PSYCHE {PK I N Q U I S I T O R}

They told her never to leave the yard when they allowed her outside because the world is a terrifying place, full of danger and strangers. They were certain that men would surely rape her and slit her throat as soon as they looked at her. Maybe it was residual from the loss of her mother's sister when she was just sixteen, maybe it was honest fear but whatever it was she was not meant to leave the grounds without an escort. She knew this well, had had the rules pounded into her brain, slapped across raw skin many a time but it never seemed to faze her, almost as if she didn't care. She would stare curiously at her parents as they wept and bargained with her. Her face would be blank as she carefully picked the locks or broke a window just to slip out into the expanse of the back yard.

She was never one to be contained.

Her father worked for the mining company as a business man. It was his job to sell product to the other districts and make sure the right amount went to the Capitol. Sometimes he would try to haggle with the Capitol about how many diamonds they had to send if they couldn't meet their monthly quota. They most often took fingers from him when this happened, as if it were his fault. He wore black gloves stuffed with cork in the places where the missing fingers should be and often told Psyche that his punishment was just. He deserved what he got because he had failed the Government, therefore he had done wrong. Easy.

When Psyche did wrong she was punished too. Her mother would spank her, or father might take away her pet rabbit for a few nights. Once, she'd kicked through the bathroom window, sending shards of glass all over the lawn in an attempt to get outside and play in the snow. However, she knew that if she did this, there would be repercussions. If she was wrong then she would be punished, if she was right then she would be rewarded. She did not care. Feelings of guilt could never hold sway over her. There was only good and bad, no grey area in between.

One day, she took her pet rabbit out into the backyard to play outside. He was a sweet, docile thing usually and often would lie on the grass beside her as she did her reading, or would follow her around the large yard as she explored. On this day, the rabbit became skittish when an eruption of barking began in the yard beside Psyche's. The rabbit bolted, wiggling through the space a broken fence slat had once been.

Psyche followed without a second thought, wiggling her own little body through the fence slats. She was not the type to stand for this sort of thing of course, her bunny was expected to behave if he did not want to be punished. As she followed the rabbit, she grabbed her long, bone white hair into a ponytail, tying it up with a piece of black ribbon that she kept tied around her wrist. Her expression was neutral as she ran, already long legs taking sure and certain steps despite the fact that she was not meant to be outside of the fence but within.

The punishment she would receive for this would be stricter than anything she had ever received before but she could not leave her pet rabbit alone in the world. Those that did wrong deserved to be punished.

Her chase took her out of the wealthy area in the district and down to the poorer streets, where those that often froze in the winter slept.

The rabbit bounds around a corner and she twists, taking it sharp and nearly running into a girl that is standing in her way. She has not seen other kids much in her short life. Sometimes the neighbors will come to visit but they always want to play dolls and often started screaming when Psyche popped their heads off or cut off all their pretty hair. She swivels at the last moment, avoiding a close transaction of bruises and resumes her chase. "What are you doing?" the girl calls out and Psyche skids to a stop for just a moment, turning her head to glance at the girl she's just passed, taking in hair stuffed under a boyish cap and a pretty face in seconds.

"Chasing the rabbit," she responds, her voice cool and calm and not going so low as to point out how obvious it is, "Will you help?" She does not wait for a response before she's off again as if trying to make up for the time she lost in stopping to chat. She hears it as the other girl's feet fly into action, a sly grin coming to her lips as she feels the satisfaction of the chase taking her over. There was something about a good chase that she adored, whether that was the feeling of righteousness that she felt or the obvious fear of her prey she could not say. "We'll corner it at The Old Man's Skull," she said, referring to the old mining cave that had collapsed and was bowl-like in structure.

She'd never had such fun before, not with another person. The job had been easier too with the other girl there. After collecting her rabbit tightly in her arms, she bowed low to the other girl, expressing her appreciation and then began her long trek back home to receive her punishment and punish the rabbit in turn.

۞ ۞ ۞

It was a week later that Psyche stood inside her yard, staring out through the broken slat at the girl she had made friends with seven days before. The backs of her hands were sore, where her father had stripped the skin back to reveal tendon, her mother crudely sewing back on the small circle of skin. A ring of red glared angrily out from the backs of her hands against her pale skin but they were hidden now by crisp white bandage. Psyche had been eerily calm as her father had punished her, knowing that she had deserved what she had gotten for leaving the yard. She allowed herself a few tears of agony at night as she lay her hands flat on the bed, trying not to do anything to provoke more pain from them, but it was near impossible.

She was not angry at her father. She had received what she had deserved for her transgression. Next time it would be a finger he had said and Psyche knew this to be true for her father was adamant that she learn the rules. They were terrified that she would grow up only to become an Avox for not understanding that what she did was wrong. Her parents had learned early on that training their daughter would be a difficult endeavor. She only responded to blacks and whites, not grey. She learned through physicality.

She decided that the rabbit would have to pay tenfold for being the root of the problem in the first place. Even then she knew that higher crimes deserved higher punishment. There was a scale and she knew it well. So she punished the rabbit, stripping his skin from him just as her father had for her but taking her time with it, taking ten times the amount. She did not sew him back together afterwards but had watched him squirm, that eerie calmness keeping her breathing steady, her heartbeat calm.

"Cool....but also ew," her new friend said, wrinkling her nose up in a girlish way as Psyche held up a handful of slightly pink snow that her parents had been unable to cover up. "What did it feel like?" she asked and Psyche was happy for this. So often her parents wrinkled their noses in disgust and did not want to hear more, but Psyche made discoveries and she wanted to share them, to be silenced was painful.

"Like being god," she said, voice soft as she watched and felt the snow melt in her hand. The liquid melted and turned the bandage a soft pink colour. She closed her fist around the remaining bit, the warmth of her hand and the tightness of her fist turning the last tiny piece into a rapidly melting piece of ice. She thought about the rabbit, the way it had lain helpless in front of her knife, it's feet bound tightly with cooking string. She'd become enamored with it's muscles, quivering and cold in the winter air. "I held it's heart in my hand," she whispered, looking back up at her new friend.

The other girl looked almost wistful as she asked, "Do you think he feared you? Before he was gone?"

"Yes," Psyche remembered him clearly, "His heartbeat sped up." His pupils had dilated as he had been able to do nothing but wiggle weakly and his heart had sped up in her hand before he finally succumbed to death. She had been curious, impressed with just how long the animal had lived for before it died. However, nothing had been lovelier than the feeling of life in the palm of her hand. She shut her eyes then, letting the chunk of ice fall into the snow at her feet, leaving an oddly shaped dime-sized hole. "It was delicious." Tears came into her eyes then as her hands began to bleed and blood bloomed underneath the bandage.

"I will be feared some day. I want to be," said the girl, Laufeia, as she would come to learn, but known as Cheif instead. Cheif was good because of what she said next. ""Perhaps I could help you again, sometime." Even after learning that Psyche was not allowed to leave her yard, even after learning about the fate of the rabbit that she had helped rescue.

A small smile made Psyche's lips creep up around the corners. "Perhaps," she agreed before turning away from the hole in the fence and making her way across the snow towards the mansion on the hilltop. Her hands dripped forlornly, she held them to the side so as to not ruin her clothing. A rainfall of blood and fresh boot prints marked her passage.

R u l e  Britannia
Bright  i d e a s  hide
in  c a v e s

Her forms were already signed, her case packed even as she stood in line-up on her last reaping day. If her name went uncalled, he was to report to the training barracks across the District, higher up the mountain in precisely two hours. Her parents watched her from the sidelines even as the crowd dispersed and another girl was named. An unlucky girl. She took her case from the hands of her parents without a word, turning away from them without tears. There was no reason to say goodbye, she would not see them for the next few years, they were no longer applicable.

However, as she made her way across the square for the final time, her eyes caught those of Chief's. They had been friends for eight years at that point, and the other girl had already promised Psyche that she would be quick to follow her as soon as she was able. She did not move herself to say goodbye to her. She only walked on, away and out of the lives of everyone she had once known.

She had applied to the peacekeeper academy as a special case and found upon her arrival that she had been scheduled for second year classes due to her excellence in her studies and in the training center. A lot of first year training was spent on combat, logic and forensics, things that Psyche was already extremely adept at. She found herself assigned to year two barracks, given a pristine year two uniform and sent off to report to her superior.

They did not like her of course, nobody likes a know it all and nobody especially likes creepy eighteen year olds that stare you up and down as if you're the roast dinner they've been waiting all day for. Psyche has a way of analyzing those she meets, completely not caring about how rude it is, completely happy to take her time with it as well. She keeps stock of people, guessing measurements with shrewd eyes, silently drinking in whispers and secrets like she's a black hole.

She'd never been good at making friends, Chief was an anomaly in an otherwise regular line graph.

Psyche was beautiful, but cold. Her hair is pin straight and falls down to frame her face and reach even lower like a cliff face, washed smooth by the sea. It's cleaner than that too, pure white, either she's gone grey early from stress, or she's spent all her life under the sun. Underneath are traces of black, places that evil has held to, no doubt. She's got eyes like pennies. All rusted and used to shit. Copper and spotted with dirt, someone has drilled a hole through the center of each one, making them obsolete.

Despite her short beginnings, she'd shot up over the past few years, lovely and tall but somehow still delicate. She's a winter rose, blooming at the last and nearly forgotten because of it. It cannot be said that her looks are not unique, she can easily be spotted in a crowd.

She spent most of her academy days alone, with a book in her lap or seemingly daydreaming, gaze trained out the window. Her first year of class was spent mostly in solitude, her only interactions between herself and her instructors with the occasional word to other classmates. Despite her intellect she was uninterested in proving it and mostly stayed silent during class periods unless called upon to speak. This lessened the dislike aimed at her, as if she could be forgiven for her youth as long as she kept her mouth shut.

Her academy year ranged from her own tender age of eighteen to that of a student who was in his thirties. She found it more relaxing from her training as a career in the fact that not everyone in the building was a hormonal teenager with their 'own problems'. Psyche was not cruel but unfortunately she did and does not care for the plight of others. It does not hold her interest.

However when a year had passed Psyche waited at the gates for Chief to arrive, able to do so as reaping day was a national holiday. She walked her friend to check in, and helped her get settled in to her barracks, taking her back to her own private third year room to show it to her, show her other things as well. That afternoon was the first time but not the last that Psyche invited Chief to her private room, extending a crooked finger, wrapping her hand around the other girl's like she was a lifeline.

With her friend around, Psyche grew louder, more present. She began to speak up in class, began to participate more often. It was evident that she knew a lot about the human body, that she had a factor about her that made her valuable as a Peacekeeper. Justice was often her driving force, wrongdoing needed punishing and she was often happy to volunteer for patrols around the barracks at night as all third years needed to do and catch out any student that was doing something they shouldn't be doing. That being said, she was rather good at getting away with things herself, punishing herself later on in a cold and exact manner for her misdemeanor.

At some point, confidence became her and she stopped believing in silence. Loud became her new policy and she swung her legs over the side of her chair in class and propped her feet up on the desk and there wasn't a thing her teachers could do about it because she was top of the class and she knew it. She was rebelling, a little late maybe but doing so none the less.

When Mirihim Illusi finally got his shit together and hit on her, she leaned forward, pulling him close by the looseness of his shirt and told him, "Not a chance asshole, but I'll let you do me every now and then." They made a regular thing of it and sometimes weeks would go by without seeing Chief except for sometimes across the quad and she'd drag the boy by his belt loops off to her room just to blow off some steam.

Perhaps her ability to work with him was recognized; at graduation she was assigned to the detention center with Mirihim to shadow the leading Peacekeepers there and prepare to take their jobs. Psyche found herself shadowing the interrogations as well as Avoxing head, helping him with his duties and finally getting what she had been wanting for her entire life, live subjects to do testing on. Those that were sentenced to death were considered property of the government, their bodies belonging to the Detention Center even after death. She was able to pick and poke her way around bodies, stripping them completely into different sections if she so wished it.

In the span of a year, Mirihim and Psyche found that they were in charge of the Detention Center, Chief and one other joining them quickly. The Detention Center was in younger, more eager hands. It was expected to improve in leaps and bounds.

Psyche was more than happy to live up to these expectations.

Line  m y  seamed-
u p  j o i n
Encased in c a s e
I  n e e d  it