The children ran across the playground, their boots crunching against the damp, thinning snow. Laughter echoed in the crisp air as they weaved between the swings and jungle gym, chasing each other in a never-ending game of pretend battles.
"My dad went to the Wild Dog Fight Club last night!" a small blonde boy with hazel eyes announced, practically bouncing with excitement. "He told me there was a new mutant fighter. They call him Red Eyes!"
"Red Eyes?" one of the other kids repeated, curiosity flashing in his expression.
"Sven fought as well!" another chimed in, throwing mock punches into the air. "He's so fast and cool!"
The group burst into chatter, throwing out exaggerated retellings of fights they had never seen and acting out battles with wild kicks and dramatic falls into the snow.
But one of them had stopped playing.
Aleksandr, the blonde boy, sat hunched near the edge of the playground, arms wrapped tightly around his stomach. His small fingers dug into the fabric of his coat, his face twisted in discomfort.
Something was wrong.
It had started as a dull ache, barely noticeable at first. But the pain had crept up steadily, growing sharper, heavier - like something was twisting inside him, clawing at his insides. He sucked in a shaky breath, but it only made the pain worse.
"Hey, Aleksandr, you okay?" one of his friends called, stepping closer.
Another followed. "Want me to call your-"
Before he could finish, Aleksandr's body seized.
Then...
SHRRRRIP!
A sickening, wet tear.
His stomach burst open in an explosion of blood and shredded flesh.
A horrific screech cut through the playground.
Thick, slimy tentacles - twisted, grotesque, and covered in pulsating veins - erupted from within him, writhing into the cold air like a monstrous sea creature emerging from the depths.
The nearest child didn't even have time to scream.
A tendril speared through his chest, lifting him into the air like a ragdoll. Blood splattered across the snow, the white instantly tainted a deep crimson.
Then chaos.
"Aaaaah!"
Screams filled the playground as the remaining children scrambled backward, their tiny hands slipping on the frost-covered ground as they tried to flee.
Aleksandr - or whatever he had become - stood there, his small frame dwarfed beneath the mass of writhing, green-tinged appendages. His mouth opened as if to scream, but no words came - only a guttural, inhuman gurgle.
Then, the tentacles lashed out...
-
Kai heard the first scream before he even turned his head.
The second made his blood run cold.
His gaze snapped toward the playground.
And what he saw was horrifying.
Blood painted the snow. Tentacles thrashed wildly, slicing through the air with sickening precision. Limbs, once belonging to laughing children, lay scattered across the ground. A headless body slumped near a swing set, a pool of red spreading beneath it.
Before he could even react, the children were being decimated, one after the other.
'So much for being a peaceful town...'
Kai exhaled sharply. Then, without hesitation, he bolted over.
He wasn't the hero type; ultimately, his goals and survival were his priorities. But how could he leave the creature that had just massacred children to roam the town and cause more destruction?
The monster - Aleksandr, or what was left of him - was now suspended in the air atop a writhing mass of tentacles, his tiny body all but consumed by the horror unfolding around him.
Kai didn't slow down.
'So this is monsterfication.'
The sight up close was even more disgusting.
The once-small boy barely existed anymore. His body was a husk, a vessel for the grotesque mass that had erupted from within him. His tentacles were dragging the surrounding remains into the gaping maw that had once been his stomach.
Kai's gut twisted.
He was too late to save any of them and was baffled by how quickly the kid had become something so monstrous.
'How the hell is that even possible?'
'Then again, I can control blood. Is anything really impossible anymore?' he added internally as he calmly faced the monster and thought back to what he had learnt from Isaac and his research.
-
Monsterfication occurs suddenly and without warning in some of those who had once been infected with the Z Virus.
When the virus first spread, it swept across the planet in mere months, infecting nearly every living creature. In the early days, monsterfication was rampant, with outbreaks happening everywhere. Governments scrambled to contain the chaos, but modern weapons weren't enough to suppress the relentless tide of abominations.
That was when the Association stepped in.
With their trained mutant enforcers, they turned the tide against the creatures that governments couldn't handle. However, even with their intervention, the core problem remained - the unpredictability of monsterfication.
The transformation didn't happen immediately upon contracting the virus. For some, it took hours. For others, days, months, or even years. A person could live a normal life for decades before suddenly morphing into an uncontrollable horror.
It was the same with mutants - not all of them awakened right away. For some, their bodies needed time to harmonise with the Z gene, letting it spread and adapt before triggering their abilities. But for those unlucky enough to lose control instead of gaining power, their fate was sealed.
This was why monster outbreaks were a common occurrence worldwide. At any moment, your friend, your co-worker, your lover, even your pet, could turn into a nightmare that rips you apart without warning.
And right now, it had happened before his very eyes.
A once ordinary child had, in the span of seconds, split open from the inside. Thick, grotesque tentacles burst out of his stomach, lashing wildly, shredding the children around him like paper, their tiny limbs and bodies ripped to pieces in a shower of blood.
And yet - he was still screaming.
The child's voice was shrill, filled with agony and terror. His eyes were wild, flickering between human awareness and mindless rage.
'Now that's fucked up,' Kai couldn't help but think to himself as he prepared to face the creature...