Jack Snr. was taken aback. His newfound mission in life was to save it, to finally affect it on a meaningful scale when it was nearly impossible to do so. Protecting people from this new weird.

Now his own daughter was threatening to endanger said people. Becoming that new weird, when she was the one he wanted to protect the most.

Another failure, he racked up on his ledger.

Sinclair leaned forward, “Y’know boss, I can’t really take that threat oh so lightly… But considerin’ this is meant to be a tender ol’ family moment… I’mma put on my headphones and look the other way, if you catch my drift~?”

And the bubblegum lady did just that, turning on her heels.

Jackie took in her transformed father. Wearing a futurist take on an army command uniform, white with dark grey lines accenting it. But despite all of that, her father wore his sunglasses, wrapped around behind his head.

Just to see his tired eyes, wet and red.

“Why?” Jackie’s eyes looked glazed over, nothing but emptiness and lacking reflection. Jack wondered in that moment if siVis was making that so. “Why remotely bother, when this meaningless existence keeps finding more ways to hit us and keep us just as meaningless?”

Jack then said the phrase that every parent dreaded to admit.

“…I don’t know,” the giant man’s tone, which was always light, so low it caused his voice to rumble. “I just don’t know, babygirl. I wish—more than anything right now—to tell you something. But I can’t. I don’t think anyone can.”

“So why bother?” Jackie asked again, flat. “Why can’t I just go and end it all right now? Destroy a block, maybe an entire subsection of the city? Maybe people can understand—nah. We will never understand. It’s why we’ve been stuck here, isn’t it?”

Jack didn’t say anything. He let her go on.

“This could’ve been it. Finally been it. Facing these Shifts, giving us that one sole goal and meaning to our short and nebulous lives—we should be united right now. Arm in arm, under a common banner—and maybe for once, taste being fulfilled. We had the one fucking threat that can kill us all—and we still fucked it up. We don’t progress. We don’t learn. We just fumble through the next disaster, moan about it, let things take their damage, and then make movies about how we should never forget it despite not learning a single thing.”

Jack was still within the silence that followed.

Jackie looked to her father, but through him. Past him. “So what’s stopping me, then? What reason do I have not to do any of that? Sure I’m weak, but I can still take five people with me. What’s keeping me from doing something in this fucked world?”

“Because even without the things me and your Mom taught you, you’re one of the few people in this world that’s genuinely good,” Jack looked her directly in the eyes, meeting her with his worn ones as they swam in his tears. “You’re just hurt. You’re a victim.”

“A victim that just admitted that she’s a monster—” Jackie cut off, huffing. “—Some good person that honestly wants to crush every single stupid human in her palms so that she could fucking win SOMETHING FOR ONCE!”

Her head hung. “EVEN IF WE WON ALL THOSE TIMES, IT STILL WOULD’VE ENDED UP LIKE THIS! NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE TRIED TO CHANGE THINGS, TO BETTER OURSELVES! IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER! I HATE THIS! I HATE ALL OF YOU! I FUCKING HATE IT HERE!”

“…And you should,” Jack Snr. agreed. “Hate me most of all. A man who should’ve made the world better when he was younger. Who should’ve gone against the grain, even if it costed me my sanity, body, soul. You all inherited our mistakes and problems. We should’ve gave you paradise, but we all lost it.”

Jackie just kept her head down.

“…Please tell me that Mom’s okay, at least.”

Jack Snr. closed his eyes.

“She is. We’re… Currently apart, right now. When you were gone, I… Wanted to do something. Needed to do something. I couldn’t accept it even if I tried. So I buried myself in my work, and she… Needed me. And I was too stupid to realize that. All these years, I flushed down the toilet too, it seems.”

Jackie began to sob again. She was so low on tears, her eyes simply burned.

“See…?” Jackie choked out. “Why bother…?”

Jack brought his daughter in again, into his embrace, so determined to not make the same mistake again with a woman he loved.

“…I can only tell you my case. So please. Just listen.”

He felt her nod against his shoulder.

“I guess in a way… The world broke me in such a way… I sort of… Can’t stop? If that makes sense? I’ve always been a massive cry baby. Too big, constantly ramming into things. I once cried as a kid because I realized that I was stepping on ants without knowing it, and the fact that I’m causally murdering things without… Taking that in. I’ve been berated, made fun of, pushed around—and worse of all, given up on. All of that happening, all at once… You’d think that I’d finally ‘man up’ in that scenario, y’know? ‘Grow a pair’, finally get ‘how’ this world works… All of that pain, all of that force going against me—it just made me go against it on a fundamental level. Y’know? I adapted against all that in time. And I stumbled, and I cracked, and I still fucked up and I still cry over spilled milk and ants. I’m crying right now. But I can’t help it. I never could, and that was the thing that made me strong.”

Jack Snr. tightened the grip on his daughter. “But it’s not really strength, because there’s an element of… Admitting weakness, I guess? Like, you can’t handle it as you are and yet… How you are is the thing that saves you. Drives you. I have faith in that you won’t go down this route, but if you did—and the world continues to keep going mad… I’ll keep on fighting. Like I always have.”

Jackie sniffled, moving away from her father.

“Th-thank you…” Jackie was so relived to admit defeat.

“In short, be stubborn like your old man,” Jack finally smiled in what felt like forever.

“Funny how that’s the one thing I haven’t failed at…”

“As much as I want to joke about it… You don’t have to keep going. This world makes it seem like you have to live fast, to get something from it, or else you’re out of luck… You don’t need to push all the time, babygirl. Sometimes, there’s other things to do. At the end of the day, it’s all up to you.”

Jackie looked up, her puffy eyes having clarity again.

“It is up to me, at the end of the day, huh…?”

“Now I don’t like the way ya’ phrased that~”

Sinclair walked up to the display, right next to a kneeling Jack.

“You’ve already made threats I can’t ignore. Let’s not make any of this messy. You’re hurt, you’re weak, you’re plum outta options,” Sinclair said in a threatening tone, despite being sugar sweet. “You’re virtually harmless.”

Jackie smiled up at her, which unnerved the pink girl.

“I am pretty harmless, aren’t I? I don’t think I can never fix my siVis. All it does is breakdown on me… So I wonder, if it can breakdown other things.”

And with a struggle, with her face scrunched up in thought, Jackie began breaking out of her mental prison, by just continuing to break things as she had.