This is a fused branch of the storyline continuing from [26/A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[27/X]
For the Primary Branch [----]

No one made a play for the guns and weapons as Dale grumbled and wished he had kept one with him. Olivia and Hanako made their way to the front of the group while both Giselles flanked them. Hanako appeared harsh and stern with all of the emotional details draining from her features. In contrast, Olivia wore plaintive concern but less for herself and more for everyone around her.

Through everything, it occurred to the older Giselle, that they barely had the time to be bewildered and confused with one another. Here stood her twin, which was kind of a big deal for an only child like Jeremy. Although her other self wore the feelings and expressions of a different life, a harsher life, judging by her missing right arm, even though a crackle of blue light filled the void at her wrist.

Finn lingered nearby with the empty right side of his face. She knew what he could see might be useful, although it wasn’t as though the beast was hiding anymore. Rachel, fortunately, stayed further back.

The bastard had taken so much. He didn’t deserve a deal, no matter what Blessin had in mind. It didn’t matter if they had to fight to the last ember of strength they had left. Evil couldn’t be placated. At the same time, even though so many of their friends volunteered for this, they didn’t deserve that fate. To be trapped. To be separated from their loved ones.

She had no idea what Blessin intended, but she clung to the frail hope that she wasn’t about to screw them over. The eruption of blackness was slow but continuous, like squeezing toothpaste split into black licorice strands with the dark, foul presence of sickening crude oil. Blessin didn’t aim her gun at the monster but instead starkly stared it down as it formed into a central mass.

“What kind of deal, my dear? And what do you have to offer me? From my position, it looks like I hold all the cards. What will you give me?”

”The Radiants are yours. Take them and leave the people behind. You can also have me. The only human to fight you off. Everyone else goes free through that door, never to even witness a trace of your presence for the rest of their lives. You won’t touch them, this world, or anyone they love.”

Giselle burst out, followed by the younger Giselle mouthing the same. “Screw that!”

Blessin tightened her scowl. “We’re not getting out of here with them. And this isn’t our fight. This is a battle between spirits and monsters from a dimension humans never should’ve even gotten close to. Some morons gave these poor creatures hope and never considered the consequences. It sucks, but we have to pay the price now. I’m sorry.”

Growls and complaints were issued from the group. Cerberus loomed and burst in, “I haven’t said if I will accept this deal. You have no idea what I really want. This place is special. It’s the only spot where you can pass between worlds. And they hid it inside the brightest bunker.” Sections of blackness slipped around the rainbow ring. Blessin took one step to the right and glanced at her doppelgänger, who was much further back.

“So, what do you want? No other lives are negotiable.” Giselle noticed the blooming fury in Olivia and Hanako. She did her best to calm Mari.

”What do I want? Why, it’s so very simple. So easy for you to give me. I just want to go home. The gateway is here, and I miss my world. I am confined to human realms, and I want to go back to be with my kind. That’s all I ask from you and your friends. Don’t they agree that’s such a little thing to offer?”

Blessin appeared tense. She fussed with her hair and pressed her fingers into her palms. “You just want…to go?”

“Yes, just open the door and I’ll see myself out. That’s all I ever really wanted.”

Nothing about this sounded on the level to either Giselle. They each knew about Cerberus’s lies in painful ways. No way was that all.

Blessin edged sideways but still kept strikingly close to the ring. She was watching carefully as the immense bulk of the creature drew together, folding in. Only when the entryway was clear of the grotesque mass, did Blessin strangely seem to relax. She glanced over again. The twin Blessin wore a flat, inscrutable look but gave a single nod.

“Fine by me. Go back to where you belong.”

Like some otherworldly ferrofluid, Cerberus swirled and twisted into the center of the ring. “Gladly…”

Everyone watched anxiously as Blessin tapped the console and hypnotic vibrations like a barely-visible mirage shifted from the ground to the air. As the effect spread, Cerberus added, “I intend to go. But not for long. I’ll be bringing all my friends with me. And I might need a snack for the road…”

Tendrils suddenly shot out and dug into Blessin on all sides. She screamed for a second and then quietly winced.

“You’re different than them. You’re worth taking one of you with me to see what the others think.”

Blessin hung her head with an undulating expression of pain. Softly, she whispered something not loud enough for anyone to hear. Cerberus edged closer. “What was that?”

“… I said… That’s what I’m counting on.”

Instantly, a golden field snapped out from Blessin‘s head like a mouth made of light. Striking, shimmering wings wrapped completely around the black mass and ensnared it. It was a Radiant! It had to be! But how?

Giselle suspected something was up from the moment Blessin managed to block Cerberus at the New Age store with a golden light and later implied it was her crystals or divine protection. Then, the actual strike against Cerberus before they got here. But Mari didn’t react, nor did Hanako. Young Giselle was of the same thought. No evidence from Athena of another Radiant, nor had Olivia mentioned anything in the three months they lived with Blessin. How had it been able to hide so well?

That was basically the same thing that Cerberus screeched in horror. “Not possible! I can smell them! I can taste them! How can this be?!”

With a thin smile, Blessin pressed herself closer to Cerberus. “Because they’re patient. Because they fight for every ounce of their lives. Because they have more humanity in every tiny, quiet moment than in your entire wretched form.”

Cerberus gnashed and writhed like a trapped dog. It struggled to retort, to offer another pithy comment, but the flailing and twisting receded until it was a black orb trapped in stark, golden light. Blessin turned to look at the group and her doppelgänger. Giselle felt an ominous sense. Blessin nodded again and her other self sniffled.

“My friends. I’m sorry for the deception. I wish I could explain so many secrets I hold. I leave that to my other life. I told you about choice. To break free of Cerberus, I have to hold him down while we rip him apart. The gateway will open, but neither of us will make it. I’m so sorry. I wish you could’ve gotten to know my sweet little girl of golden hair. She sacrificed everything for this, and I gladly stand with her.”

Barely holding her emotions together, Blessin swiftly explained to her twin, “Choice. Like we said. Contrasts. Something you loathe and want to get rid of. Something you love and want to embrace. An emotion that tears you one way and the inverse. Strong love and bitter pain. Feed the fire as much as you can with whatever you have until there’s nothing left of the bastard.”

She urged them to get closer and place their offerings, with her own to begin, explained in words. “Aosaginohi to name the one I saved from the beast. A fitting, suitable name but one strange and disliked by her. We actually fought about it. She throws the cutest tantrums. She much preferred the name so close to my heart…Emmanuelle. And simply Nue. Someone new. Someone so beautiful. One to live and one to sacrifice.” She turned away as a vibrating tear stretched through Cerberus within the ring, confined by the glowing radiance.

Finley came forward next. He struggled to understand all this, but he innately recognized the emotion. He stretched between the struggles of the store as the mall around was desperately dying and pulled against the imagining of going on a date with Blessin no matter how she looked, no matter what secrets she held, finishing, “You would be a queen to me, no matter what. I dream of one fair hair as few have dreamed before.” Another rip stretched on the other side.

Gwen struggled with hers, feeling the wish that she had been faster to get to the cars while also bending her emotions through the desperate hope that she wouldn’t lose her friend and they might go to the beach next week and play some silly game on the shore. She sobbed through her words, but it was enough. Dale focused on possibilities, wishing he was closer to so many people around here and stretching his thoughts over who he might’ve been as a woman.

Finn cradled his missing eye with fervent anger, imagining what he would do to Cerberus in turn, but also turning him into a cat in her mind space like he pretended to do with the illusion of their kitties. Blushing slightly, she delved into every quiet moment holding Giselle while being desperately held as Rachel. Cerberus looked more like the strands of a baseball painted black and ripped to chaotic pieces.

Rachel reciprocated what her other self offered while imagining her gamer destiny with exuberant crowds contrasted with her quiet arts. She wished solemnly that she could’ve worked out the initial toilet nonsense before it ran down the slope of revenge. At the same time, she desperately wanted to adopt and care for all the little lost children trying to emulate what it meant to be human.

Each Giselle could feel the quiet wishes of their guests within, as they added tension to the trapped beast. Olivia and Hanako held hands as they went next. Their wishes were similar and their choices adamant. They simply wanted to be children despite the darkness wrapped in human lives. The mistakes that people made, they wanted as their own. Mistakes to grow from. Olivia contrasted the meals of tater tots from the cafeteria with Rachel’s expert dinner. Hanako chose between the quiet waiting within her seat as the three months passed and the joyful sounds of playing Smash with newfound friends.

Desperately, each Giselle wanted to add more logs to that fire. They wanted the bastard to burn, even though he already appeared a mess of tangled wires spreading towards anarchy. Young Giselle chose between the anxieties and uncertainties of school and the love of her quiet found family. She lamented the distance between her and Jeremy, between who he was and who she is. The wires stretched to a muddled haze trapped in a sunbeam.

Older Giselle reflected on the possibilities of motherhood. It terrified her in so many little ways. Not so much the pregnancy but all the uncertainties of looking at someone like Hanako and fearing that she didn’t have the words, wisdom, or ability to give her what she really needed. How could she give what a child really needed? How could she not disappoint them? At the same time, she stretched into the easy realm of loving Rachel no matter what face she wore and what face Giselle presented to her. All the quiet moments after surgery, and the end of a raucous multiplayer victory. Cuddling after a quiet day of work at home and panting after running to reach a rescheduled flight. The chaos and the ease. The solemn love and the silly arguments. The bitter and the sweet.

She wouldn’t trade any of it for anything, but she also darkly imagined being alone. The true stretch of possibilities. She accepted life without Tycho, despite the hole left in her heart. She had to imagine the same without Rachel. With Rachel and without. And in this final possibility, everything erupted into a column of bleeding light.

When it cleared, it was like the world fell into a frozen moment of time. They were still in that vault. Her side no longer ached with warmth. For young Giselle, it was like her head was clear. The world around them hadn’t changed but rather it felt like they had stepped off the stage of a play and were standing behind the scenes before the next act premiered. They also saw new faces.

Gently cradling young Giselle’s stump was a small girl with a face like hers blended with traces of Olivia and Rachel. Her hair was a vibrant, unnatural shade of blue like shimmering electricity. “Hi, mommy. I’m so happy to meet you.”

A gyre of tangled emotions swirled through her. She thought herself too old and too young for such a moment. Meanwhile, the girl’s twin with darker hair and different traces of inspiration clung to the older Giselle‘s left and spoke the same. She had Finn’s warm gaze along with a touch of Dale‘s playfulness and Finley’s coy energy even while she was the picture of Giselle‘s flesh and blood. Far too soon, the girls let go and walked forward. They joined Olivia and Hanako, who drifted towards the glowing light erupting in the room. Finn and Rachel stretched forward plaintively, as did both Giselles. For Finn, Mari tenderly caressed the place where her eye had been. For Rachel, Olivia and Hanako wrapped themselves around her stomach.

“Where are you going?” The desperate question was only spoken by the older Giselle, but it represented the plea of all of them.

“To be born”, Hanako stated simply and looked to Olivia. Olivia looked back and regarded the rest of the Radiants. Somehow, Giselle had missed the golden girl enveloped by hair stretching down to her legs at Blessin’s side. When she scampered off to join the other girls, it looked like Blessin left a limb with her. The brightness of her locks faded to a straw luster.

Olivia halted the group and whispered around. She smiled softly and conveyed with Hanako, “Permission?”

The Giselles pondered, “Permission…?”

“…To say goodbye.”

Young Giselle clung to her mouth, fearful she might whimper and cry if she didn’t hold on. Older Giselle trembled and truly felt the emptiness now that Mari stood across from her, forever separate. Desperately, each of them just wanted to say no, to hang on and stay here, to stay in this moment of quietness. But it felt like soon the passing pause would slip away and this was all they had. It took immense effort, but they each nodded.

“Goodbye…”

Joyously striding forward, the Radiant girls, the bright shimmers of new life, walked into the glowing bloom. Once they did, the light spread everywhere, washing over thought, fear, and hope with gentle comfort. 

[No poll this time :)]