It's In Her Brain.

It's in her brain. All in her brain. Radiation messes up so much. Whatever demonic magic Alice produced to alter the very DNA of the surrounding population, only being partially stopped by the bonds keeping her trapped, it messes with Bloomie's robotics. Fizzes them out. That would be fine. That should be fine. If only she hadn't had wires tied into her muscles, companions to her veins. For Flora, the radiation pulls deeper. It tugs at her mind, clouds her senses, makes her angry.

Light, dull and grey, seeps between squinted eyes. Her body wasn't really in the mood to stand. Bones creaked in protest as she lugged herself up, box cutter arm digging into the wall, already adorned with other similar gouges in the panel. Gears grinded, metallic muscles clenched as her arm pulled the rest of her body up. Her legs, pointed and sharp with springs and other gizmos, her metal limbs compressing until she sprung back into life.

Flora wobbled on over to her closet, blinking nothing out of her eyes to fumble to open the door. She didn't blink sleep. The woman doesn't remember the last time she laid in bed without being aware of every twitch of muscle, of every hair on her body.

As the wood creaked open, Bloomie would have seen clouds drifting very far in the time it took for her to chose an outfit; a black shirt with two white buttons and a white, long skirt. Like yesterday. She closed her closet on the six other outfits that were the exact same, stretching all the while. Her blunt nails on her flesh and blood hand scritched at the fuzz on her neck, running over scars from when she had used her other hand, the more stabby one, half asleep. When she pulled her hand away, a few sparse strands of chemical burned hair was pulled along with it. She shook her hand and buttoned her blouse, leaning against the paper covered closet while she slid on her thick lensed glasses, her now small looking eyes squinting before she made her way to school.

School was loud. Rowdy. Striking her cranium, bouncing around the four pound electrified meat slab floating in a pool of fluid. Bloomie groaned softly, her mechanical hand chittering and purring, joints flexing and digits twisting, revolving.

Class was…well, it was class. The same unit every year. Students don't usually last that long to notice the looping curriculum.

She knew how to teach so, so much more. Physics. Biology. Forensics. Robotics. But all she would speak of is chemistry. It wore her thin. As thin as the paper she would give out tests on, as thin as the split ends that wrecked her hair.

Even as she stood in front of her sea of half awake, weary students, she felt no satisfaction. A significant amount of them would be dead by summer break. The few that could pass, Bloomie knew not of what their fate was. Sure, she had a lot of theories; but most of them were only passing thoughts in her mind, more preoccupied with her chemical reactions than students.

Even Miss Bloomie could barely recognize the speech coming from her mouth, it having less relation to comprehensible words and more like the teacher from Peanuts.

The lights were too bright. She rubbed her eyes, but the damning brightness pervaded. Her mouth was dry. Figures clad in darkness flitted through the corners of her eyes, enticing her to look for the sources of movement. There were none.

Papers scattered as her hand swept, fumbling for her water bottle. Her hand of flesh, feeling colder than the metal that was as plentiful in her body as her exhaustion. The wire rimmed glasses were fogged, further exacerbating her suffering.

Bloomie took off her glasses, other hand rubbing her head when-

The screech of metal on glass had some covering their ears, Flora dropping the lenses like they were made of lava. Her hands shot up to her head, but by then she had realized the source of the sound.

Her glasses had a crack where her pupils would have been, running a long both lenses.

Ruined.

She didn't make them that weak. But obviously, it didn't matter. Her last good pair of glasses were ruined. The world had been cast as somewhat the same, save for her blurry hands; but it didn't matter. If it could be possible, a vein would be popping out of her head. She could continue her lesson, but Flora couldn't take it anymore. Creepy.

Steam hissed from a joint in her arm, Bloomie's emotions boiling into a torrential disaster. Her breathing came quicker, her eyes darting around the room. Her chest heaved, huffing and puffing with froth dribbling from her curled lip. Her gaze took in the trembling students, when she also spotted the fat red F on a paper on the tiled floor.

"Who." Her voice was quiet, but in the otherwise silent room, it reached across the class and struck tremors into every student. They already knew. She should already know. But like a mockery, she felt fog where the names should be. Not a single name—these students she had been teaching for so long were simply blank faces.

Save for once face, ever so slightly more detailed than others; a boy, quaking the most. His water bottle was spilt, the water spreading across the floor. Their eyes met, and the near rabid teacher took one trembling step.

The bell rang, and the herd of students nearly stampeded over each other. She tried to push past, and kids stumbled and leapt- she dipped her head down, aiming.

The boy was a few feet away from the door when the box cutter blade was flying towards the students. Some fell and scrambled away, others simply leapt to the side. The boy dodged out of the way, letting the steel tear into the concrete, as Bloomie reloaded. The previously tight knit fluffle of kids scatters in all directions, small shoes squeaking as "every man for himself" became the nervous energy. Teachers were also about, guiding students to other classes and gathering their own to teach.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!" Flora howled.

However, they were accomplices in their own way. Miss Sasha "accidentally" body blocked the boy, tanking the force of their collision with an "oops!". The student couldn't waste time, and kept running. Miss Circle excitedly tripped him, her foot sticking out so fast and hard that it was less of a trip and more of a full fledged kick. The kid crashed into the ground, rolling until he hit the wall.

Her body crashed into the adjacent bricks. "GET BACK HERE." her voice cracked, vibrations ripping through voice chords.

Bloomie already upon him, the teen scrabbled to avoid the box cutter, cleaving through the air. The sharp tip sliced his calf, but he had to keep moving. Farther and farther he was chased, Flora as a shepherd. She sliced at his heels and shot at him until he was trapped.

The boy skidded to a halt, left in a long hallway with only two doors.

Alice's door, green and ominous. It whispered and muffled screams could be heard.

The other, a set of already damaged classroom doors, dark and empty.

He chose the latter.

The door rolled to a close when Bloomie slammed into the gates to failure. Her screams were barely muffled, the door shaking as her foot smashed into the metal continuously.

"God fucking DAMNIT!" she roared. "I'll KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU!" Her head was grinding, her eyes blazing, glowing in the shade offered by her hair.

The boy hid in a corner, only partially hidden from view when the door was ripped from the hinges, sailing across the class and crumpling into the wall.

"CRY. CRY FOR YOUR LIFE." Bloomie seethed, her form covering the light from the hall, blanketing the student in shadow. Her chest rose and fell as she heaved for breath, her chapped lips cracking as she couldn't stop smiling. Breathing seemed to be a struggle, Flora being held up by spite and mechanics—her head dropped low, her knees close to buckling. And still, she stood.

The student hiccuped and sobbed, high pitched wail akin to a young child. Maybe he were one. It grated on her nerves, Flora's muscles tensing before her body swung again, her blade barely missing the failure.

Clumsy.

Mistake.

Her metal was stabbed into the wall, stuck fast. Flora blinked incredulously, a tiny "weh?" slipping from her lips. She didn't conciously move, the occasional twitch jerking her body.

The teacher couldn't remember the last time she had screwed up this bad. The blade peeked from the white bricks, a speck of silver in the concrete.

Since if it slid in so easily, it should slide out just as fast.

But it held. She grunted, pulling a little harder. Still nothing. Harder grunts, her fist came to shove against the wall in vein. Next came her pointed legs, stamping and kicking with half hearted energy. Still, nothing. The woman yanked, and hissed in anguish as the wires in her body were pulled and scratched at her nerves.

She couldn't call for aid, her voice small and whispery from the screaming. Her body finally couldn't take anymore, body sliding against the wall as she fell to her knees, held up only by her box cutter, which was occupied. Fortunately for her, she was also blocking the way to freedom for the student. The boy didn't seem as shaken anymore, blinking up at her with those haunted eyes, the same eyes a hatchling would have as the eagle swooped for the kill. Tears were drying, the sniveling coward wiping at them. Flora quivered, making the kid hide his face in too long sleeves, whimpering.

For just a moment, Bloomie needed to rest. Just. One minute. Her eyelids drooped. So close to Alice and her invisible ooze, she lazily wondered how her servos wouldn't be fried.

Tiny hands on her suspended arm.

She opened one eye, blearily observing the kid-who's face was inches away, but not looking at her. His hands grasped at her sleeve. He leaned backwards, fully using his weight. Bloomie didn't think it would work, but the determined glint in his eyes was endearing. Too bad he's dying soon.

He planted both feet on the wall, and pulled with all his might. A inch. Two.

Like King Author's sword, they went careening into the air, the saber sliding free with stupid ease considered how much Bloomie was fighting to even get it to budge. They both fell to the ground, Bloomie sprawled out, just as dog-tired as before.

It was quiet besides the hitch of her breath and the curious noises the boy released, Flora could feel his atypical presence. He crawled around her, his legs probably weak and injured from her earlier assault. "What are you doing."

He didn't answer, preoccupied with ways to escape, no doubt.

Raccoon-like fingers touched frayed hair. Doubt. Neatly combing through knots, his foot kicking at her metal arm when it tried to raise to end his…pathetic…? His life. Her blade stopped moving after he smacked her arm so many times he planted his foot on her forearm. Soft digits, with a kindness that was otherwise absent in the student population, combed through her scalp, undoing knots from weeks of tossing in bed.

Her resolve was crumbling. It was shattering and disintegrating and Bloomie wanted to cry. This creature, this prey was being so gentle. The ex-scientist didn't want to hurt them. Maybe she never did. Whatever the past was, she couldn't anymore.

An inaudible sigh escaped her lips, her body melting into the warmth seeping into her skull. A sense of uselesness dripped at the edge of her mind, but the sensation of hair being braided with care kept it at bay. The back of her head laid in the student's lap, braids of all sizes and thicknesses dotting her scalp.

"Sorry." She murmured, feeling his foot shift slightly from her pinned arm.

Later, the student population went silently wild as a student, chased not even an hour ago, was sitting back at class politely.