her hand. Several small pieces fell down onto the couch and floor. "And then you realize what just happened. That someone just took that what you thought you knew, that default truth of yours, and shattered it, turned it upside-down maybe."
Stiphos glanced up from his work momentarily to see one of his cups in shambles. He shook his head slightly, and went back to his work.
Anima turned her hand upside-down like she said and dropped the rest of the pieces to the floor. "Oops. Looks like you were wrong this whole time. But don't worry, just because you were masterfully deceived, doesn't mean you can't deceive them right back. Because you have a plan, don't you? Oh yes you do. You know how to make it all work. Hmm? Hmm? That right?"
Shifting her position on the couch so she could better gesture with her hands to abstractly illustrate what she was trying to say, Anima continued with a excited grin, "This is what you have to do. You have to find a man, like Neseraph, that you know, whose in a similar... situation as yourself. You find this man, because he was the first one to figure all of this out, and you just take what you know about him away, strip all of that needless excess away carefully and methodically. Reduce him to absolute nothingness... and what do you have left?"
Anima opened up her hands like a present, as if to reveal a phantom prize in the palms of them. "The answers."

[Anonymous]

Nim nodded and gave grunts of affirmation at the right moments as Anima talked, showing that she was indeed following. The cup symbolised something important Anima had taken as absolute truth, and it had been smashed, her sense of reality shattered.

Glancing down at the shattered pieces, Nimue pondered it. "That's all very well," she said, "but your metaphor seems to be flawed." She took her own cup and drained it, the liquid having cooled enough to do so. "If the cup represents the something, you're thinking about it wrong. You think it's a cup, you've been told it's a cup, but it's not a cup. No, it's a bowl. So in fact it hasn't been shattered as you demonstrated, but rather revealed for what it truly is."

She leant back, grinning smugly at her own brilliance. "I'd guess that it was your own inability to accept that it is indeed a bowl that lead to it breaking in the first place."

Unaware of just how spot on she was, Nim was nevertheless pleased with herself. She wasn't the brightest girl ever, so it was nice to feel smart sometimes.

[Anonymous]

Anima listened intently to Nim's response. She kept her eyes steadfastly locked on to the witch's own, only breaking such contact when Nim was finished. She started glancing around the room as if she heard something, or if some ghostly person might be trying to sneak up on them.
Looking back at Nimue with a puzzled face just genuine enough to be fake, Anima asked, "Who said anything about a bowl?"
Just before her eyes lost focus again.
"That ought to do it," said Stiphos after assembling the phone back together. "Whenever this phone is near the source of another device that emits waves of the same frequency, you'll get feedback. The feedback, of course, will get louder as you get closer, allowing you to home in nicely. Anima?"
She looked over at The Experimenter, blinking twice as her eyes came back into focus on him.
"Your phone?" he prompted, holding out the device toward her.
Smirking wryly, Anima stood up and took the phone from the man, looking it over once before dropping it into her pants pocket. Without a word, she turned around and went over to Stiphos' shelves, perusing a rack that held several rows of small liquid-filled vials.
"So, how much do you think Anima?" asked the scientist, eyeing her back. "For my service? I'm thinking two bites... that was quite the antique, you know."
"I might need these," announced Anima with a brief look back at Stiphos, before scooping up several of the poison vials and slipping them into her back pocket.
"That'll make four bites, if you wish," said Stiphos with a punctuating and eager smile.
That soon devolved into a more worried look.
"No, Anima, that's not for sale."
She had taken a large jar off of another shelf and opened it, taking a second to sniff the scent of its contents before a wide grin crossed her face. She dropped the lid and started walking past the table and couch with it.
"You have to put that back. It's extremely volatile and-"
Abruptly, Anima hauled off and struck Stiphos hard in the chin as she walked past, the force of the blow making his wheelchair teeter over onto its side and spill its legless rider helplessly onto the floor.
As Stiphos touched his quivering hands to his bloodied mouth incredulously, Anima began to splash the contents of the jar in random directions around the room, only caring about making a large mess.
Propping himself up on his elbows, Stiphos questioned, "What... what are you doing, A-"
After throwing the empty jar away, causing it to shatter chaotically up against the wall, Anima crouched down and brought a finger up to her lips to shush the scientist. "I had," she looked up thoughtfully for a second, then back down at Stiphos' eyes, "a vision. And I just want to see if it's true. Though, I have to tell you, that it involves you..."
She unsheathed a knife quickly, seemingly out of nowhere, and slammed it through Stiphos' right hand, pinning it to the floor and making the scientist yowl in pain.
"...and everything you've ever cherished," she finished with an ominous smile.
Anima stood back up and sauntered randomly about the living room, knocking down and breaking everything on the tables and shelves as she went about her rounds.
Stiphos winced heavily from the pain in his bloodied and injured hand. Though his mind refused to accept what was happening, he couldn't afford to ignore the reality this time.
He looked desperately up to Nim then, pleading with her, "Nimue... please... do something. She'll kill us both."

[Anonymous]

An exasperated sigh escaped Nimue's lips as Anima failed to appreciate her excellent metaphor. Such a waste.

Peering over at Stiphos, Nim examined the 'fone'. It was an odd little thing, all smooth and shiny. He said something about a feed bag. Why would Anima need a feed bag? And how on earth was that little thing going to get her one? Maybe it was magic and could produce food.

Stiphos wanting bites in return only convinced her more. He have wanted some of the magic food. Nim bet it was good.

She gave a curios look to the liquid filled jar Anima was handling, one that apparently she wasn't meant to be touching. That was so evil. Or, was it just bad? Naughty? Nim puzzled over what exactly qualified as evil for a moment, before a sudden crash broke her from her deliberations.

"Oooooh a vision! Neat," she bubbled, "Does it involve me too?"

With a wicked grin Nimue rose, stalking over to Stiphos like a cat prowling towards a mouse caught in a trap. Planting the heel of one boot on his free hand, to ensure he couldn't grab her, she squatted over his chest. "Poor, poor Stiffy," she purred, smiling down at him with a carnal glint in her eyes.

"I can't die. I have what I need from you. What makes you think I care if you die?"

She sniffed the air. Whatever Anima was tossing around sure spelled flammable. Nim didn't like fire, because while she wouldn't be permanently damaged by it, her clothes and broom, which was resting on the wall outside, would be.

"That said," she continued conversationally, "Anima, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to leave before you blow this shithole."