Thrusting a fist up HARD, she felt her forearm explode through packed dirt into light airiness.

Clawing upwards slowly, she pulled herself upwards, out of the soil, and into the sunlight.

Sakura "Psycho Saki" April Shinguugi had returned to Earth 1337, home of the 'Suburban Senshi' and her one-time nemesis, Sakura Xadium Aino.

But that blood feud was in the past. This was the present. But where in the present?

"Oh god... oh my god!"

The android swiveled, hearing a panicked voice on the wind. At first she blushed, thinking it was someone reacting in mortal terror to her appearance. That was always a turn-on. But no, not this time. Someone was in desperate fear of something else.

Homing on the panicked cry, Saki squinted, her pupils narrowing to cat-slits as she telescopically zoomed in on its source.

What she saw surprised her. There was a man, wrapped in a coarse hemp blanket, being carried aloft by eight people-- each wearing a strange animal-head masks-- towards a huge wicker figure looming in the distance. Surrounding them was a crowd of about 50 more similary-dressed people. A simple bioscan indicated the man's knees had been recently shattered. There was no way for him to escape his fate.

Intrigued, Saki switched to stealth mode and flitted towards the scene with incredible speed.

"Oh gods and goddesses of nature!", cried out a blonde-haired woman whose face was covered half in blue paint and half in white paint, "Recieve this sacrifice, and be appeased!"

Sacrifice? Saki thought to herself, watching as the people carrying the man attached him to a rope and pullet and started hauling him up into the Wicker Man via the crotch area.

Saki felt a burning sensation in her chest. Her brown eyes glowed blood red, and a slow, sick grin spread across her face. A low, sadistic laugh growled in her throat, begging for release.

"Gods and goddesses of nature--" the crowd surrounding the wicker man chanted as the man with the broken knees was lifted ever higher inside it, "Recieve this sacrifice, and be appeased!"

There was a thunderous clap that resounded in the air, and the crowd hushed, in awe. Had the gods answered them?

Then someone cried out in a panic. The rope suspending the sacrifical victim had snapped, and he'd come crashing back down to the ground!

"Secure him!" the leader of the group asked, beckoning to some of her followers to string the man up again. Then a voice rang out across the field, loud and hungry, lustful for blood.

"Any one of you mother[BLEEP]ers even MOVES, and you're getting it in the head!"

Saki stood just behind the group of villagers / pagans / whateverthehelltheywere, her Hellsing Arms .454 Casull "handgun" (more like handcannon) spinning in her hand. As the people all turned to look at her, she cocked her head to the side and grinned. "That's the only warning I'm obliged to give you~"

The next second, there was a huge CLANG! sound.

The Android turned her head to the left curiously.

One man, a large, burly fellow in a wolf mask, had slammed a massive sledgehammer into her side. She looked down at the massive iron head of the hammer, which had impotently struck her and was just sort of resting against the side of her maid's outfit, and then up into the startled face of the human who had hit her. Using her free hand, she just shoved his head away with an open palm, hard enough to snap his neck instantly. As he crumpled, she grabbed the sledgehammer before it could fall, and bit into the iron head, chewing some of the metal. Making a face, she spat it out. It was inferior garbage, not even worthy of being reprocessed into ammunition. She flicked the head of the sledgehammer off into the distance like it was a small stone and turned to face the crowd, which had erupted into a hue and cry after seeing their comrade killed.

The crowd rushed Saki, their bodies covering hers, burying her in a sea of flesh, overwhelmed.

"Complete the Sacrifice!" the leader shrieked, as some of her followers broke off and went to pick up their victim, who was still lying under the Wicker Man, in shock from his fall and unable to move.

At that moment, with a thunderous explosion, about 10 of the crowd that had jumped on Saki simply flew into the air, a blood red gusher of chunky flesh-bits and sticky crimson blood, with just an aftertaste of entrail. The Android stood up, hefting a massive cannon that was taller than she was... the Baron Harkonnen II. Its barrel was smoking, red hot. Without missing a beat, she fired five precision shots at the people who were heading for the victim. To the untrained eye, it was almost as if he was protected by a force field, for they all fell after getting precisely within 12 feet of his body.

"You cannot interrupt the Ceremony!" The Leader cried out. "The goddess--"

"Goddess?" Saki hissed. "I am the Goddess of DEATH." With two shots of her cannon, she shot out the legs of the Wicker man, exploding its wooden structure into a firey rain of death which pummeled the worshippers as they tried to flee its destructive radius. The Android ran into the screaming crowd, brutally kicking or slapping away anyone foolish enough to get in her path-- with bone-crushing results-- pausing only for a microsecond to let her blood-red eyes lock with those of the Leader before rushing into the flames and hefting the purported sacrifical victim over her shoulder.

Leaping over the flames with inhuman strength, she cleared the inferno and deposited the man behind her. Surprisingly, the villagers-- what few of them were left standing-- had rallied behind their leader, grabbing their pitchforks, spades-- whatever they could find-- and were preparing to charge her.

"Release the Bees~" the Leader said with a growl. There was a tremendous buzzing sound, and thousands of insects flew towards Saki and the man she was protecting.

"Not the bees.... NOT THE BEES!" the man cried out in a panic, even through his shock and trauma.

He was so loud and annoying Saki turned to shoot him in the knee just to shock him back to silence, but her routine torture scans revealed the potential for an anaphylactic reaction to bee venom-- the man was allergic. And apparently they'd stung him before, then healed him. The sadist in her appreciated their technique and approved.

Saki dropped her cannon to the ground with a huge thud, and there were some jeers from the crowd. Apparently they saw this gesture as one of fear or recognition of the inevitable.

That was, of course, until she pulled the flamethrower out from under her dress and lit the sky aflame with Napalm hell.

Liquid fire incinerated the bees, and the villagers screamed-- one at the loss of their cherished bees, and two, at the fact they were now being burned alive.

"Any more of you little shits want some?!" Saki demanded, her eyes a demonic red. But the only one left standing now, amidst the flames and cries of mortal pain was the Leader.

"The goddess--" the Leader began again, slowly.

"The only Goddess here is the one you summoned," Saki said coldly, slowly advancing towards her. "Your f[BLEEP]ed up little ceremony is what got my attention. I warned you to stop what you were doing~" she said with a murderous growl as she got even closer.

"You are no Goddess!" The Leader spat. "The Goddess is Love!"

"Love?" Saki laughed dismissively as she came nose to nose with Miss Braveheart or whatever the hell the paint job on her face was supposed to signify. "Yeah~ she loved breaking that man's knees so he couldn't run away. She loved envenomating him with Bee Venom just to watch him suffer~"

"And what have *YOU* done here?!" the Leader boomed accusingly, pointing to the slowly burning, crackling graveyard of her village. "You are a devil!"

"Damn Straight~" Saki concurred cheerily, as the Leader's face fell. Apparently the woman had hoped to score morality points or something. Oh well.

"You will be punished~" the woman hissed.

"Oh, I am being punished," Saki growled, her eyes glowing even redder with ever-increasing rage. "Every time I realize I can no longer murder or maime just for the hell of it, but only in order to protect, I feel the sting of the whip, the searing pain of my torture. Saving little shits like him--" she gestured to the victim-- "is my purgatory."

The Android paused and looked over at the remains of the Wicker Man. "I hate f[BLEEP]ing helping." She scowled. "But it looks like you guys were going to burn this man for a reason, and I shouldn't get in the way of that--" She pressed the nozzle of her flame thrower right into the ribs of the Leader. "After all, your Goddess needs her sacrifice."

Squeezing the trigger, Sakura April set the Leader ablaze, turned and walked off, humming a little to her tortured screams of agony. She sighed, her eyes going from red to brown again as she picked up the Victim and slung him over her shoulder, looking up the nearest hospital in her memory banks.

"You know what my problem is?" Saki asked the barely-conscious man, as the Leader's cries of pain finally split her throat and she collapsed dead in the background.

"I'm too nice to people."