seriousfic

Title: Under peaceful conditions, the warlike attack themselves
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,583
Characters/Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Santana/Brittany
Previous: Part 5
Summary: Fight! Fight! Fight!

Showered and dressed at least semi-fashionably, Quinn paid a call to her scientist friend. She used her reporting job as an excuse and laid out what she'd learned in the guise of an interview.

"So what you're saying, doctor, is that the transformation Ms. Lopez is going through is affecting her mentally as well as physically."

"Yes. The reptilian center of the brain must be gaining dominance. By trying to remove her lesbian feelings, Santana has inadvertently censored all emotions: compassion, pity, remorse. She'll become more aggressive, murderous even. And I see no reason for the process to stop. She'll become less and less human with each day."

"I know this isn't your area of expertise, but… do you think your scientific expertise could be at all helpful in creating an antidote?"

Mike Chang took off his glasses. "Not my area of expertise? I'm Asian, aren't I?"

***

Most people thought the city stopped at the street. If they thought it was a trick question, the sewers. If they were right, they thought thirty stories down, to a room so large and rounded it could've been a Roman arena, but the expensive, old-fashioned décor marked it as another kind of decadence.

Walls tiled in murals depicted the fortunes of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and other great names of the Gilded Age. Waiting rooms with mirrors, sofas, fancy stained glass. Gaslight fixtures, once beautiful, now skeletal. A fallen crystal chandelier in the middle of the floor. Hydraulic elevators with parquet flooring and velvet curtains. The ceiling a great dome tiled in mirrors that were now shattered. They hovered above the Reptile like a ruined sky. And everything warped and twisted by flood damage.

A perfect place for the Reptile to go about its work.

The refractor laid in pieces, thrown aside except for the pieces needed. Other equipment laid nearby, waiting to be added to the growing project. Santana had been busy. Her jury-rigged machine was taking shape. A few more parts and it'd be complete.

Then it caught a glimpse of her reflection, through the doorway into a waiting room, where a dusty mirror showed what it'd become. The snout of a raptor, nostrils on either side flaring and exhaling condensed vapor like a mad bull. Talons ripping out of its feet, a spike in the heel adding traction. Fins ripping through its worn coat along the spine.

For a moment it wanted nothing more than to see Brittany one last time, to say goodbye while the words still lingered in its mouth. But it couldn't. And in a lightning flash of movement, Santana was at the hole ripping apart one end of the station. A long drop led to the ocean.

It jumped.

***

When she'd told him about the items the Reptile had been spotted taking, Mike Chang had come up with a working theory of what it was building. And Santana needed just one more piece to finish.

So Quinn was on stake-out, her bright costume concealed in the shadows as she watched the massive skyscraper where the world's only functional Lecter Transfunctioner was kept. A seven-foot-tall dinosaur wouldn't be hard to spot. Still, she kept an eagle eye out, scanning every face, every movement. It kept her from thinking of that kiss.

Her lips still tingled and something unclaimed electrified her body. She couldn't even think of Rachel. The sight of her made Quinn want to pull those ridiculous clothes off once and for all.

Night fell. Her body wouldn't be still. This was a waste of time, a snipe hunt, but Quinn didn't dare leave. She didn't want to run into Rachel again. There was nothing in her other life that interested her.

Her breathing raced. Her head and heart pounded. She needed something, now. She'd abused her body for too long and now it was rebelling.

She thought of Finn. His smile. His dancing. His coma. And tears came, her entire body's frustration channeled into sobs that buffeted her like gusts of wind. He was gone. He would never wake up. And she might as well be too, because she had nothing and no one. She was a zombie, dead but still carrying out some meaningless task.

Then she saw the silhouette of the Reptile, scaling the building by the light of the full moon. And the emptiness was gone, replaced by a rage so deep it was intoxicating.

***

The Lecter Transfunctioner scraped as the Reptile swallowed it whole. It would be safe there until later.

"You know what's depressing? How lame you are," a female voice chimed. The Reptile whirled around, its tail slicing through one of the many cubicle walls surrounding her. The Cheerio stood with her ribbons at the ready. "All those scales and that pretty smile, I thought maybe you'd have a cool backstory, but you're just another freak… Santana."

It roared and Quinn scooped up an office chair to break over the Reptile's head, softening it up for a right hook that sent it through several rows of cubicles. But with one deft flick of its tail, the Reptile was up and charging back at Quinn. She ran right at it, fist cocked, and they both threw punches in an unstoppable collision.

Every window on the floor blew out simultaneously, followed by Quinn flying out an empty window frame. She smacked into the building across the street, cracking the concrete, needing a moment to shake the cobwebs out. As she recovered, the Reptile escaped down the side of the building, crawling like a gecko.

Quinn's anger set her on fire. She kicked off the building, shooting a ribbon up to wrap around the struts of the windows she'd just flown through, and swung down to hit the Reptile like a rolled-up newspaper catching a fly.

The impact carried them through the office, shedding a fountain of tempered glass, people diving aside as the wrecking ball of grappling bodies rampaged through computers, copiers, and office furniture. Finally they slapped against the opposite window, which cracked but held. The Reptile immediately sprang for freedom, but Quinn grabbed its tail.

"This is gonna hurt," she noted for the record as she flung them both through the window.

***

"It did hurt," Quinn muttered, lying on the cracked pavement of a freeway. They'd landed in the breakdown lane and cars rocketed by, buffeting them with riptide. Across from her, the Reptile twitched, its bulging chameleon eyes moving independently of each other.

"I know what you're trying to do," Quinn told it. "All the parts you've stolen... it won't work. The machine will only make things worse."

"Worse?" The Reptile huffed a croaking laugh. "Before, I was weak. Now, I can do anything. And I will cure the rest of the world. When they'll all like me, it'll be utopia. No more messy emotions, no more complicated relationships. Tell me you wouldn't like it better that way. No one dresses up as a cheerleader and fights crime without some major issues."

The words hit, but Quinn's anger rushed in to fill the holes they left. "Yeah, I know, we're all monsters on the inside, yadda yadda, let's just skip ahead to the part where I win. Although if you insist, we can pause at beating the hell out of each other."

The Reptile lunged up roaring and Quinn stuffed her baton into its mouth, shooting the ribbon out to snag a passing tour bus. Even as the Reptile swallowed, it was jerked along, dragged behind the bus. But it didn't take long for it to start clambering up to the bus it was tied to.

Quinn went after it, leaping onto a passing car and, with a running start, jumping to another one closer to the Reptile. She didn't let her momentum drop, but kept moving like she was jumping across stepping stones... if the stepping stones were all driving at 70 mph.

The car she was aiming for changed lanes. Quinn overshot and landed against a massive tanker truck; kicking off it, she managed to snag the safety railing on the open top bus. Her body slapped against the bus's frame just as the Reptile slithered past her, throwing itself into the midst of the passengers. Quinn flew up and over the edge and ran after it, past rows of screaming tourists, only to see the Reptile leaping from the front of the bus.

Quinn snapped out her baton and caught its foot with her ribbon, ripping the Lizard back into the windshield of the bus. It pulled itself inside as Quinn rushed after it. She looked over the side to see it holding a claw to the bus driver's throat. Then the bus swerved, nearly throwing Quinn off as it took an off-ramp, hitting yellow collision barrels, flecking Quinn with the water inside.

Quinn went with the motion. It was just like she was back in high school, buoyed by the crowd and her teammates and the noise of the cheers, only now it was waves of anger and pain. She flipped up and over the safety railing, using it to swing down through a window in the bus's first level and kick the Reptile into the bus door. The impact knocked the doors off their hinges, and as the Reptile snagged the steps' handrail with its tail, the door landed through the windshield of a parked car.

The Reptile flung itself back into Quinn, knocking her into the driver's seat and cramming the driver underneath them. The bus swerved out of control, bulldozing through a parked car and fender-bending a storefront before continuing down a sidewalk, plowing through parking meters like they were cornstalks. As Quinn and the Reptile struggled, coins and uprooted meters scattered through the destroyed windshield.

Lizard or not, Santana was at least a girl lizard. Quinn headbutted her in the tit, and when the Reptile winced, she tackled it out the door. They landed on the sidewalk, Quinn on top, riding the Reptile as momentum dragged it over the pavement. She punched it just because it was there. Finally, the sidewalk ended, they hit a patch of moist dirt and rolled over each other, still trading punches, before Quinn landed in a puddle of muddy water. She heard the sound of mud sucking at feet as the Reptile ran once more.

Her body ached as she got up. Even she wasn't good with falling out of a building and a bus on the same day. And her costume was dirty as hell. And she was missing a baton. She wiped the smut from her face and mask as best she could, and saw the World's Fair in front of her.

If the Reptile wasn't inside, who'd smashed the ticket-taker's booth?

She jumped over it and ribboned her way to the top of a circus wheel, looking out at the carnival. Santana, the Reptile, was somewhere out there. Quinn panted on adrenaline. She hadn't been in a fight this rough since the Prom Queen. Unbidden, it occurred to her she might die. Her parents would freak the fuck out. Rachel would miss her.

Focus. The Reptile was climbing a gargantuan metal sculpture in the middle of the carnival, a post-millennial version of the stainless steel globe from the '64 World's Fair. Strands inside formed a complex network, like a half-melted web.

Quinn jumped off the circus wheel, swung off the top of a Test Your Strength pole, and smashed into the Reptile. The impact carried them inside the globe, metal bars snapping under Santana. Almost immediately the Reptile spun them around, knocking Quinn deeper into the framework and bending a bar around her neck. Then it slithered out, its body contorting and squeezing together bonelessly to get to the bottom.

Quinn pulled at the metal bar, not sure if she couldn't get enough air or if she was panicking, but either way wanting it off. Then she heard the globe ripping loose of its moorings. She could still crane her head enough to see the Reptile pushing the globe from its base.

"Shit," Quinn muttered, as the globe started to roll, pick up speed. As a superhero, she usually never swore, but when the occasion called for it—

The bar around her neck started to bend. She got her fingers in the small gap that had been created between her throat and the metal and pulled with all her strength. She tried not to throw up as the world spun around her. Rachel would never get to tell her—she'd never get to tell Rachel—

With a scream of frustration, the bar broke in two. Gravity pulled Quinn loose and she dropped against some more bars, shockingly cool after the body-hot one around her neck. Then the globe smashed into a funhouse and Quinn was thrown down, smacking her ribs against another bar before dropping out the globe and through a ceiling and into a floor covered in dry ice.

She gave herself no time to regain her breath, pulling herself up to look for her enemy, and saw herself. Lots of herself. She was in a forced perspective room, an army of distorted reflections surrounding her. She looked like hell, blood soaking the side of her uniform from a cut she didn't even know she'd got. But Quinn still gripped her baton, waiting for the Reptile to—

Santana smashed through a mirror behind her, charging her and ramming her through another mirror and a wall and down into a tunnel of stagnant water. Quinn was pinned against a set of tracks for the Reptile to slash her across the chest. Blood sprayed, mingling with the scream Quinn let out. She turned the pain into fight, punching the Reptile hard enough to hear bones break, but it grabbed her by the throat and slammed her head against the tracks, hard, hard, hard, until light shone in her eyes.

A tram full of young couples was coming toward them. They were in the tunnel of love.

Quinn punched it in the place where she'd heard bones crack, and this time something jagged happened. The Reptile hissed and fell back and Quinn pushed away from the tracks before the tram could hit her. She dropped into the water, finding it red with her own blood. Before the Reptile could come for her again, she shot a ribbon out to the tram and let it drag her away for a chance to breath.

***

When the tram came to a stop, Quinn had ripped out enough ribbon to at least cover up her wounds. She didn't know if it counted as bandaging. And she still felt out of breath as she limped away from the tunnel of love. Distantly, she could hear screams, but distantly. More and more distant. The Reptile was leaving. Getting away. And she was letting it.

She needed to get away too. Nearby was a fence and beyond it, all the trees anyway could ever want. She still had strength enough to hop the fence, but there was a black moment in the middle and somehow she ended up on the ground, grass tickling her. She staggered up and away from the lights of the carnival, the growing crowd. Tree branches scratched at her. She gestured incoherently at them, ripping some down, her strength just enough to rip the bark of some trees before she tripped over a root. The ground wasn't comfortable, but it didn't hurt her.

"Finn…" she said.