(Episode I) (Act 5)

She charged towards it as if to tackle it, and only ran faster because her fears were confirmed as she pasted her new friends. The comet met, connected to the side, her thrusted arm, side of her head, and it smashed against her before crumbling into nothing, knocking her down into a spiral then skidding a bit as she fell on the same, heavily damaged side.

Aiko was watching the whole time and sprinted leaving the rope. Maddie immediately turned back, screaming in a series of “no’s”, franticly. River was aghasted, and only could help Maddie and Aiko carry Jackie as they quickly got to her. Tracy was still there, frozen, trying to absorb what just happened. It was only until River came back to her, grasping her hand, did she move and yet she really didn’t.

It was awful. Broken, once toned, arm, roadrash covering it, plus her left side of the face, fresh and destroyed her tracksuit. Jackie only could make the noise that Maddie was all too familiar with; the ruddering noise coming from a nose trying, struggling, to breathe. Her eyes; once sharp, fierce, confident and hopeful. Vacant.

The shadows grew darker, as Jackie couldn’t make out anyone’s face but Maddie’s, as she was the only one close.

Maddie found herself, wrestling the tall girl to get her to sit up in her scrambling hold, sputtering “no’s” when she had a mouth that always knew what to say. She had to find those words quick as Jackie fluttered those eyes closed.

“Non-nononono-non-n-no,” what fell out of Maddie’s quivering mouth, “Ja-Jackiejackiejackie, please, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, pleasepleasepleaseplease—FUCK!”

A swift slap was delivered upon herself, startling the others because they were sure it was going to be for Jackie. The crack jolted her awake, if not slightly as she couldn’t hold her eyelids up, still making that horrid ruddering.

“Jackie, Jackie,” Maddie’s sore cheek made the words sound somehow more painful, “You have to—you have to stay with us, c’mon man, just stay awake, think about something, any fucking thing, just keep thinking, keep staying with us, or me or your family or a-anything man, just c’mon!”

She was barely stirring, slurring her words, taking a while for Maddie to piece together what she was saying, “…Wuzza… Conc… Concession…?”

Maddie nodded shakingly along the process, “Yeah—yeah, concussion, and I don’t know if it’s mild or worse yet and I’—I’m leaning toward it being pretty bad, so just keep those mean eyes open, yeah?”

“No…So much…Medical…”

Maddie kept blinking away, she pointed at Aiko, snapped at rapidly even as she motioned toward Jackie’s crooked limb, some of the blood covering her red shirt, standing out clearly, “Yeah man, wh-when you live in a shithole like I do, y-you gotta learn how to do shit like this, a-actually I took it as some stupid elective at my shitty school and-and I actually l-learned a lot a-and yeah, focus on how weird it is; a piece of shit like me knowing anything and shit, yeah, yeah yeah—”

Jackie just stared at her in a daze, head wobbling slightly even as the crass girl is holding the back of it straight, tight. She jumped at the sound of ripping as Aiko tore the bottom of her own shirt completely off, giving it to Maddie and backing away.

“Jesus, you’re all fucking ripped and shit,” Maddie tried to talk, quickly fashioning a sling for the battered girl, grunting out the next run-on sentence, “I mean, I should’ve known but fuck, can people break their teeth on them or what? Have you tried, is it something that happened with some weird dude that wanted you—or-or girl, I don’t discriminate, but holy shit we gotta wrap this up so you can still bench-press cars; you still with me?!”

“…What’s…Even next…?”

“Yeah!” Maddie replied trying to keep up the manic pace, “Yeah, that’s why we need that fearless leader brain of yours man, it’s gonna be some crazy plan that’s totally gonna work this time man, I’m dumb as shit or I didn’t care about all that stuff, so you gotta pick up my slack!”

“…No…”

Maddie slowed to a halt, looking at a girl that was truly broken.

“…What…Is…Even next…?” Jackie struggled to fight back the tears. “No…Point… All of this…”

And like that, the mean and proud girl’s hardy walls came down, and she too cried, grubbling her next, coherent sentence, “I’m ‘bout to fucking cry, yo…”

Jackie nodded slowly, and reached up to her cheek with her hand, lacking total control.

“I knew it-it was over,” Maddie sobbed out, hiccupping as she continued to talk, “I-I don’t want it to be like this…!”

“I…I know,” Jackie mumbled out. “We…We messed up. We should have dealt with… Should’ve been like Edith…Strong…”

Maddie didn’t question who that was and couldn’t, as she tried her hardest to cry silently despite herself.

Everywhere was encased in shadow, but Jackie couldn’t help but to look up to where the sky should’ve been. No one would find them. Not law enforcement, not Shift researchers qualitied to help, not even their families, their parents. Not even the deadliest recorded incident where people wanted siVis was this terrible, this strange.

Funny how something she hated… Feared… She earnestly wanted to go back to in this moment. And she had to make peace with the fact that she and the others can’t.

She saw something come tumbling down, gleaming almost by the judgement of her clouded eyes. She welcomed it.

…But then she realized two things. That the “gleam” looked like lights from far away on a street, and the fact that while it broke the last of the building, it wasn’t breaking itself.

It was a sign. A literal small, street billboard.

Jackie tried to use all the coordination she had left the point, but it made enough noise for the others to notice. Gasps, mixed with surprise and overjoyed confusion, echoed as Aiko, Tracy and River instantly bolted over and tried to align themselves to catch it, raising their arms. Despite the debris it was causing as it hugged the “wall”, the three girls stood their and painfully intercepted the sign brought it out of the world’s perspective and put it down on its side, dropping it with a thud.

“Rosebud,” Tracy said deliriously, the light showing her face shifting from crying to smiling, “Rosebud!”

“Rosebud…” Jackie repeated, softly, completely blown away herself.

“I-I… Can’t fucking believe it…” Maddie choked up. “That’s so stupid… That’s so unbelievably stupid…”

“It’s big enough for us all to huddle together and sliiiide!” Tracy cheered, possibly high on excitement.

Jackie couldn’t fault her, though. She wanted to be so, too.

But of course, this world can’t let her be, even as a possibility. It moved again, turning slowly as one side went one way and the other side countered.

Jackie’s mind raced but it couldn’t make sense of the thoughts. She tried getting up, but she can’t. Even with the head injury, her body locked up on her. Maddie felt this and helped her stand, struggling under her weight.

“Flip it on the metal side, quick—” Maddie grunted out before straining out a noise, “So it slides well, I guess…”

Aiko and Tracy did so studiously, revealing what the sign said. Jackie let out an amused huff, as it pained her.

It was some robot, a cute cartoonish design, giving a warm smile as much as a robot with an comical lightbulb for a head and his steel underbite jawline could, with a thumbs up with Davenport, a tourist shot of the island, in the background:

LIFE’S A CHANGING, AND THAT’S OKAY

“I don’t even know if this is going to work,” confessed River, her hands lifting her clumps of hair she has in each. She was in the light rays the sign produced and in the darkness.

Maddie shot her a glare, “Well alright Einstein, give us a physics lesson real quick.”

River shook her head slowly, and her voice was drenched in stress, “I’m no—I’m not even smart…”

“WE’RE NOT DOING THIS NOW,” Maddie roared at her, and she walked close to, somehow getting into her face without being nowhere near, “You’re fucking something—Worth it, useful—There, you’re fucking useful! So be useful in telling us what we need to do!”

The increased rumbling aided her nodding, River let go of her hair, “M-maybe momentum, a push, and h-hopefully…”

“Got it”, Maddie put Jackie down first onto the sign, “Tracy, you’re a bit thick, let her rest her head on your lap.”

She only sputtered, but it was a response none the less, she climbed on and sat seiza style, carefully raising and putting Jackie on her lap as ordered. Maddie grabbed the “front” of the sleigh, River and Aiko at the “back”.

They rushed out of the alley, the board sliding well enough as they come out on the street, watching the last of the buildings cross onto themselves.

Yes, buildings were flying into other buildings.

But the debris, the junk, was suspended in the “air”, as the plane was still twisting about in ways that ultimately, the girls didn’t care to worry about anymore. The very same was beginning to happen on their side.

Maddie planted herself at the front, “Alright. This shit is about to get crazy. Give us enough juice but hurry on, you got that?”

Both River and Aiko grunted in agreement.

“…Man, I make for a shitty leader, eh Jackson?” Maddie joked but also made sure she was still with her.

Jackie laughed, coughed, indicating that she was.

And with that, River and Aiko dashed along, pushing the sleigh as it headed straight for the twisted maelstrom they had to face. The road was not only ripping but beginning to twist forward again. Using both the motion and their gained speed, the sleigh took off and both Aiko and River jumped on and joined the rest who held on for dear life.

There was no form, no shape in which they’re approaching. The junk twisted into something that’s close to a cluster, a field twirling with trash. From the front and the back, at opposite ends in opposite in directions, as the girls’ Rosebud dived down and instantly impacted the large chunk, jump, sliding, onto the next and the next. Soon, they were sliding and jumping off the various debris, chunks of ground, pieces of wall, even shattered windows. Was it because they stumbled upon a nice rhythm of using the twisting and finding a way to ride it?

There was no time to ask questions, to react, they used their tired arms to hold on, used their tired body to steer as much as they could.

The shadows parted as the street and building remnants broke down into chunks. Even the 2D sky was becoming disturbed, giving way to the core, the center that they were far away from, their first hope.

The tear grew in size, and its glow was illuminating. They all looked at it as they continued to drift. There it was. That is their last chance.

They rode on, through the rough landings, through the constant perspective flipping. Despite going all over the place, they grew closer and closer to their target. Due to the nature of the cluster fields, they twist and twist closer to the rift, as the last “ring” orbited oh so close.

They couldn’t take in the exact detail, the exact reasoning why this is happening, they weren’t focused on that. They clutched at their respective part of Rosebud until their nails were white, what matter was what came up ahead next, and they constantly checked the status of the rift.

Maybe the head injury made her closer to her emotions, but Jackie found herself crying again. Finally. Finally, this nightmare that had no passage of time, that was made of fakeness and fear, and was surreal just for the sake of such, was over. It was all finally over.

Just before the final loop, everything, including Rosebud screeched to a halt.

This catapulted Jackie and made the others twitch to hold their places as they looked on with horror.

Jackie fell and landed on a small, but body-sized chunk. Her motor controls still shot, she tore, she clawed, she practically dug her fingers, of one hand, into the mass. She hit her broken arm in the process, and her vision swam as she arched in pain.

She looked up, and she was practically a block or so away from the girls, but she could here them trying to slide down to meet her again. But it was fine, at least…

Then Jackie looked down. The rift that was expanding in size was shrinking second by second. The light dimming. Both from it and Jackie’s eyes as she took it in.

Of course. It had dawned on her why this world was so terrible. For every, single, action they took, it countered it. And it wasn’t methodical, it wasn’t planned, at least from the surmising of her feeble, human, meek brain and worldview. The fact that it was this aimless, unstable world that acted on not even rhyme nor reason, was enough for her to scream primally.

She was expending the last of her energy and she didn’t care. She wrecked her head around, causing the pain inside it to be worse. She screamed and she screamed, and she screamed, until her throat couldn’t allow her to. Regardless, she had something to say and it needed to be said.

“Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over aND OVER!” the strain on her voice was the only thing holding back her fury. “YOU DENY ME EVERYTHING, YOU TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING, PIECE BY PIECE! AND FOR WHAT?! IS THIS WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED?! THAT YOU WANTED A REACTION YOU CAN’T EVEN USE, GET A KICK OUT OF?!”

She heard Maddie, or someone, calling to her as they get closer, but it was all muffled, nearly muted by her rage towards the environment, the universe. She felt her grip getting heavier, and…

Or rather, she felt that.

She looked down and she whimpered. Her legs were systematically broken down, spiraling down into the void down below. Dark. Impenetrable. And she didn’t feel a thing.

This was it.

She felt a hand grab hers, she looked up. The girls, Maddie front and center, formed a chain to pull her up. But she isn’t budging.

“Weeee’re gonna get yooooou ouuuttta thiiis!” Maddie strained, clearly out of energy herself. Soon, her body will lock, along with the others, and they’ll all meet the same, terrible fate.

Jackie moved her nubs idly, and it dawned on her.

“…Let me go,” barely a whisper.

“NO!” Aiko shouted, so far from the back, practically sweating buckets.

“No. Let me go,” Jackie insisted.

“N-never!” Tracy squeaked out yet went up a pitch. “What happened to the bravado?!”

“Jackie, I know you can’t feel anything or some shit, but you’re really--!” Maddie was cut off.

“No, I do feel something. Familiar. Super familiar…” Jackie glanced down, moving her nubs more, to get a confirmation. “Ground. And not just… Not just any ground. I know those loose floorboards from anywhere…”

Maddie eyes got bigger than Jackie was ever expected, as the grip loosened a bit, “Y-you mean…?”

Jackie looked at her, then River, then Tracy, and finally Aiko, “It’s worth a try. One final try.”

Maddie then turned to the struggling girls. They knew that they were kidding themselves when they wanted to save her, to give her the humane illusion that she could’ve been saved. But they were equally tired, equally broken.

She let go and then watched Jackie break into pieces, swirling into the void. She then jumped in herself, same effect. Then River dived in. Then Tracy, closed her eyes shut, leaned forward and sucked in. Aiko took steps back and performed a running start, leaping in. The world promptly was allowed to collapse, everything being devoured by the void until it was the very void’s turn itself.

It was like every psychedelic, mind bending interpretation every artist, everyone, had on the metaphysical, the beyond, but unrestricted. Nothing held back by the human mind, capability, technology and comprehension. And it would’ve been unseen, untouched by said human experience until the girls made their choice. Were there colors? Were there shapes, sounds and structure? Where were they? It was all so much bigger than them, they were mere specs despite unable to sense themselves in such grandness. Then came something, a sequence, that was understandable, recognizable, especially to Jackie.

The countless centuries that were so alien yet was building foundation toward what they knew, the collective birth of civilization, the birth of kingdoms and dynasties, the fall of Rome, the Napoleonic Wars, discovery of the New World, the revolutionary birth of America, the two World Wars, the two bombs, the tangible paranoia that ruled over decades, the man on the Moon, the corpse of the President on the motorcade, the lone man in front of the tank, the tearing down of the wall, the two towers on fire, all there, all along at once with the other moments, stretching across the plane but still seen, maybe the moments were something she and the others picked or what they could make out.

But then there was the shot of the most important woman in the world, getting warped by a freak Shift wave on live television, the tragedy that they lived through and understood since they were roughly five. Thus, came the cavalcade of the series of events and moments they all knew too well, unable to look away, this time. What was called a transition was instead a downward slope that even they figured then was a bad sign. The mood of existential dread that defined them and others. But they didn’t have to watch any longer.

The Shift Noumena, represented by a crawling infection, took over the moments of history, all of it a blur now. Tangles of writhing, eternal veins, twitching, becoming engorged and paving over even itself, a healed over scab that itself had marks that could never fix. Then it became just a flash. It was all a flash, in the end. A flicker in the expansive unknown that simply continued. The unexplainable. They all experienced this, and they can never explain this, even to themselves, for the rest of their lives.

And it was all a moment, as if it all didn’t matter. Jackie stood in the middle of her room, finally safe and sound.

Jack Snr., her father, came rushing in by opening the door, with his wife Dawn behind him, “Jackie?! What was that noise? When did you get in--?”

He didn’t know that his questions would’ve been solved with answer that was so incompatible.

All he saw was his only baby girl with totally blank eyes with a face twisted frozen with pure terror.

What she wanted was finally given to her.

Her skin went translucent, opening in sections under her own power. This extended to her limbs, arms, legs, all expanding outwards into pieces, but always meant to be somehow. Her screams, which were strained by her damaged throat, not only showed no signs of damage earlier, but grew louder, stronger, as if she finally found the hidden well of power.

Said power shined out of the sections that her pieces of herself couldn’t cover, the exposed tissue, and said light was flashing in some certain motion. Then it happened, as she separated into even more of her pieces and they all started to shift and connect endlessly, as she tried to move and continued to scream.

Jack, not only knowing what’s happening but dreaded it, shielded his wife as she cried out for their daughter, and that gutted him, holding her tightly for his benefit versus hers.

Jackie has now become a shifting mass of her individual pieces, every time she moved illustrated with such detail, it lingered after each motion. She grabbed onto her desk for it to spilt under her power, she fell backwards into her poster littered wall only to break it with her might, she finally stumbled unto her loose floor, reaching out to her parents, only for it to cave in.

It wasn’t just Jackie. It was each of the girls, going through the same motions, in their respective homes. Maddie tried to run outside, away from her neighborhood, only to have everyone witness her come undone. Aiko slowly merged onto the bed that she almost never sleeps in and they couldn’t pull her out. Tracy, alone in her apartment, turned it into a multi-loaded trap. And River in hopes of trying to breath, trying to calm down, only became ghastly.

They did it. They achieved their siVis.