Bishie Style SL: November 2026

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STORYLINE: Helga went numb, her stomach dropping at the sight of her idol contorting in mid-air, his black wings beating frantically against the red sky as her DinoDog clamped down, its teeth sinking deeper into his leg.

"LET GO!"

Happy's jaws held tight to his ankle as Romance climbed higher into the night, trying to shake the creature loose.

"YOU STUPID MUTT! I'M TRYING TO PROTECT HER TOO!"

Romance's body dissolved into a burst of violent magenta smoke.

Happy's teeth snapped shut on empty air. He tumbled from the sky, looking thoroughly offended, but Romance reappeared below in a low crouch. Bracing himself, he caught the dog by the tail inches before the mutt hit the pavement.

"Strong bite on this one," he muttered.

Happy twisted loose, darting back between Helga's legs. His scaled frills flared wide as he snarled at the demon.

Helga barely registered the dog.

She had been a member of the Romaniacs, a fan club for Romance, spending endless hours listening to him sing. After a chance meeting with a man calling himself DJ Romance, whom she thought was a celebrity impersonator, she was now looking at the real thing. Except the man standing before her was undeniably a demon.

Romance turned toward her.

That familiar face. That striking hairstyle. The blue heart necklace. The gat hat from his famous Jeoseung Saja concept. It was unmistakable. Yet he had horns, purple skin with strange patterns, glowing yellow eyes and a massive silver scythe held expertly in his claws. It made her blood run cold.

She touched the replica necklace she wore every day. Her gaze drifted to his mouth. Those were the same lips that had kissed her during their supposed chance encounter, a meeting that no longer seemed quite so accidental. She remembered the blue glow she'd seen during that kiss, and how weak she'd felt afterward. Seconds ago she had watched him kneel over the sack-headed thing and drink the blue light from its head like smoke.

Romance caught her staring and winced.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm trying to protect you."

"You're..."

"Yes."

"But also...?"

"Yes."

"And you're really a..."

"Doesn't matter right now. We have bigger problems." His glowing eyes scanned the dark street, scythe held at the ready.

"Why are you protecting me?" Helga called out, her voice trembling. "You don't even know me!"

Romance slowed. He did not face her when he whispered, "I know you better than anyone, Helga. I've been right beside you for years."

Beside her. For years. Every late-night chat. Every birthday message that arrived at exactly midnight. Every kind word from the one friend who always understood.

"Mira," she breathed. Mira had once told her she was a retired idol herself. Of course she had.

He spun around, his handsome, demonic features twisted in raw anguish.

"I wasn't always like this," he said, his voice dropping into a ragged rasp. "You remember me from before. When I sang to small rooms. You liked me. You have no idea what that means to me."

Before Helga's scrambled brain could process what that meant, Romance reached up to his throat and unclasped his iconic blue heart-shaped necklace.

"Take this," he said briskly. "A trade."

He extended a clawed hand, offering her the necklace he always wore.

Helga stared down at it. "Why are we trading necklaces?"

She unclasped her cheap copy and exchanged it for his. Her fingers trembled as they wrapped around the glowing blue jewel.

It was real.

She had seen it so many times. Drawn pictures of it. Commissioned the best copy she could afford. And now she held the original.

She fastened the glowing jewel around her neck. It hung exactly like her fake one, but this felt different. It was alive. Warm. The gemstone pulsed against her chest like a soft, rhythmic heartbeat trapped inside the glass.

"Precaution," Romance insisted, fastening her cheap copy around his own neck as if it were the crown jewels. "If anything happens to me, keep it safe. Understand? Don’t lose it."

"Safe against what?"

Clop.

Happy began to bark.

Romance went rigid. His wings flared wide, shielding her instinctively.

Happy’s barks grew louder, more frantic.

Clop. Clop.

A heavy rhythm echoed around the corner of the alley. A foul stench of scorched meat and rotten eggs rolled across the asphalt. Blue light flickered against the building facades, pulsing in time with the approaching hoofbeats.

Helga froze.

For a moment, she tried to make sense of the sound. Maybe there were horses in the city, somehow, and one had been spooked by the blackout.

Clop. Clop. Clop.

The rhythm quickened, each impact heavier than the last. The sound of a galloping horse thundered through the darkness, approaching far too fast.

"Against that," Romance grumbled, tightening his grip on his scythe.

A terrifying silhouette rounded the corner, wrapped in its own infernal fire. A massive blue horse advanced on blazing hooves, its tail streaming with living fire. Rising from its shoulders was the charred torso of a man, crowned by a bare human skull. Blue flames blazed within its eye sockets, illuminating the bones from the inside out.

Across the street, dark shapes began to stir near the cemetery’s crypt. Blackened bodies dragged themselves across the dirt, blue light pulsing through the cracks in their scorched ribcages.

Happy charged toward the cemetery, barking furiously at the dark shapes stirring near the crypt.

Helga crawled backward, pressing herself against the neighbor's door.

The Nightmare Centaur lowered its burning skull and charged straight down the sidewalk.

"Romance! Look out!"

"Won-Gwi. Poltergeist, Level Five!" he shouted, lunging forward. "They haunt places where they can harvest bodies to reanimate! I’ve dealt with these flame bastards before. They don’t die easily."

Romance swung his scythe in a violent arc.

The Nightmare didn't dodge.

For an instant, blue fire swallowed the magenta smoke. Blue sparks flickered through the misty outline of his wings as he reformed behind the beast, spinning on his heel. A stray blue flame caught his magenta hair. He yelped, slapping it out frantically with his claws.

The Nightmare was already turning its burning gaze back toward Helga. She was the only living human in reach.

She screamed, snatching wildly at the groceries scattered around her feet. Her hand closed around an object. She threw it with everything she had.

The package sailed through the air. For one absurd second, Helga watched as it struck the creature's shoulder and burst open. White sheets of paper towels unfurled.

It ignited instantly into a brilliant blue inferno.

Helga gasped. "Are you kidding me?"

The Nightmare reared, fire streaming from its front hooves. Helga tried to scramble sideways, but her heel caught on a fallen plastic bag. She hit the pavement hard.

The hooves came crashing down.

She threw her body to the side just in time.

The impact shook the building. The neighbor's front door splintered beneath the blow, the frame cracking like dry bones. Wood fragments exploded across the pavement. Flames licked up the shattered frame.

Helga stumbled backward on her hands and knees. The Nightmare spun toward her, fire roaring along its torso.

She was trapped between it and her neighbor's door.

The creature raised its hooves to crush her.

Romance intercepted.

The scythe swept through the dark in a glowing arc.

Both front legs of the Nightmare hit the pavement.

Thump. Thump.

Flames burst from the severed stumps.

The Nightmare crashed forward in a roar of fire. Its body convulsed. Flames surged from the severed stumps, twisting into writhing pillars that clawed at the air beneath the creature's burning torso.

"Stay back!" Romance shouted, lunging forward.

Helga didn't need telling twice. She jumped to her feet, clutching her bruised hands to her chest, her fingers tight around the warm, beating heart necklace.

Romance raised his blade once more.

The Nightmare lurched forward, fire pouring from its wounds.

He struck again and again, hacking away at its remaining limbs. Each severed part reformed in a flicker of spectral blue fire.

The creature kept coming.

Romance's expression turned ruthless. He lunged onto the beast's back, seizing its flaming skull from behind and yanking its head to expose its jaw.

For a moment, the air around them shimmered as the Nightmare thrashed beneath him. A thread of blue light curled up from its throat, thin as a hair and flecked with black. Romance drew in a sharp breath and pulled. The thread jerked toward his mouth, then curdled into oily smoke and snapped.

He recoiled, spitting blue sparks, as if he’d bitten into something rotten. For the first time, his expression held something beyond frustration. Fear.

He vaulted off the creature's spine a split second before its flaming tail lashed the air where he had been.

The Nightmare surged upright again, flames bursting violently from its ribs. Romance hacked at it again, but the strikes only spread the fire wider.

"Stay DOWN, damn it!" he roared, his long fangs bared.

It didn’t stay down.

From the cemetery across the street, the charred corpses continued their slow crawl toward the sidewalk, their blue inner flames flickering through hollow eye sockets as they followed the Nightmare's lead. Happy continued his relentless assault on them, driving them back like a sheepdog herding the undead.

Helga watched, trembling. "Hurry! Kill it!"

Romance shot her an annoyed glance over his shoulder.

"It’s already dead! There’s no soul left, just grudge! That's why they don't die easily!”

The Nightmare struck out with a flaming hoof. Romance twisted aside, but the fire clipped his wing, sending him stumbling across the pavement. He recovered instantly, scythe flashing, but the beast only grew wilder as the fire expanded.

He couldn't destroy it.

She saw it clearly now.

Romance had told her to stay back, as if he could handle this on his own. As if she were just another helpless civilian who needed to be kept out of the way.

But he couldn't handle it.

And she couldn't stand there watching him die.

The night pressed in. No power. A red sky. More monsters crawling out of the dark. She couldn’t breathe. Her only tether to reality was the warm blue jewel at her throat.

A hiss cut through her panic. It came from behind her, from the neighbor’s doorway.

Helga turned.

Through the gap in the splintered door, she saw white clouds of extinguisher suppressant billowing into the house. Someone inside was furiously spraying the damaged doorway, trying to smother the flames licking along the broken frame.

It worked.

A fire extinguisher.

Helga looked back at Romance.

He was dodging another wave of fire, snapping his wings to vault over a burning limb.

Then she looked at the extinguisher again.

Oh.

OH!

She lunged for the damaged door, shoved her arm through the splintered gap, and grabbed the extinguisher right out of the neighbor's hands, the one who wouldn’t open the door for her.

"HEY!"

Helga yanked it free.

"Sorry!"

She meant it. Mostly.

She turned and ran back into the middle of the street.

"Romance!"

He glanced back, his glowing eyes widening. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET BACK!"

"YOU HAVE A FIRE PROBLEM!"

"I KNOW THAT!"

"THEN STOP MAKING MORE OF IT!"

Helga skidded to a stop beside him and squeezed the extinguisher's handle.

A roaring blast of white chemical suppressant erupted from the nozzle, completely smothering the Nightmare's burning torso.

The flames recoiled instantly.

Romance stopped in his tracks, staring.

Helga pressed forward spraying, keeping the nozzle locked on target. White powder blanketed the creature's head and chest. The infernal fire sputtered, turned to thick grey smoke, and died out. The Nightmare convulsed, its remaining limbs scraping helplessly against the pavement.

Romance took one cautious step back.

The creature made one final attempt to push itself up.

Helga aimed right for the center of its skull. "OH, NO, YOU DON'T!"

The last spark went out.

Silence fell so abruptly that Helga could hear the suppressant hissing from the nozzle.

The Nightmare's body sagged. Its monstrous torso collapsed in on itself, the remaining limbs crumbling into blackened fragments. A moment later, the entire monster disintegrated into a pile of ash.

Across the street, the crawling corpses stiffened. Their blue inner flames flickered once and went dark. One by one, the bodies collapsed into harmless piles of dust and bone.

Helga let go of the handle.

Her arms were shaking violently. Her palms were bruised, her knees weak.

She had just defeated a supernatural demon-horse with a household fire extinguisher.

Happy trotted up, tail wagging, with a large human femur in his jaw. He flopped down content, and began to munch on it.

She looked at him. At the ash pile. Then at the extinguisher. Then up at Romance.

He stood in the drifting cloud of white powder, scythe held low, his black wings half-unfolded. Soot streaked his face and chest. His glowing eyes were wide as he stared at her.

He blinked.

Helga blinked back.

Romance slowly looked down at the heap of soot. Then at the extinguisher in her hands. Finally, back at Helga.

"...Seriously?"

Helga shrugged with an apologetic smile.

Romance raised one clawed finger, pointing back toward her neighbor's house where tiny embers still flickered on the broken door.

"Better kill that one too," he said flatly, "before it births a doorframe monster."

"OH! Right!"

Helga turned on her heels and charged back toward the porch, spraying chemical powder like a madwoman. Around her neck, Romance’s heart kept beating.

On Him, The Nightmare:

Tattoo: Martyr - Grave Crawler - Dirt Light - Body, Face [mesh](Camp Syndicate)(199L)
Tail, feet mod: MILKBATH - NightMare Feet, Tail - Centaur Draft [mesh](Camp Syndicate)(499L)

Tail, feet horse: MILKBATH - Centaur Draft - Legacy M & Ath [mesh](Camp Syndicate)(1500L)

Feet mod: MILKBATH - Cloven Hooves - Dewclaws - Centaur Draft [mesh]

Skin centaur: SOMEONE - Centaur Skin - Hecate [BOM]
Skin head: SOMEONE - Sterling Skin - No Stubble - Hecate [BOM]

Skin body: SOMEONE - Titan Body - Legacy M - Chiseled - Hecate [BOM]

Neck: AVEC TOI - Aiden Neck Corset - TIGHT - V1, LegacyA [mesh]
Arms: Dreadmorne - [DM] // Phantom Arms (Jake) [mesh]

Harness: Garmonbozia - Lunar Harness - Legacy - Rusty [mesh]

Flames: papermoon - *pm* Spirit Flame: Turquoise [mesh]

Body: TheShops - [BODY] Athletic Meshbody (Legacy)(m) (1.7.1) [mesh](5000L)

Pose, deformers: DevinVaughn - created in Firestorm

Setting:

Crypt: Aetherys - Dramerian Mausoleum [mesh](Camp Syndicate)(349L)

Plant: Schadenfreude - A Pomegranate Remains [mesh](Camp Syndicate)(200L)