The Legend of the Great Southern Star - Part Three

“There’s honestly not much we can do for you anymore… Is there?”

Four walls and a ceiling. That’s all he could describe his surroundings as. It wasn’t much of anything special—perhaps bright. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked around.

“We weren’t expecting all of this at once… Two incidents in one month, then you create this opportunity for yourself out of the blue…”

It was also large. A little overwhelming, even. An excessive amount of tools. An excessive amount of equipment. All inviting him in towards the massive box shaped jail which pulled at him like a magnet.

“You weren’t our first choice. After the breakdown, all of our scientists had abandoned the project. I’m sure you could imagine the severity of such.”

It wasn’t the small centerpiece atop a pyramid shaped pedestal marking the room’s center that grabbed his attention the most. It was the large mirror on the wall he was facing.

“We had one student in mind… But unfortunately, there was an incident surrounding her in particular a month prior.”

The mirror opened up the room to so much more than it appeared, doubling its volume. Atop a balcony watching from the other side, dozens of meters away, another Cobalt stood over the railing, looking down at his own side of the duality.

“Obviously, I won’t defend nor redact Mr. Taranaki’s words. He wanted to get rid of you altogether. But I saw another option for you.”

That Cobalt wore the same solemn frown. And his eyes carried the same burdens, the same pain. But he couldn’t be bothered to look at him in those eyes.

“You said that there’s nothing that can scare you anymore, yes? That’s good… If you truly mean that, then show me, personally, what that apathy and defiance can achieve.”

Staring across the reflective glass, he saw what would become the hell he alone trapped himself in. But as he oversaw his new solitary confinement from both sides of the glass…

“Don’t run away from what you’re afraid of. Run toward what you are not.”

Could he truly attain a purpose from this?

“And try to achieve the unachievable… Attempt to reopen the Rift to Crestia.”

“...”

Those had been her words. But he used the word her in his head lightly. That thing. It wasn’t human. It was a devil.

Yes…

Mother was a devil. A devil with blood of silicon.

But that was something he wouldn’t have to concern himself with anymore.

Nor his classmates.

Nor his instructors.

Nobody.

By throwing his own life away in an act of defiance, his punishment was simple: a straightforward message to settle his insubordination once and for all.

Your life is our life. Your purpose for life is what we tell you your purpose for life is. Now die under that aspiration.

The solitude was something he could appreciate, at least. Isolation could only be his highest hope to fight back his despondency. Though, to anyone else, isolation and despondency would be synonyms. To Cobalt, that contradiction would keep him alive.

The hope that maybe one day, he could truly forget.

The hope that, if the solitude shall drive him to delirium, it shall do it under the guise of a welcoming hysteria of false-fulfillment.

But could Cobalt truly accept that?

To run towards what he’s not afraid of, rather than running away from what he is?

Were those words the embodiment of hope? Or despair?

To Cobalt, both words were meaningless now.

He could only hope that the somber atmosphere of silence would remain.

That is… Until…

“—!!!”

He hit the ground.

Reeling on the metal grates from the sudden blunt force to the back of his head, he manically rocked back and forth against the pulsating throbbing he felt.

“—Phew,” another voice sighed, stretching his arm around.

Who-?!

“God, you’re a bitch.”

He couldn’t breathe. He choked. His protest barely escaped as a breathy squeak.

His nerves forced his eyelids shut, staggering from the blow, but in retaliation, he forced them open…

A toothed snarl appeared across the man’s sardonic face. He appeared restless, his almond shaped eyes barely visible from behind his dark brown hair. He rolled up the sleeve of his white collared shirt, which rested under a lavender-colored tie. Standing to his left, a tanned girl let out an annoyed expression of boredom. Almost like accompanying him was a chore.

The two attackers' outfits had almost matched, except her tie was yellow, matching with her pleated skirt which was held together with a sharp belt and several pocket chains. She subtly blew the dead split-ends from out of her face before eyeing the squirming Cobalt. No emotions plastered themselves across her face. Instead, her twisting and twitching nose lifted her lip on one side, showing her clear repugnance of the insectile creature wreathing on the floor deplorably.

That insect was, of course…

“Really, Cobalt? This is the hovel you’ve run away to this time? You really are FUBAR¹.”

The man’s unique vulgarities… Even if he knew what to say in response, the blunt force trauma gave him the twitching sensation of lockjaw.

Cobalt knew this man well…

The intruder spouting affronts was none other than…

“Nick, don’t waste our time here.” She once again blew the flyaway disheveled blonde bangs from out of her face mockingly. “Insects aren’t worth the time of day. Hm—? In fact…”

The abhorrently mannered, detestable girl took a few steps forwards, arms crossed into the creases of her arms. And as she lifted her leg…

“Ktch—!!”

“Hmm… This insect’s sniveling sounds just like the squish of a bug. Dignity isn’t a word you’re familiar with at all… Is it?”

Pressing right onto the spot Nick had just pummeled into a moment ago, the heels of her boots dug into Cobalt’s unkempt hair. Pressing, pressing, pressing harder against his lobes, his fingers involuntarily twitched against the sharp force perforating his head.

After all this time of hoping to be alone…

Nick showed a hesitant face against the indecent torment and abuse currently puncturing the back of Cobalt’s head, but smiling uneasily against the harassment, his resolve sharpened his smile, twisting into a vile smirk which spread out with malignity. Almost like the one shred of restraint he had, was blown away mercilessly.

Jumping in with a surprise attack… You two are just as pathetic as I am.

Footsteps.

Then a face.

“Yea, yea! Insect, that’s good! Just like one to try to spread its nasty wings and fly away, right?” With excited mannerisms, that voice continued. Such cheap and contrived insults—this was unfortunately a voice Cobalt was far too familiar with.

“Buuuut you should know… Little shits like you never make it far.”

Cobalt’s face twisted and twitched with indignation. Smashed from out of no where and squashed underfoot...

“You gonna break under Hydeira’s boot, huh?”

That other voice, belonging to a rather toxic girl named Hydeira, continued to push Cobalt’s face into the grated floor panels. It scratched through the surface of the skin where the metal intersected, grating it like cheese as he could feel layers of skin flaking off.

Blistered and bruised, Cobalt could only look on hopelessly at the face of his tormentor: Nick, who squatted leisurely in front of him, all the while looking down on him with resentment.

“Listen closely, dickbag.” He practically spat the words at the restrained Cobalt, twisting his scowl into a glaring snarl.

“Did ya think that little outburst was for her sake, you mouth breather? You can’t come to terms with your own failures so you take your problems out on everyone else… Well newsflash bitch, that's not how shit works around here.”

His other tormentor, Hydeira, still treated the beating as a chore. She suppressed a yawn while Nick carried on. Though Cobalt couldn’t help but scowl at the hypocrisy in his words.

Nick’s sharp brown eyes aimed to slice through Cobalt’s own, though there was a certain familiarity in them…

“When I heard you were getting this place to yourself… I would almost feel sorry for you. That is if you weren’t such a selfish cuck.”

Hydeira didn’t need to twist her heel against his skull, because Nick was already twisting in the knife.

Feeling his pride slip away, there was nothing he could do but watch this scene unfold.

Almost from a distance, he sought to detach himself from it all.

—But that was when he saw it.

Beyond the crass words and looping cruelty, it was from the other side of the mirror that he saw just how pathetic he looked.

He saw Nick’s dark glaring eyes mocking him cynically from above.

He saw Hydeira’s foot twisting into his head, keeping him pressed to the grate.

And more than that…

He saw the red face of a boy getting squashed against the floor. He saw the dark circles under his eyes. He saw the despair hidden within them.

No…

None of that was hidden anymore.

That despair boiled up to the surface for all to see.

And from that scalding despair burned his hatred.

From across the mirror, even Cobalt could see it—clear as day.

No matter what he tried, or where he went, they were all the same.

Pieces of shit.

—He had no other words left.

Cobalt used to have a lot more words to give, but…

Just when did he lose them all?

He watched the vulgar boy brush the hair from out in front of his eyes.

He watched the apathetic woman just watch on from above, arms crossed.

He lost a spark in himself. Seeing these faces day after day, they just blurred into a sea of grey.

He couldn’t escape from those depths, just pushed further, further down.

No matter how many times he replays the simulation, tries it all over again.

Repeating. Repeating. Repeating.

Lying on the floor, watching as all his self-respect slipped away across the mirror, Cobalt realized that somewhere along the line both himself and the world had lost their color.

A broken record, repeating.

“Throwing your little tantrums and pity parties isn’t going to bring her back.”

That sharp voice called to him from a sea of noises he couldn’t decipher.

“—And trying to open the Rift to Crestia isn’t going to make you any less of the pathetic little twat you are. Pack it home, give it up, and kill yourself so we can all be done hearing your squeaky voice.”

The cruelty of that voice echoed before drowning under the sounds that overtook it.

Then another:

“I’m surprised—no—more disappointed this bug hasn’t already.”

Cobalt’s poeticism had slipped away, spilling out over the metal grates. Pieces of shit, a thoughtless title he couldn’t stop giving away to people like this to try and rationalize it. But time after time, again and again, Cobalt couldn’t rationalize their nature, he couldn’t even decipher their words.

Why all of this was happening to him—were they really the problem? Or was he?

Drowning under a cruel and noisy silence, Cobalt inhaled sharply and unevenly through clenched teeth. He could feel the cold sensation of liquid finally dripping down from atop his forehead—but he had no thoughts left to give, nothing left to say.

All the words had bled from him, seeping down through his blue bangs, down the bridge of his nose.

He felt like he was somewhere else. He didn’t even feel connected to the world. None of it felt real. Watching his pathetic, grieving face in that mirror as it lost battle after battle.

Every time…

He nauseously gulped back his anger.

Every damn time…

He could feel his spirits being sucked away from him. Swirling, swirling around as he forced back the pressure in his stomach that welled up.

I draw the short straw… Every single damn time. If that wasn’t enough for you crooks…

His thoughts shook frantically, and animalistically, from within his beaten and bashed head. All he could do, time after time, was watch from afar. The fierce glare in those beaten, battered eyes—were those really his own?

If it wasn’t enough for you to take her away from me… You just wanna take everything I have left… Don’t you?

Being thrown away like this…

Having seen it a thousand times, I’m starting to realize… That it’s a lot easier than I told myself it was.

Being thrown away, devalued further with each sunrise.

It wasn’t something he needed to justify, and it wasn’t something he needed to rationalize.

Feeling it for himself, understanding that disgust.

I don’t have any attachment to that face, either.

“—But one more thing.”

The vile boy, which now inadvertently seemed much more human, leaned in closer.

If he had a knife, his impatient and restless fingers would be twisting it around and around in Cobalt’s pummeled body. But Nick didn’t need a knife. All he needed was his words—the only thing a wicked boy like himself needed, the only thing Cobalt lacked.

—No, that wasn’t accurate either. Cobalt had lost far more than just that.

“There’s no where left for you to run off to. I’m tired of watching it. So go ahead, I implore you to find a way to escape again—but you won’t. You can’t. If it takes a damn ego death for you to get that through your heads, by all means…”

Nick’s words scorched the parts of himself he had left. He didn’t understand. And he didn’t know if he was supposed to.
“—But if that doesn’t work, you can always just hang from the rafters up there.”

Still keeping eye contact, Nick flicked his finger towards the ceiling, narrowing his eyes as a chilling feeling sliced through Cobalt’s spine.

And with that invitation—

“It’s what Bismuth would have wanted.”

Ptu!

Having no words left to give, Cobalt kicked himself down from his own throne.

Pretending to be better than all of the horrible people around him—Cobalt didn’t need that anymore.

Giving in to that nature, he understood what it was that he hated about this world.

It was those thoughts, the ones that burned into his brain, singing and tearing apart the parts of himself that wanted him to be better.

Time and time again, he heard those words. Just like himself, this world had become a broken record.

But bringing a pained smile to his face, Cobalt understood that hearing them out loud meant nothing.

As an act of defiance, that was all he had left to give.

For the words that rang out day after day, all he had was the vulgar nature he inherited from that world.

But facing off time and time against those words, maybe he didn’t need to prove Nick wrong.

Because after all, Cobalt knew…

Nick’s eye closed shut.

While his other eye glared cross at the spit on his face.

Dripping from his nose.

Infiltrating his eyelids.

Seething with pure resentment and rage.

He heard the knife-like inhale through Nick’s teeth.

And the twitching of restless fingers closing into a fist…

Before Cobalt’s own eyes were smashed shut.

* * * * * * * *

[¹ FUBAR is an acronym for “Fucked/Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition]