“Please,” Tracy clutched at her head, which was once done up nicely now disheveled, small chunks of goo. “Please tell us the astronomical odds of us just walking into the thing in one piece, never mind doing something…”

“Look,” A-J began, pointing at her. “Things are fried bad, but if we let this write our exit for us? Then that’ll be it. There won’t be a conversation needed.”

“It’s a Nulgarrt building their ecosystem,” River debated back. “We’re gonna have to not only play on their home turf, but figure out the rules while fighting them. Even with a success, that’s guaranteed damage just going in.”

“We didn’t even fight ours!” Tracy extended her arms out in desperation. “We barely interacted, the same level of what happened just moments ago, and we couldn’t do shit! Why are we subscribing to vain hope right now?!”

A-J looked up with Tracy. Barely an expression made, which caused both Jackie and Tracy to be taken aback by it.

“Y’know, I pegged you as the very, very desperate one,” A-J retorted. “And yet you’re the one that’s telling us there’s no chance?”

That silenced the meek woman, she shrunk in her spot.

“Thank you. It’s like I said. I don’t live for a lot of things right now. That was before all the cosmic mind-spirit-body magic. But when I set myself on something to do, I’ll damn sure that I’m gonna bloody do it. I’m getting you lot out of here, I’m getting you out alive, and I am NOT gonna die wearing THIS shit—”

“… It’s weird,” Maddie croaked out. “You’re one of the high level siVis people we’ve talked to, but you’re proving to be the realest motherfucker we’ve encountered so far. It’s mind boggling.”

A-J looked at Maddie from afar, wincing a tad. “You sound like you’re getting worse there—”

“If I’m not dead, then it doesn’t get any worse—” Maddie’s voice broke and crumbled as she said that.

“My god, you girls are like, moody archetypes rolled into a troupe…” The older woman got up. “You lot must be 17 or higher. That’s when the emotions are the highest.”

“Well, I’m sixteen, so—”

“This is fucking news to me--!” Jackie exclaimed, looking towards Maddie with wide eyes.

“We’re literally a year off, if it wasn’t for my insides aging, the number is just a victory lap thing.”

“Are you really going to give a tirade on the idea of birthdays, Solomon--?” Jackie squinted at her.

The usually, and self-delightfully, argumentative girl just fell silent. Didn’t even bother keeping up the fight, which immediately caused Jackie pause.

A-J reached into one of the pouches of the vest, putting out a green can, tossing it to Maddie, who caught it while looking down. Jackie shook her head at the display, the fact that they can do somethings like that all of sudden.

“It’s Battery Acid,” A-J explained. “Once you drink that, it’ll give you the energy to just power through just about everything. Catch is, clearly gonna hate yourself as soon it dies on you.”

“… Is that a brand here that I never encountered here yet?” Jackie let her surprised-mixed-with-trepidation be clear in her tone.

“It’s just an energy drink, you cop,” Maddie popped it open. Causing the green fizzle blast from within the can, hardly can escape from the small opening. “I would’ve cold cocked it into her face if it had a hint of alcohol to it.”

A-J rubbed her face, on the same side, in a dramatic huff. “And just when I got it refigured. I hurts.”

“… Just to try to negotiate—” Aiko clasped her hands together. “No beginner’s level of that skill? Or at least the idea of relocating the pieces of the body? Do you feel around for them or--?”

“So, let’s get this in order…” A-J clapped her hands together. She held her hands up to her mouth, in a prayer motion. “You don’t have to give everything away, but…”

She pointed, at each girl. “You can make structures bend to your will…? And you, you can turn misty. No idea with you—but you said something about not having anything, no idea with pouty face there, and you… Some enhancement ability. Is that the correct assumption?”

“More or less,” Jackie answered, shrugging a bit with her arms crossed.

Aiko just coolly closed her eyes, turning her head upright. “If you’re not going to show us how to be unstoppable tanks, then no info for you—”

“I can turn things into silly string, she can turn into a ghost and take over things,” Maddie shook her head, only because of the jolt of energy that flooded her senses.

“A mess of very situational things, alright…” A-J massaged her own hands, the wheels turning in her head. “I’m gonna propose what I think we should do, just shout if your stuff has any complications to it.”

The woman clapped again, just once again. “Just pouring chemicals into the Stew isn’t going to help, I hope we all got that? It would just help them strive in more in harsh elements. It has to be something that just fucks the course entirely—but also something that can cripple, and something we can deal with. Glass, iron, something that prolongs everything. But before we do all that, we have to force the three we’re dealing with now to retreat—go back to the Stew, and heal in it. We attack, we follow, and we ruin their lives. We’re in the store room, we basically have everything we need. We just have to search for them.”

“Sounds good to me…” Jackie agreed. “The biggest problem is doing into their ecosystem. Sure, this means they won’t attack probably if we keep our distance and let them lick their wounds, but we’re walking into territory we don’t know. Never good.”

“That’s why we gotta squad up. Cover each other, move as a unit.”

“I do have a concern… What could harm these things?” Tracy brought up. “They can eat through earth alone, so we can’t cause them to fly into a building or crash them into the ground.”

A-J smirked, “But we do have pretty desperate animals.”

River blinked. “Is that against your job or--?”

The guide shrugs. “They said protect the place and the populous in any way I can. Protection can also mean self-defense.”

“And even if we get the Tigers on our side or whatever,” Tracy interjected. “That doesn’t change the fact the Nulgarrt might be hardier than what we expect, even for actual animal predators. Like, we need to figure out to at least soften them up, find something that burns through anything regardless.”

River looked distant for a bit.

“…Is there any, uh. Chlorine-based bleach anywhere here? And a flicker—lighter.”

A-J nodded rapidly. “You need to find it in here, but I’m sure we got it.”

“Then I’ll go and search for it…”

Tracy rose up. “I’ll help!”

Maddie perked an eyebrow at that. Was going to say something, and then silenced herself. She then pointed at the duo with her thumb, still holding the massive can.

“Alright, you ladies go down and search everything,” A-J said. “I’ll hang here with your friend.”

“’Friend’ is still a strong word,” Maddie retorted.

“…I do not at all miss being a teenager,” A-J just shook her head. “Holy shit—”

“No, no…” Jackie looked down with a somber expression on her face. “She’s an ass about it but she’s right. Kinda fucked that up for myself.”

The other left, one by one, walking down the stairs, further into the storage room.

“Is it too private…?”

Jackie looked up at the guide. A-J shrugged, raising her hands up in confusion. “… Y’know, to ask about all that? You girls said you’ve survived a lot of things together. Isn’t it true?”

“Doesn’t mean that I didn’t fuck up the possible relationship we could’ve had due to my choices,” Jackie answered. “It’s… Justified retribution at this point.”

A-J just leaned against the wall behind her, eyes on Jackie.

“You saw what happened with me out there. I rushed in, got scared in the end, and fell on the ground. Just add the complicated nature of people stuck in a shitty situation, and you’ll get why without me telling you.”

“I’d still like to know. If not for further knowledge. Also that small part of me that’s still a bit human.”

Jackie scratched at her forehead, some of the dried flakes from the Stew residue.

“Well… We don’t have a prior connection, before all this. I don’t know what each of them really wanted from that night, outside of what they said and the personal theories I made. But… It was a bad day for me. All the frustration, all because of this shitty fantasy undermining every single aspect of my life—all of our lives. It made me realize that my parents weren’t the only perfect ones, it made me lash out at my best friend—who was a fucking terrible bully, but I helped her get beyond that—ruined everything about that relationship. And all this talk about integration, that the bad times will soon end… And they kept prolonging it. So I ‘had’ to. I had to witness the Shift coming that night so it could awaken my siVis.”

She grasped at her other hand from trembling, not realizing the other was just as shaken.

“So you guys were bone-headed kids I’ve been hearing about,” A-J had her eyebrow arched. “Chancing it, to get siVis? Running head onto the events, knowing how fucking terrible it could turn on you?”

“We met, at Pell Forest, which was on the pathway of the Shift. We were all closed off, it drove me nuts, so I made the first conversation. It eventually got organic, but y’know… It took a while getting there. But there was the same thread. All of us was just… So tired of what we were subjected to. And like the stupid, bone-headed teens that we are, we were doing something drastic to stop it all. The Shift came… And let me tell you. In that moment, I was so scared. I tried to convince myself then that this is everything I wanted in the end, that it’ll be worth it… But all of us—we could’ve been fucking mangled! Warped, like the other victims! It was the stupidest idea in the world… That’s why I was so relived that our shitty luck made it so that the Shift made a complete turn away from us at the last moment.”

A-J’s face morphed in surprise. She was about to comment, but Jackie is going to continue by hook or crook, cutting herself off before she could begin.

“You know how… The silent thing, about anything Noumena. It’s not just the weird events, but the reality tearing. The weakening of it all, causing hiccups, glitches.”

“Of course,” A-J responded. “The reason why it’s not often reported because… There’s nothing left to report when it’s all done…”

The guide’s tired eyes flickered in realization.

“…You girls… Oh no…”

“We got pulled in. Trapped in… To this fucking day, no idea what happened, what it was… But it was like a mirror realm or something. It was falling to pieces, as if the thing was just created and couldn’t sustain itself. We fucking screamed, nearly turned on each other… We managed to find a way out but… I got hit. Bad. I was barely there after the injury happened.”

The tall girl tapped on her head.

“It was mental damage, blood… Couldn’t breathe. They could’ve left me. M-maybe they should’ve… But they carried me with them. We got out somehow… That should’ve been the happy ending. But we got what we wanted due to all of that. The strain, the stress, the sheer fucking surrealness of it all—that’s how we ended up activating it. We all got rushed to the hospital, and to this day, I’ll always remember the… Emptiness I felt when I took everything in, enlightened. Everything looked more dour, more unconquerable… More ugly. Now I couldn’t turn it off.”

“…You said hospital—” A-J clued in what was going to happen next.

“Yep, it was the same day that everyone’s new edgy playpal, Mayhem, activated his siVis. Same night.”

“Fuck meeee…” A-J stressed, putting her hands to the sides of her face. “It just wasn’t a good week for you girls…”

“Try three.”

A-J blinked, as if the girl suddenly spoke in a different language. But as a fellow, but increasingly far along siVis user, she quickly understood what she meant.

“Jesus H. Fucking Christ,” A-J facepalmed with her two hands, covering her face. She still decided to speak with them over her mouth. “You lot were stranded and you didn’t go home until that massive Shift wall was down.”

“Yep. After everything happened in the hospital, when Mayhem activated his nightmare shadow ability for the first time and tried fighting for our lives… He created that wall of Shift, that spilt the island in two and we were on the business district side. We went to a Megaplex, had a Nulgarrt in it. We tried teleporting using the PATH-OS system, ended up stranded in a Terminsys City. Got back, had to fight against Shift-affected technology… Every woe humanity had with the Noumena, we survived against. Barely.”

“And you did it!” A-J pointed out. “And due to how this shitty thing works, you can learn from and avoid those mistakes going forward!”

“… We were never meant to have siVis in the first place.”

A-J took a pause, getting up from her leaning. “You’re Shattered?”

“Recovering, but yeah. We didn’t even have full access to everything, and was on the verge of breaking down every time we got caught up in something… And being honest, I feel like it’s the same way now, despite everything. Even if we recovered, survived… We’re still on a bad foot. Everyone else here is able to use their powers without abandon, without limits… And we can’t catch up. How can we make a lick of difference if we’re so low on the ground?”

A-J stood there, looking away. Scratching the back of her head, twisting her lips.

“It’s a raw deal, for sure. I don’t know how I would handle any of that… But I’ll say it again, because I feel it’s important… Gah. I’ve never been good at this, with the little I had to be this support… But you did survive. And you did it, again and again. Sure, yeah, you’re not at a Trend level, but there’s something that I’m gonna unveil. Something that’s more powerful than some siVis trick.”

A-J raised her hands towards Jackie. “We see them at their best and their egos at critical mass, but we don’t see the hours of their own whinging and crying like we do. It’s time, that’s what it all is. It’s time. But we have to make it, work for it.”

“But what happens when you’re on a road that splits into multiple paths, and each one disregards what the other lead to?”

A-J shrugged, but not out of malice, apathy. “It’s something you have to figure out.”

Jackie only looked down again. “Yeah.”

“And you kids have so much to figure out…” A-J shook her head. “None of this shit is your fault. Guys above my generation fucked everything, then we got all mopey about it versus facing it head on. You guys are just victims at this point. How anyone learn from a broken world and broken people?”

Jackie nodded. The shame weighed her head down.

“That is the thing about all this… Why Nulgarrt are such a threat. Hell, why this whole saga fucked us up so badly in the end. It’s our collective ego as a species. Those fucks outside? They understand they have no time, no chance or favor in their wheelhouse. They understand that they need to adapt, and is willing to do it so they can survive. The ego of humanity cannot allow them to prosper because that involves leaving behind what they want. We have to break, in order to do that. Understand that everything is gone and there’s nothing left but us. But then that ego ends up hurt and scattered all over—and now it becomes the last thing we have, so fuck everything else other than it right now.”

Jackie just rubbed her closed eyes, in frustration. Fear.

“I don’t want that to be true…” Jackie whined out. So little despite the deep voice.

A-J scoffed, rubbing the side of her face that was once emptied, letting the fingers trail down.

“I didn’t catch myself there. Said ‘humans’ again. 'They'. That’s the shittest thing about this stuff. All that knowledge unlocked, and do every biological test—you’re still considered a person. But you’re so far back into your head that you can’t remember that. Feel that…”

“I fight against it. Every day. But as I keep doing that, I’m losing connection to the power that I need right now… It’s fucked. All fucked.”

Jackie felt both hands suddenly on her shoulders. She met with A-J, who was a few inches down to her. But she gazed right into her eyes, seeing how further along she is.

Jackie and the girls, starting siVictims, have the ring along their irises.

People like A-J, their entire eye is a series of siVis parts, formed together to create a “normal” eye. You can see the whirring, the intersections. Which made what she was about to say all the more poignant.

“Like I said from the start. Don’t be like us. Any of us shitty people that ruined everything for ourselves. Figure out your way of doing things. So that maybe, one day or someone like you, can come up with the craziest shit imaginable. It’s not about power, it’s about what you can do with it. Do this better, not perfect. Fall into the pitfalls, and be the ones that can climb out. Take this higher. I know you can.”

Jackie looked at her distant, but tired eyes. Maybe it was her putting her emotions in other people’s actions. But she can see the ambers of her lost humanity in them.

“…I’ll try,” Jackie agreed. “I’ll never stop trying.”

A-J looked away from a moment, to her left side. As if she was pondering something.

“I’ll at least tell you this,” she snapped her head forward again. “siVis collects experiences. That’s why you can’t forget, why you can’t just run away unless you activate work against that. You collect all of your struggle, all of your success… And even your mistakes. Use them.”

Jackie crumpled her brow in confusion. “I don’t even know how to decode that… But yeah. I’ll try. Don’t worry.”

A-J slapped at her shoulder, patting it aggressively before clasping it strongly. It was a sign that this woman was fully behind them, invested in their story.

Out of all of the weird feelings, sensations that Jackie had encountered so far on this journey… This was one of the warmest.