(Episode VII) (Act 4)

There was a visual shuddering, before Jackie exploded in a blue light—knocking everything and everyone away and down. Such a concessive blast made Maddie skid backwards, hitting a stone wall that elevated a lawn.

Maddie gasped; the air knocked out of her.

Her vision was blurring, but she focused on Jackie, still glowing and quivering.

She was crying, but the cracks were open so wide, her tears ran out of the gash that was once her cheek. She was building up for another blast.

“You… Talk about good days…” Maddie choked out. “Look… At what you’re doing…!”

Another blast, but weaker this time. But no less hard on Maddie’s body.

She only had an eye open and she forced herself not to pass out.

“Fine… Destroy the last piece of what you have… You’re a hypocrite… And to think… I thought you were…”

There was a loud rumbling and it wasn’t Jackie.

A shadow was casted over them and Maddie looked up.

There was a floating Diamond, chrome—white—and black. Extant.

The undercarriage was opened, and five metal coffins fell out, each landing with a thunderous crash as each one ripped up the street.

Each one was stainless, bulky, and armored. Pretty trademark, finishing the look off with a helmet prodding out.

With whirring and hissing, they became the Extant Enforcers one would ever see on TV, never up close. Heavily armored limbs, black body suit, a helmet take took over one’s head, along with a main body, torso and back that housed all the life support and fire power they need—giving them a hunched over look.

Jackie quickly turned to them, face cracked open and leaking, her eyes red and shunken. Half human, other unrecognizable.

The middle Enforcer was reading themselves, but stopped for a moment, oddly hesitated. It was a pregnant second, but they combined both their gauntlets together, transforming seamlessly into a cannon—the other two on their respective sides held them in place.

It fired and flung out a net of some kind—lancing forward and trapping Jackie. Trapping her, head to toe, as the net shrunk around her as well.

And even when covered with gray wrapping paper, the light from the cracks started to flair up again.

The last two Enforcers rushed in, despite being so worn down by that armor, and one held a piece of a device each on opposite hands. They got close to Jackie, connected the device on her head—forming a ring—and then backed away. She went completely still.

“YOU ARE NOW FORCED INTO YOUR MINDSCAPE,” the Enforcer bellowed. “FOR YOUR SAFETY AS WELL AS OTHERS, YOU MUST GAIN A HOLD OF YOUR SIVIS ABILITY. REPAIR OR HOLD TOGETHER YOUR ACTIVATION OR YOU WILL BE RESIGITERED AS A SIVIS TREND AND TAKEN TO DR. TABER MEMORIAL RESEARCH!”

Maddie would laugh if her lungs weren’t caved in (and she quickly checked—nope, shit just hurts). Jackie Jackson: The Next Cassie Morgan, Nathaniel Fuuki. N’atural Savage.

“hey, im slowly turning into a monster and no one can stop me” is really different to, “yeah I lost my house and I managed to fuck up getting siVis”.

It was a long wait. Maybe too long. But the lights begun to wind down, and the two Enforcers moved forward to take off the crown, then unwrapped Jackson—who while covered in tears and sweat, was returned to normal.

The other three spread out, hopefully tending to the others. It was the roaring hum of the diamond ship getting ready to touch down that Maddie passed out to.

***

“You guys were lucky. We were only passing over, just to get to somewhere else…”

Maddie awoke, finding herself sitting along with the others, at the bottom of the open ramp of the diamond ship.

The Enforcer had a posture—they stood as if they gave little to no shits. Hand on their hip, lean to that said hip… And then they sighed, looking straight at Jackson.

There was a hiss, similar to the hiss where they transformed outta coffin-mode. They reached up, and took off their helmet.

Whoever she was, she made Jackson cover her mouth in surprise. She looked like she honestly couldn’t have taken anymore.

The chick shook her head, her crimson hair bun swaying a bit before she spoke again, “You were supposed to be one that never got into messes, Jackson…”

Jackson jumped up, and hugged the red-haired chick… And she didn’t instantly hug back. Only wrapping an arm around her and patting her back, reluctantly.

Maddie could only rub her forehead, prepping for the trainwreck. Maybe Jackson was right. Shit’s getting waaaay too shitty…

“So uh,” Maddie broke the silence. “Are you gonna introduce your ex, Jackie or-?”

The redhead chuckled, “Fuck, I wish… But nah. Name’s Scarlett. We went to high school together… Here…”

“Jesus,” River managed to make sound monotone. “Like. We’re getting into poorly written soap territory…”

“The hell are you people doing here…?” Scarlett asked. “And more importantly, did you guys force her to do any of this?”

Tracy waved her hands in fear, with her makeshift ‘fro bouncing as well, “NO! NONONONO—NOT AT ALL! We all made the choice-!”

“And not only that, it didn’t even happen the way we wanted…” Aiko backed up.

“In the interest of my slightly suss cohorts here…” Maddie cut in. “We only met like… Days ago. We were gonna chance getting siVis, blew up in our faces, and since then—we’ve been royally fucked by the universe by just existing. We WERE promised to be going home by using PATH-OS, but that fucked up and landed us here.”

“You’re shitting me—” Scarlett blunk.

“I wish I was…”

Scarlett scratched her head, with her free hand. “Well… We have PATH-OS built into the Carrier here, but if you people are having problems fucking going home…”

“I think we were conned, but the running theory is that big girl there thought about home and well, popped us here.”

Scarlett sighed. “That right…? Shit’s weird enough today, I can buy it getting worse like that…”

Jackie finally stopped hugging her, as she grabbed Scarlett’s shoulders.

“What? No insults? N-no bragging…? I finally did something stupid, why aren’t you rubbing it in, huh…?”

“UNIT-7785!” one of the Enforcers yelled behind Scarlett, forcing everyone sans her to turn to them. “YOU HAVE AN OBILGATION, AND I SUGGEST YOU STICK TO IT!”

Scarlett only sighed, rolled her eyes. She backed away from the girls, from Jackie, leaving her standing there.

“I regret to inform you that I, Scarlett, am currently serving what could have been a prison sentence as a Unit for Extant. While my record will not be stricken clean, this is my journey in redeeming myself.”

Jackie looked crushed.

Scarlett looked at her and shrugged. “I did something stupider.”

The girl slowly put on her helmet, clicking it back into place. “We’ll get you girls teleported back to where you were. I’ll just inform my bosses and we’ll make the reports, so it’s going to be a while.”

She begun to turn around, only glancing back with her featureless mask.

“Too bad we can never make up now, huh?”

And as Scarlett turned away, walking to her superiors, Jackie just simply ran. Ran away down the street, without a second thought.

“Goddamn it—” Tracy shouted.

“Nah,” Maddie got up, stood up with hands in her pockets, looking at the rest. “I got this.”

“Listen Maddie, you making fun of her being a cynical asshole isn’t going to help!” Tracy shouted. “She’s lost everything! Everything she’s cared about! Sarcasm and being nihilist with puns isn’t solving her hurt!”

“…Nihilist, huh?” Maddie remarked. “If anything, cutting out the things that don’t matter only helped me.”

She walked away, walking down the path Jackie took.

She prepared her speech, her grand justification, trying to add ethos to her weary journey down memory land.

She prepared to tell Jackie that her parents were terrible, incompetent, not in her life anymore due to her sister’s death. That she was malnourished for a while. That every single event in her childhood that she could recall always ended in some sob story, some tragedy. Just because her parents were scared of the Shifts and turned to drinks to not be there to experience life—no matter how much they told her that she loved them. Her.

It ruled them, everything did, and still will rule them if they ever do get clean. Maddie knows she’s wounded, she saw it when she got trapped in the Mindscape. But if you don’t do shit about the wounds, they’ll only get infected by something far worse. So you remove, you dig, pour acid or cut whole arms off if you need to. Maddie was prepared to make Jackie see that you can only be hard, against a world that only serves to knock you down into paste.

But when she found Jackie…

She was sparing at an uprooted and twisted hill. It was embedded with what would’ve made up a house—door, walls, windows—scattered away and broken beyond repair. Hell, even a tree—turned brittle and gray, wrapped around the hill, almost looking like a bony hand petting the abomination. It was so bad, the ground before Jackie was a chasm, so deep it was black.

Jackie stood there, because she couldn’t get any further.

Maddie glanced her fist, as it was balled tight.

She nodded to herself, leaving her to grieve on her own.

***

“You guys promise that you’re sending us back to Davenport?” Maddie stood, clean and only slightly fucked up again, in the teleporter with the rest of the girls. They told them that this is a special model, allowing for mass transports.

They all nodded, all in formation.

“…Ya’ll better be lucky that I can’t tell—the armor’s cool and all but—” Maddie.

And with that, the rings descended, scanning them up and down, before disappearing into a beam of light again.

But before it took hold… Maybe the others heard it too, but Maddie heard the Enforcers’ radio talk.

“We’re done with our detour, we’ll be on bound to assist you, Ms. Masters.”

“Thank you for your services, Officer. Maybe we’ll solve this whole mess yet…”