Adisa did have impeccable taste when it came to psychotic people with freakish strength, Chris thought after witnessing Domingos launch a nuppeppo into the air.

As the airborne tubby creature fell towards them, Chris and Takato jumped in opposite directions and avoided getting crushed. The ground boomed as it hit the ground, like an earthquake.

Chris stumbled into the center of the pack of nuppeppos and got squeezed from all directions by their massive greasy bodies. He pushed his way out and summoned his Relic as soon as he had enough space. He held up his shield and stared at the creatures for a while, remembering that under all that lumpy skin were innocent, confused people in extreme agony.

He made his move anyway.

“Amazzi-go!” he shouted. His watery speed dash didn’t last long as he bounced off the belly of a nuppeppo and fell onto his back. He got up quickly before getting trampled and tried again. He shouted the command repeatedly with his eyes closed, tightening his grip on the shield’s handle. He caromed around the cluster of fat and eventually succeeded in escaping.

Chris slid onto the ground, got up, and looked back at the crowd of nuppeppos clumped together without any clear view of either Takato or Domingos.

His focus was literally cut by a wind slash that thrust into his back. After enduring an unforgettable face splat on the cold ground, Chris returned to his feet and turned back.

He saw a cackling Tayte in a heated battle with… nobody.

The laughing girl spun and swung her scythe at nothing in random directions, launching wind slashes every now and then, destroying more of the amusement park’s property.

Chris stood as he watched, shuddering and pondering about his blunder in assuming she was cured. Turns out, her mind was far more broken than he realized.

Feeling the weight of responsibility, Chris plodded toward her. He blocked incoming slashes with his shield. It was like the flat ground suddenly tilted as the muscles in his legs squeezed together.

“Tayte!” Chris screamed over the wind. All he got back from her was louder cackles.

He ducked when a massive wind slash came his way, and then it ascended behind him. Chris turned on his heel and looked up to see the attack approaching the news helicopter.

The projectile barely touched the rotorcraft, but it was enough to make it spin chaotically in the air for a while before stabilizing.

“Oh my God,” Chris muttered and then looked back at Tayte. This was it. His negligence finally let her insanity reach its ultimate stage. She was going to leave this place in bloody ruins, and the incident would be documented and studied for decades.

It would be a 3-part miniseries picked up by some big production studio cashing in on yet another tragedy. Little Monster: The Tayte Enberg Story and the Moron Who Helped Break Her Mind.

He could imagine the haunted look on his face as he testified in the documentary.

“I did everything I could.” he would say.

Yeah, right, you dumbass. Chris said in his mind to his hypothetical future self.

Chris kept the shield up, peeking over the top as he got closer to the mad scythe-wielding girl.

The black blade came after him, and he blocked it with his shield.

Tayte’s arm swung back; in her crazed state, her moves were all sloppy. It was his chance. Time was of the essence. He ditched the shield and put all his faith in his grappling skills. Skills he practiced as a contingency for his sharpshooting skills (his bad luck botched his otherwise perfect aiming). It was a mix of the Hausa people’s Dambe and the Kabye people’s Evala.

He seized her arm and twisted it until she dropped the Relic. Then he quickly went behind her, slipped one arm under her armpit, and looped his other arm over her shoulder. His hands clasped under her chin.

Chris had a hold of her, but she wasn’t subdued. Tayte squirmed and fought back to break free.

“Tayte! Tayte! Tayte! Stop! Just stop!” Chris pleaded. “I’m sorry!”

Tayte’s rationality returned to her as she asked, “Sorry for what?”

“For doing this to—”

Even if he went to seclude himself in a cave for an entire year thinking about it, he still wouldn’t be able to understand what followed. He outweighed Tayte significantly, yet she managed to push her heels into the ground, lift him up as she arched her back, and flip over—landing on top of him.

Tayte was free to roam and she ran off twirling and laughing.

Chris sat up, and then an even crazier sight caught his attention; green lightning blasted down from the night sky, upchucking a multitude of nuppeppos into the air. Takato and Domingos emerged from the crowd and fought while yelling at each other.

Whatever they were talking about must’ve been extremely dire and revealing.

But it wasn’t his story.

Chris turned away and found Tayte standing still while staring into the distance to her side. “Tayte…?” He asked as he approached her.

“She has no head,” she said and snickered. “She’s trying to glare at me, but she has no head.”

His eyes followed the direction she was staring, and all he saw was a destroyed cotton candy stand. “Tayte… there’s nobody there—”

“Tomoka is trying to glare at me, but she has no head.” She turned her head back at a dangerous degree, directing her crazy look at Chris. “I’m the one who took off her head.”

Chris kept getting closer. “Tayte…”

“I can’t move, by the way,” she said. “This is what I sacrificed. Mobility. Any part of my body can just paralyze me out of nowhere. This’ll make fighting so much more entertaining!”

Chris halted and put on a weary look. A part of him was hoping that her damaged mental state was due to what she sacrificed. It really had nothing to do with it.

His attention was drawn back to his former partners in crime as Domingos shouted: “Is that all you got, Green-eyes?”

Domingos, barely scathed, was dragging a brutalized Takato (his gas mask was broken off) across the ground by the back of his collar. He then hoisted the former firefighter onto his shoulder and sped forward.

“And now Mama is here,” Tayte cooed, getting back Chris’s attention. “She’s mad at me, like always.”

Tayte began to sway her head left and right as she hummed.

Deep within Chris, he wanted to just turn away from the chaos, stop by a convenience store to grab some snacks (pretzels would be great), catch up on a TV show he hadn’t seen in a while, and then go to sleep.

“I’m sorry, Mom and Dad,” Tayte said. “I am just having so much fun. I’m sorry about Tomoka’s head, but I think we can go back and find it. I’m sure it’s still in the same place. The trip back to Uganda will take forever, though.” She paused for a while, and then her head perked. “Hey, Chris! Melissa is here, too! So are Ayo and those twins! You know, all those people whose death we are responsible for.”

“That’s enough, Tayte!”

She lifted one leg, and her eyes widened. “Ooh! I can move again!” Then she looked over at Domingos carrying Takato on his way to the Godzilla rollercoaster.

“Tayte, wait!” Chris yelled as Tayte broke off into a run. He went after her and was able to catch up to her quickly since she was still moving in a drunken, frenzied way. With a lunge, he took her down, and the two rolled across the ground.

Halfway up to his feet, Tayte swung an upward kick at him that he managed to block with his arm, and then as the two rose, Tayte unleashed ferocious attacks onto him.

He tried to avoid hitting back, but to her, this was no sparring match; it was a no holds barred fight. The short match ended with Chris being blindsided by an uppercut that crushed his teeth into each other. He dropped and stared at the helicopter in the moonlight sky while rubbing his jaw, wondering how the hell such a small hand could hit so hard.

Chris pushed himself up and chased Tayte. They dashed under the flashing entrance sign and ran up the white steel platform deck.

On the rollercoaster area everything was decorated like the inside of a high-tech underwater control station. Chris lunged at Tayte again and stayed on top of her, trying to keep her still, and then from the corner of his eye, he noticed that Takato broke free from Domingos’ hold and was swinging his electrified Relic at him.

Domingos dodged an attack that fired a couple of lighting bolts that crashed through the control room windows and wreaked havoc inside.

Alarms went off, and colorful lights flashed. The midnight blue rollercoaster train roared and started moving just as Domingos took Takato into his arms and jumped onto it.

They took off.

A kick to the groin had Chris get off Tayte. She ran up to the empty rails of the rollercoaster and pouted.

“Let’s just let those two kill each other and head for the Checkpoint,” Chris muttered while he groaned on the floor.

Tayte looked down at Chris with an unamused look. “No,” she said and ran down the deck’s steps.

With the sharp pain spreading to his thigh, Chris forced himself up and followed her.

Tayte was slowly walking backward while looking up at the rollercoaster. The twisted smile on her face made Chris nervous.

“Hey, what’re you thinking?” He asked and then spotted the rollercoaster train go up and descend a downward helix while Takato and Domingos were trading blows on it. Lightning flashed off Domingos’ problematic fleshy armor.

The train took a banked turn and began ascending the vertical hill. Domingos conjured a giant ball of flesh triple the size of his head and flung it at Takato, he dodged, and the ball landed right on the top of the lift hill.

The massive ball of flesh impeded the train from going any further as it crashed into it. Keeping Domingos and Takato stuck at almost 200 feet in the air.

“I gotta get up there,” Tayte said. “Kamaitachi,” she pulled the Relic out of her chest and then started to spin it to her side. Shifting between left and right.

As the stormy winds collected around her, Chris grabbed onto a nearby trash can and noticed something that he couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or not—her dark, steel-gray hair… seemed whiter.

With the hurricane gyrating her frame, she looked like a goddess. Chris decided to play storm chaser in that moment and ran toward the hectic winds. As Tayte swung her Relic down and blasted up, Chris managed to grab an ankle and went up with her.

Chris could feel his eyelids flapping, his cheeks expanding with balls of air, and the joints of his arm socket on the brink of giving out as he zipped up into the air with Tayte.

They landed one of the carts at the end of the train, frozen at a curved angle and right in the middle of an intense exchange between Takato and Domingos.

Takato’s chest was expanding and compressing rapidly as he stood in his cart seat with his axe in hand, staring at a robust Domingos standing at the front edge of his cart.

“I have a question for you, Richard,” Domingos said, “assuming that you can beat me, does that mean you’ll be okay with ending my life right here with lopping off my head or whatever? Will the anger just up and disappear?”

“What are you doing?” Chris yelled at Takato. “Why’re you still letting him talk?”

“Shut up!” Takato snapped as he glanced back at him.

“How many buzzwords did they give you in recovery?” asked Domingos, earning back Takato’s attention. “I bet you’ve heard all the cliché lines in hundreds of different ways.” He proceeded to make a high-pitched voice. “‘It won’t bring her back,’ ‘you need to focus your anger on other things,’ ‘vengeance gets you nowhere,’ ‘forgiving is what takes real strength,’ ‘it won’t make you feel better.’”

Chris looked over at Tayte, nestled in the cart in front of him, watching the scene with intrigue. Just like how plans were his pacifier, chaos was hers.

“Lemme share something with you, Richard,” Domingos went on. “You know what is the one thing that no one ever tells you?” Domingos paused. “It actually makes you feel better.”

“What does?” Takato asked while baring his teeth.

“Torture.”

“You’re a sick bastard,” Takato said.

“I know. You think this is news to me? I never once said what I did was right, but it felt good anyway. People do things that they know are bad for them all the time. This is elementary stuff, Richard. What matters is if it makes you feel good after doing it, whether it is stuffing yourself with junk food or kicking a bully down a flight of stairs. Although, unlike most, I prepared myself for the repercussions of my actions, and I don’t blame anybody for trying to punish me. It doesn’t mean I’ll just let them though.”

Takato’s body language relaxed, and he took on a more laid-back standing position. As if Domingos’ venomously enchanting words were taking effect.

But that was not the case.

“All I am going to do is kill you, Domingos,” Takato said. “Because you don’t deserve to live. I’ll take pleasure in it, yes, but I don’t plan to relish in your suffering despite how much I want to, and sure, I might enjoy it, but I won’t stoop down to your level to find out.”

Domingos laughed, and then so did Tayte. Chris looked between the two back and forth.

“What do you want with the prize of the Trials anyway?” Takato asked.

“It’s simple, really. Just bring back the Tokoloshe in a body that’ll never let him die and torture him until I get bored and then bury him in cement so that he’ll be suffocating for eternity.”

Chris shivered and heard Tayte’s laughter elevating. “You psycho,” he said but wasn’t sure who he directed it to.

It got Domingos’ attention, though. He stared right at him with his feral smile. “What sob story did this low-life give you? This fucking scumbag used to get stupid drunk and beat his girl senselessly until she could barely see. He used his connections in the fire department to keep her quiet, and well, he also personally scared her into silence.”

Chris looked at Takato with horror, but he didn’t turn around. He hoped with every cell in his body for Takato to refute. But he remained silent.

“I am so sick of this fucking shit!” Domingos roared. “And it’s not just you who likes to talk as if they were a hero or something. Newsflash to all you idiots! NOBODY HERE IS A HERO! Nobody here is even a good person! We’re all participating in these trials to change something that is natural to life! Whoever the fuck your God is, you know that is a direct transgression of Their word, and you can convince yourself that what you will wish for is far nobler than the others. Listen closely, I don’t know what kind of arrogance can lead you to believe you have a good reason to try to reverse a fundamental phase of life, but there isn’t! “You’re supposed to accept it and move on! You think just because you beat up a couple of people it gives you the right to change the mechanics of death? Richard, you’re an asshole—”

“I was getting help!” Takato finally spoke up. “You took away my chance to get her forgiveness—”

“You don’t deserve to be forgiven, you delusional dumbass! And Chris, you knew about Melissa’s ventures wayyyy before she told you. You just stayed with her because she was a good contact. She was extremely knowledgeable about the criminal underworld. You only got Adisa’s attention because of her, and now you’re using a new girl again.”

Chris interrupted Domingos with: “No—”

“Shut the fuck up! Enough of this melodramatic shit! We’re all bad people here, so let’s all shut up and fight until we can no longer move our arms, until we lose a fatal amount of blood, until the sun rises, until we collapse, and then get up to keep on fighting until the battle is ultimately over. Ouve! Benson Domingos isn’t going down like a pussy, nah, the only way you are getting out of here alive is if I am dead!”

Tayte stood up, brandishing her scythe as she said: “I agree.”

Chris hopped onto her cart and turned to her just as she held up the scythe behind her.

The black blade released a mighty typhoon that blasted her forward, and once again, Chris managed to grab hold of her—by the arm as she rammed into Takato and Domingo.

They all fell off the rollercoaster train and plunged toward the life-sized Godzilla model.