Finished You're Either With Me or You're Against Me

"What? Don't call her!"

Uzza could see it all play out in her head. Jackal was going to help the main Chloe, the one with their body. And he was going to help that Chloe kill her. All the sirens going off in her head were saying the same things: this was a mistake. You're going to die. She thinks you're like Ana. It'll be just like Ana. You're going to die or you're going to end up like her.

"I, I don't think you should trust her." She didn't want Jackal to trust the other Chloe more than her, even if that made more sense. "... The other me is acting weird. I can't think of a good reason for her to, basically corner me like that. There's something up with her and I don't know what it is."

Honestly Uzza could think of several good reasons the other Chloe would do that. Giving Chloe the benefit of a doubt was too scary, though. It felt like giving Chloe yet another advantage in the war against her.

Uzza took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "You know what? You're right. That... that makes sense." Jackal was going to talk to her other self, and it was going to ruin everything. There was no avoiding it, or at least no good way to stop it without causing an even bigger problem.

"...Do you mind if I use your bathroom?" She would be heading in that direction when he started calling.

——— ——— ———

Chloe put her phone on speaker and set it down next to the bathroom sink. The rites she performed to reestablish her foothold in hell called for some of her own blood to be shed - now that was done, she had some aftercare to attend to.

"Hey Jackal! How's it going?" He would hear the faucet running in the background.

"It's been a wild fucking day," Chloe said. "I'm pretty sure I lost part of my soul while the long night was happening, but... you know, I'll just figure out what to do about that later I guess."

The side effects of losing a piece of soul didn't seem too bad to her, at least from what she'd already read. She was more worried about how it could be used against her.

"So that's my crisis. Malara's crisis is that some dickhead broke in and raided her underwear drawer. She's talking to the cops about that right now. Dunno if she told you any of that yet." It would make sense if that was why he called.

Okay, yeah. He was right. The soul thing was way more concerning.

She turned off the faucet. Now she was busy replacing the bandage on her hand, where she cut herself open to draw blood earlier.

"Well. Step one is obviously to figure out what happened to it. Most likely, something stole it, ate it, or enslaved it or something. If you and Malara are down to go raid somebody's place to help me get it back, that might be on the table for a solution. Worst case I could try to... heal what's left of my soul, I guess. I know that's a thing, theoretically."

"I was thinking it probably has," Chloe said. "But maybe not like Ana, in that I don't think it's... I mean, she I guess?" Her soul bit probably used she pronouns too. "I don't think she's planning to kill me. If I was trying to kill me from her position, I'd probably have just tried ambushing me. And she wasn't in my realm when I checked, so she's probably just dead or captured."

And since those things, which probably happened in Chloe's mind, were basically done to her, then they definitely called for revenge.

"Not sure how the whole merging back together thing is going to work though, but... I guess, if both of us are cool with it, we might try what you did with Dalia?" She's gradually been getting more comfortable with the idea, especially since she was pretty sure it would go smoother than the Dalia and Ana thing. She and her soul bit should be a lot more similar.