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She picked her name because of the way it feels to shape her blood in her hands, to make human eyes go wide. She is Power and humans should know better than to even look at her. Anything that manages to break her skin is broken in turn, rent open, shattered by her. Even in this limited form, she kills and drinks and shreds until she is sated and not before.
Until Makima.
When she wakes up and immediately hits her too-long horns on the underside of the table, she doesn't understand what it means. She punches Denji as far as she wants, a tiny taste of what her name used to mean, and for a moment there's only the delicious elation of bending reality to her will, for a change. And then she thinks, for a moment, and she feels the rich flush of life in her veins and she knows what's going to happen.
Denji hasn't even sat up before she's gone, finding the corner of the apartment where Nyako has found the sun and clutching him to her chest like she can save the warmth for later. The horns knock against the wall and she frantically weighs whether she could do it herself, if pouring blood down the bathtub drain could start this morning over, but Makima would know and she hates when her toys lie to her. It's been nearly a month, anyway. This was going to happen regardless.
It's not hot enough on the train to justify how much she's sweating, and only someone as stupid as Denji wouldn't notice. He doesn't realize that her jabs aren't as sharp as usual, either. He must sense something is off, because eventually he stops responding to her, attention drifting to a woman further down the car, and the silence is almost worse. At least Makima's already in town, she reasons, and she won't have to wait in cuffs until she gets around to her. It doesn't make her frozen core shift at all.
Denji isn't her friend, exactly - Power doesn't have them nor does she want them - but it still stings, how quickly he gives her up. Makima is steering him too, but at least Power knows when Makima takes her reins. Denji just goes in whatever direction he's pointed as he always does, because as idiotic as all humans are he's the worst. It's unbelievable that they so consistently fall for what is obviously a costume. So many times Power has wanted to grab a human and shake them until whatever they have instead of a brain turns to mush in their skulls. Look at her, she has almost screamed. How impossibly stupid are you?
Makima keeps talking, and Power keeps sweating through her shirt because this body is constantly secreting all sorts of fluids that don't help her at all, and Makima looks back at her when Denji leaves.
"Oh, Power-chan," Makima says, voice rich with fake pity, coming up close to her again. "You never learn." Makima doesn't want her to talk yet, so she doesn't. Her clothes feel even worse than usual, sticking to her skin. Makima touches her horns again, gripping one to angle her head. "Look at this arrogant display. You don't deserve these, do you?"
"No," Power's mouth says. Maybe the human that used to own it had once sounded that small. It's Makima talking, not her, but she can feel the words shape on her tongue and it still makes her feel sick before she's lost a drop of blood.
"Don't worry," Makima says, tugging the horn on the side of her head like a handle. "We can fix this."
Makima lets go of her head, because she doesn't need to touch Power to drag her. Makima heads into the hallway and Power can picture every step to the barren room with the drain in the center. There are a dozen places where she could turn and run until her shoes are worn through, but Makima wants her to follow, and there's never any escaping her. Power's feet move without her until her sneakers squeak on tile.
"I don't want a mess today," Makima says. She doesn't need to tell Power what that means anymore. She's done it too many times not to already know, and it seems that Makima's control works that way as well. She shrugs off her sweater, peels out of her clothes, and sits cross-legged on the floor next to the drain. She wonders if Makima is going to want her to cry or not. She won't know until it happens.
Makima locks the door, click heavy, and stands on the other side of the drain, where she can see. "You don't have to wait for me, Power," she says. "You know you need it out of you."
The tears press behind her eyes but they can't fall, so Makima doesn't want her to sob while it happens today, or at least not yet. Her hands don't even shake when she forms the knife, as razor-sharp as she can, because the cuts hurt less that way. It still stings when it slices through her forearm, hitting the deep arteries that gush and spray, and she pretends that the thick smell is from something she's killed.
"Stop." Her hands freeze. "I'm glad you're enthusiastic," Makima says, voice cool, "but I can't have you rushing through your punishment."
She's starting to get dizzy already, and she doesn't know if it's blood loss or blood lust.
"You wouldn't do that, right? You want me to be happy."
Her nod is jerky. The horns on the side of her head are almost entirely receded, now, and the ones on top are smaller than she would ever allow them. They'll keep shrinking until they disappear and Power disappears and there's only a mass of empty bones for Makima to puppet around.
"Switch arms," Makima says, "but shallower this time. If I see it spray again I may have to show you what I'm looking for." As if Power has a way to disobey. The threat still sends a ripple along her spine.
A gush of blood spasms over her left wrist when her heart picks up and she twists it into a blade like that had been her intent all along. She has to focus on staying closer to the surface of the skin, in the veins. The left hand doesn't work as well as the right, especially not now that tendons hang down from her ragged skin. She's never understood why human bodies have to be so complicated. It makes them so much messier. She slices up almost to her elbow before Makima tells her to stop. "Keep it flowing," she says, and Power's hands are allowed to let the knife dissolve back into blood that coats her knee.
Makima watches, eyes bright with cold delight, and if Power angles her own eyes to the side maybe Makima won't make her look back, this time. Between the red sliding down the drain and her rapidly paling skin and the pile of empty clothes against the wall, there's not really anywhere better to look. She's so cold. When she's here is the only time she ever feels cold.
"Stay awake," Makima says, and Power jolts. She needs blood. It smells so strong. She's so tired.
"Poor girl," Makima says. She doesn't like her voice. She doesn't remember why. "You need help, don't you?"
Power doesn't. She can help herself, and if she can't she deserves whatever happens to her, because she's not weak like the humans are. But her mouth opens and says, "Please, please help me, it hurts so much."
"Pathetic little thing." Makima crouches, watching her from across the drain. Her hair shifts when she moves and it makes Power even dizzier. "You hate that you need this to happen."
The tears release, and they burn her arms when they fall on them, but she can't move her hands away from where they lie on her thighs. She can't move anymore. "Please stop," Makima makes her mouth say. "I'm sorry. I promise I'll obey next time."
"No, you won't." Makima sounds so warm, so gentle, dense with fake care. Power doesn't want anyone to care about her. She wants them to leave her alone, and barring that she wants them to give her what she demands of them. She wants Nyako, and meat, and to make Denji look confused and stupid because then at least someone is more trapped than she is. "That's why we keep doing this, isn't it? You don't really want me to keep you alive."
Power's sobs are loud and pitiful and she hates them and she doesn't know if they're just for Makima or not. "Please," her voice moans.
Makima draws closer, trails a hand down the skin of her shoulder where her shirt used to be. She doesn't even like human clothes. They itch and get caught on things and are an unnecessary irritant, when there are already far too many to living in a human body. She never wore them until she came here and Makima said she couldn't leave the building until she put them on. It should make it better, that she doesn't have to wear them for this. It shouldn't make her feel like a creature without its skin, beating heart and gleaming intestines exposed.
"You're not being very convincing." The corner of Makima's mouth turns up. She can barely smell blood over the reek of Makima, this close. Nothing about Makima's scent is anything close to human, a solid wall of stale fear, like she's gathered it from proximity. Not from Power, though. She's too strong to experience a foolish emotion like fear.
Her mouth says something she can't follow. It's harder and harder to keep her attention on Makima as her heartbeat patters in her ears, too fast but too light as the stupid human heart pumps the rest of her blood out of her arms. Her gasps are too loud. She tries to remember that Makima never let her die before, not all the way, and she might not this time either. It doesn't help.
She wakes up on the table, straps tight on her limbs, and her arms have partially healed. A deep gash still runs down each one, trickling, but it's slower now. The copper taste in her mouth is heavier than usual. Her voice is hers again and she curses at the ceiling until she chooses to stop. The dizziness that threatens to knock her out again has nothing to do with it.
Her blood is still made of the same components as when the body belonged to a human. It still clots and congeals and scabs, especially once she becomes too weak to keep it fluid, and that's why Makima has to keep coming back to reopen the wounds. She doesn't let Power do it, this time, and that's the only reprieve. Makima's blade is blunter and she slices cleanly and clinically. "It's as if you don't understand the purpose of this," she says. "Your ego is fully unmanageable. There's no way you can be allowed to walk around until you have more respect."
The blood disappears down the drain until it's too far away for her to feel anymore and it hurts less when she loses a limb. It's worse when Makima does it this way, only veins, slow, because she has nothing else to do but notice how incrementally she gets weaker, dizzier, sicker. Sometimes she wakes with metal thick on her tongue, and she knows the clock has reset and she knows she'll spend more time staring at the ceiling.
This is the humans' fault, ultimately. People aren't afraid of blood the way they used to be. She was much stronger back when humans were better at slicing each other than they were at keeping wounds clean, when bleeding badly enough meant death. Now humans have antibiotics and transfusions and with other devils splattering humans everywhere left and right no one has respect for it anymore. If she wasn't in this form she would tear through the walls, burst through the ground, and raze any memory of this city into oblivion. People might have the good sense to be afraid of her then.
Last time, Makima directed the blade down her thighs, ripping open the wide arteries there, letting the blood run in thick sheets. She'd wanted Power to thank her for helping, that time. She prefers when Makima makes her slit her throat, even though she hates the choked sounds she makes like something caught in gears. At least then her voice stays her own and she's down quickly, and it lets them get faster to Makima pouring blood into her mouth, letting her heal enough to not have to listen to her own struggle to breathe, before she does it again.
She doesn't want to think about that anymore. Nyako wouldn't let her think about it. He would curl up on her stomach, if he was here. She could put her hands on her cat's fur and feel the purr in her bones and it would make it harder to notice how her blood keeps dripping away like the tide flowing out.
Denji left her, but if he had control of himself he would try to help, probably, not that she needs it. The first time Makima came back, Power caught Denji's scent in hers, and she doesn't care what happens to him, and nothing would happen regardless. He worships the ground Makima walks on and he isn't strong enough to be a threat the way Power is. Makima has no reason to harm him. It must be some remnant of whatever human fool used to exist in her body that makes her thoughts keep looping back to that smell and trying to tease it apart, trying to confirm that the fear and Denji didn't overlap.
Time doesn't mean very much, but she knows enough to recognize that she's been bleeding for at least a few days. By the time Makima unbuckles the straps, Power is on the verge of death from boredom alone. That's why she shakes and jumps and sweats, when Makima lets her crumble to the ground, because her brilliance is suffering after being deprived for so long.
Her horns are long gone. Makima pulls her head back by her hair to put a cut hand in her mouth, and Makima is the only being whose blood has ever been unpleasant to drink. It tastes like she smells and Power almost chokes on the density of the terror and dread on her tongue. "You won't disappoint me again, will you?"
Power shakes her head against the hand holding her in place and it isn't until Makima smiles that she realizes that that response had been her own. When she's mended, Makima puts slack in her leash and she stands on the city street in clothes that are as aggravating as the first day she put them on. It's getting late, and the evening rush out of the nearby office buildings has begun. People flow around her.
She's still scattered, like there's an integral part of her brain that became jammed sometime in the last few days. She spots a date on the newsstand and she must be more disoriented than she'd thought, her memory must be flawed, she couldn't have been gone for an entire week. There's a comforting scent on the wind and she's following it before she fully identifies it; when she does, she walks faster. She sweeps into the strange little shop and something she can't name releases under her ribs when she sees Denji sulking about something probably stupid.
If Power shouts her name loud enough maybe it'll actually apply to her. She seizes Denji's ridiculous flowers and tugs them from his ridiculous mouth and they don't quite smell strongly enough to forget how fear tastes.