Grey skidded across the ground like a stone skipping across a lake. He ground to a halt, his head patting softly against a stone wall and sparing him the concussion.

’Fuck...’ Grey groaned. ’I really gotta stop being thrown around like I’m some sort of cheap slut or something.’

The echo of broken bone filled the air and Grey checked his body quickly, only to realize it wasn’t coming from him at all.

Blood stood on the shore of the lake like a robot that had been shut down. His chin was against his chest, his arms at his sides, his body completely rigid with hardly any sign of life at all.

The moment Grey’s blade had passed through Calixan’s heart, it was like Blood had ceased all operation. Grey hadn’t expected that, but he also wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Calixan himself, though... well, for lack of a better descriptor, it looked like he was being vacuum packed and slid through a meat grinder, all without either industrial grade item being present.

His arm was twisted and snapped, his elbow pressing against the side of his head. One of his legs was facing the wrong direction, quite literally. His left foot was facing forward, but the right one looked like it was aiming to shove itself up his own ass.

His head was awkwardly bent to the side, but that was about the only sort of contortionism he was doing now that Grey felt he might actually be able to replicate. The rest of it was just... a death warrant.

Calixan’s eyes had just become vacant husks of darkness, his skin rapidly paling as his long black hair became a river of ashen white.

The crackling and snapping of bone continued to foam at the air almost like it was festering, building toward something larger, more oppressive and violent, more relentless.

"No..."

It was Calixan’s voice again, but this time it was far softer than before, far more weak. It didn’t carry the same conviction the man had had moments ago. That was the reaction of a man who knew that he had lost everything there was to lose.

He had nothing remaining.

And then the resistance stopped. It was abrupt and sharp. All at once, Calixan’s bones and limbs snapped back into place as though he were an action figure. Then, almost stiffly, Calixan, or whoever the man had become, walked over toward Blood.

"I don’t fucking think so, you bitch."

Grey activated a contingency plan he had been storing up for a while already.

The footprint he left on Blood’s chest sizzled and Grey vanished. With a roar, he stabbed through the giant’s chest and then Calixan’s own.

Calixan had just opened his mouth to take a bite out of Blood’s neck, a pair of fangs formed from darkness coming from his teeth. This was the last thing Grey expected. He thought that he was going to wake up Blood or something, but the reasoning didn’t matter to Grey.

He had said he would be quite the comic book artist for a reason. He had a particular aversion to idiots letting villains power up right in front of them. He liked his life intact. He had died enough to know that.

Calixan looked down at the blade in his chest, almost more confused than anything else. But there was none of the same pain there was earlier.

In fact, Grey realized then that the hole he had cut through Calixan’s chest before was still very much there.

’Fuck. Great job, Grey. Yeah, sure, stab the zombie idiot the same way twice and see if that’ll change things.’

To be fair to Grey, there really weren’t any options outside of a thrust to get both Blood and Calixan at the same time, but he just couldn’t stand his own poor luck.

What surprised Grey even more, though, was the fact Calixan only paused for a moment before his fang finished biting down.

Grey’s expression changed. ’No!’

He didn’t need to know what Calixan was doing to know it would be bad for him.

That was when he finally remembered something and he grinned ear to ear.

’Do your thing.’

The fang necklace roared around his neck as though it had finally been unleashed. It latched onto Blood’s blood, forming a loop between it and Grey’s heart.

Then it began to suck.

Calixan froze and then slowly looked up, his teeth still stuck in the meaty traps of Blood’s enormous body. For the first time since his change, he displayed hints of emotion. Rage.

Grey sneered. "I can do last minute power ups better than you can, trust me, asshat."

SHUUU.

Grey started to feel like Blood was being sucked dry faster by Calixan than himself. The old bastard had locked in at the worst time.

Luckily for Grey, though, he realized something else in that moment.

He had two fang daggers for a reason.

His grin widened and he cut down with his second one on the opposite side of Blood’s neck.

BANG.

Grey felt like an eruption had gone off in his mind. Blood poured into his body, more blood than he could even properly store. He was quickly feeling overwhelmed, and his heart felt like it might burst at any moment.

But he roared in defiance, swapping from his Helion Frame to his Vampire Lord Frame once again.

Tendrils of blood-red light came off of him in flares that almost looked like they came from the sun itself. As though his body had become a roaring red giant, the blood poured into him, and his Frame processed it in real time.

His skin reddened, his eyes turned an even deeper shade of crimson, his body fluctuating with motes of endless rouge light.

Blood was quickly shrinking. His frame remained just as outrageously large, but his skin was sinking down to his bone, his life losing all life that there was.

BANG.

And then he ran out of blood. Grey fell backward, skidding across the ground as Blood collapsed into a pile of ash.

Calixan faced him, blood drizzling down his chin and a growl escaping his lips.