"Natalie?"
Lorna Grayswift walked back into the lavender room, gently closing the door as she entered. "I'm back, sweetie. Are you-"
"I know what this is," Natalie said numbly, her back turned.
Her mother stood, unsure what to say.
The wolf girl turned. "Why was I in the Bullet, Mom?" she asked with a trace of accusation. "You said I'd never have to go back in it. Not since-"
"Natalie. Honey." Lorna shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, I know I broke my promise, but I just... there was nothing else to be done. I tried, believe me I tried everything else I could."
Nat shook her head, holding her hands up. "What. Ever. I am really mad about this, but frankly I'm just... glad to be alive. So come on, tell me. How'd we win?? Did I black out and miss the final fight or something? Did Jacent free you from Osoth, what happened?"
She tilted her head. "I..."
"Wait." Natalie looked puzzled. "What... what happened? Why are you so tall? Where... ohmigod!" She grabbed her chest through the patient uniform she wore. "My boobs! What happened to my boobs?? I mean I know they weren't huge, but just-"
"Sweetie." Lorna sighed. "We have to talk."
Her eyebrows scrunched up. "Uh, yeah, I was kinda hoping you would, what's going on??"
She took a deep breath. "How... old do you think you are?"
Natalie laughed. "What... what kind of question is that? I'm sixteen, Mom, you put it on my birthday cake. You did the nerdy nose and base for the one, as usual."
Lorna swallowed hard. "I've... only done that once, sweetie. When you turned ten."
Nat chuckled, but her laughter died quickly. "... Wait. What? Mom, that's not funny. You can't... mess with me like that right now."
"I'm not," she reported sadly. "You're ten. You're my little ten year old girl, and I love you."
The girl blinked. "What! No. This is stupid, gimme a mirror."
"The... doctor doesn't think mirrors are a good idea, considering what you did to the last few." She winced. "I'm just glad they covered the repairs."
Natalie shook her head in confusion. "What are you talking about? I just wanna see my reflection, not throw tomatoes at it."
"Just... Okay, just a second." Lorna pulled out her large, dull, matte-finish PET and took a snapshot. After navigating a moment, she turned it around.
And on the screen stared back a wide-eyed, confused-looking ten year-old wolf girl, with spindly arms and legs, and hair down to the back of her knees.
A deep, unsettling feeling set into Natalie's gut. Her hands felt numb, and her legs felt weak. "Wh-... What..."
"Honey." Lorna knelt down to her level. "What I'm about to say will sound very strange. But your adventure with Captain comet... your relationship with Carrie... your turning eleven and onward..."
Natalie cast a dreading eye back at the thing she'd woken up in. "No. Oh, no. No, no, no..."
"I'm afraid so, Natalie," Lorna nodded with a heavy heart.
Sensory Replacement Therapy, also known as the Brain Bullet, for the unit's shape. Activating a gland in the body that placed it into stasis, this type of therapy would deprive the patient of all sensory input, and take advantage of that lack of input to place them in a semi-lucid dream state. Their dreams could then be monitored and, to some degree, controlled. This was an effective way to replay memories crucial to witness accounts, reform criminals...
... Or provide a Purgatorial place of solace to those for whom trauma had proven too debilitating to live with. Like a six year-old girl who lost her father to a cruel freak accident at a space station.
"No," she insisted strongly. "That's not true!"
"Natalie, honey, I know it's hard-"
"You're LYING!" she screamed, pushing her mother away. "I've already BEEN through this, this-... this doesn't make any sense, I got better years ago!"
Lorna's eyes were full of tears. "Yes, baby, you did. I know you did, and you were so brave."
"This is fucking stupid," she swore right in front of her mother- something she'd never have done. "I wanna see Carrie!"
The older wolf frowned. "Honey, I don't think that's a good idea-"
"No! No, enough of this crying-for-me bullshit, I wanna see her! I wanna see Carrie!" she insisted, not caring how awkward such words sounded coming out of her young mouth. "I know we were at least friends at this age, you can't lie to me about that. I'm gonna see Carrie and we're gonna suck face and everything'll be fine. Or I don't know, she'll call me a goober or something, I don't remember exactly what it was back then."
Lorna paused a few moments. "I... Nnh. A-... Alright. We'll visit Carrie, a little later on. Tonight."
Natalie blinked, not expecting her to capitulate. "Oh. Good! Well, then, I'll just... wait for that. Meanwhile, I'm pretty hungry."
Her mother nodded. "I'll get you something to eat. Sit tight, sweetie."
As soon as Lorna left the room, Natalie let out a long sigh of relief. "Echelon, we're in big trouble. Mom is still under Osoth's control, and they've changed my body somehow. We need to get out of here."
Silence.
"... Echelon?" she ventured, growing increasingly frightened of the sudden feeling of emptiness inside her. "Echelon, answer me! ... Crap, what's going on?? I'm getting out of this place..." She went up to the door, pulled the handle-
"Stuck? But... this door never had a lock on it! Not unless..." Unless she was on the level for patients at-risk for violence. "No. No way. Not today!" She pulled her fist back. "Captain... COMET-"
"Crash?" An accented baritone interrupted her as the door opened. "I certainly would hope not," he chuckled. "You don't even have a helmet on."
"Dr. Mauzer??" Natalie blinked. "Did they get you, too?"
The owl smiled easily, as was his way. "Hm. Now, by 'they,' do you mean the inklings? Under Osoth, of course. Or do you mean the new army, under Officer Murphy?" He closed in a bit. "Or perhaps you refer to the alien mothership Max takes orders from?"
She laughed. Despite herself, and the entire situation, she couldn't help it. Mauzer was charming, and had built up a relationship of trust with her during one of her darkest times. Still, she couldn't afford to be vulnerable. "So you know about all that!"
"Of course," he nodded. "I've watched the whole thing from start to finish, as I always did." He referred to the fact that all 'dreams' had in the SensRep Therapy module were displayed, monitored and recorded. Mauzer had been the one to monitor Natalie's constructed world when she'd lost her father.
"... But... this is real, Hans." She frowned. "The other place... I knew it wasn't real. The lucidity safeguards-"
"-Had to be switched off," Mauzer explained. "I didn't want to, but you needed this world. To keep you from fully investing into this constructed existence would have damaged you further. You needed the escape, Natalie." His face was sad but sympathetic.
"But I'm over Dad!" she insisted. "I've been over his death for years, I came to terms with it. I didn't need a big elaborate world to comfort myself with... I'm sorry, but you're just wrong!" A silence passed between them. "... I wanna go outside. I'll show you."
"A trip outside sounds wonderful," the doctor agreed. "I'll let your mother know we'll be back in a little while. She should go home and rest anyway- she rushed over from a full work day to come see you."
"I'm sure she did," Nat answered absently, keeping her mind focused on uncovering this farce. Even Osoth couldn't hide her own destructive legacy, and once faced with it, either Mauzer would snap out of his trance, or reveal himself to be her shill. She was still in charge.
-
- -
-
Sunny skies looked down on them as they exited the Mental Health clinic. Lush green grass laid underfoot, moist with dew and putting a fresh, lively scent into the perfectly pleasant breeze. It was an achingly nice day, just beckoning children to play.
Natalie set the pace, slowing down to look things over, then speeding up to uncover more, all while Dr. Mauzer pleasantly strode at an even tempo. She walked to where she knew she could see the city skyline and saw...
"... It's... that's impossible." Staring out into the city, she saw... the city. No barely-contained fires, no pockmarked crumbling buildings, no abandoned areas. Children and adults were playing, the train was running on time- or close to it, anyway- and people were going about their business, unconcerned by evil space queens.
"I admit, you may find yourself alone in hating what a beautiful day it is." Mauzer smiled.
"No!" she insisted. "This is wrong, something... something's just wrong!"
"I won't push you, Natalie," Hans acknowledged. "But I do wish to ask... would it be so bad if this reality were the real one? People not suffering? Your mother safe? Your city, unlocked and undestroyed?"
"That's why I don't believe it!" Natalie stamped her foot. "It's too clean, too easy! This whole place is some kind of trap to make me love it and stay here because it's just so perfect."
The owl frowned enigmatically. "I wouldn't be so sure, Natalie. Other challenges still await you right here."
Natalie was about to reply, when she found somebody skateboarding down the midwalk. "... MAX!!" She ran to the green iguana, who seemed to be he same age as her. "Max, it's me!"
"Huh??" He turned and stopped, looking at her. "Oh! Natalie! Hey... what's up?"
"Max, I'm so glad to see you." She hugged him. "Crap, did they get you, too??"
He blinked. "Ohhh, right! The aliens! Yeah, they totally sucked my brain out and replaced it with apple sauce." He grinned.
"... No, Max. The inklings. Empress Osoth? You still have Koralo, don't you??" she asked urgently.
Max looked around uncomfortably for a moment. "O-Oh, yeah! Koralo, um, the prince of cheese!"
"The lord of adhesives!" Natalie corrected, upset both by his forgetting and by how what she said sounded just as dumb through no fault of her own.
"Um. Yeah. Hey, it was good talking, Natalie, but I should get home- dinner's probably ready. See ya!"
"B- Uh! Wh-...?" Before she could say another word, Max was skateboarding away. Her feeling of isolation grew, and her knees wobbled. "I-..." She looked up at Dr. Mauzer. "I didn't imagine my friends! He recognized me! We're friends!"
The owl nodded. "Yes. Though you'll notice that he's not quite as... wild and crazy as you remember him."
"Well no of course not, he got more random as he got older-..." She looked up to him and glared hatefully. "No."
He gave her a knowing look. "I won't push," he repeated.
"Push all you want, Hans!" the diminutive wolf girl challenged him boldly. "You think you've got some great big theory about my friends, I can see it in your eyes." She laughed. "It's wrong, so what do I care?"
Dr. Mauzer took a deep breath. "If that is really what you want. I... do want to explain that I don't take any pleasure in this." Spotting a bench, he decided to sit down comfortably. "Have a seat."
"I'll stand," she countered, arms folded.
The owl stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Your fantasy world, this Earth 2541, as I've dubbed it in my notes, is a fascinating one. It extrapolates so much further forward in your life than I've seen happen with this sort of situation. Your mind aged you naturally forward from the time of this fantasy's conception. You naturally learned about friendship, love, lust, pain, loss... even dissatisfaction."
"Pretty lame fantasy world to make me lead a normal life," Natalie cut in sharply, raising her brows in a sarcastic 'how about that' manner.
"Indeed," Hans agreed, chuckling. "So preoccupied with making the fantasy believable, it projected your world as you could see it banally proceeding. School, home life, everything. But it also provided your friends, as they were... but reflections of their true selves, at the same time that they were a fractious reflection of yourself."
Nat blinked, slowly digesting that, and tilted her head. "What? What do you mean?"
"Your band of misfits, each an aspect of your personality," he explained. "Samantha, a warm-hearted personification of your nurturing love." He held up a finger, then another. "Max, the symbol of your overexcited childish nature. For the fantasy to work, you had to leave your child self behind to some degree, and needed someone to point out how mature you had become by comparison."
Natalie shifted uncomfortably. She had always thought of Max as being the kid of the group, and not just by age.
"Erwin, your sense of responsibility and early representation of lust. He was unwanted at first, and this interaction was to then define his role in your world. Because he was brought in by-"
"Carrie," she realized breathlessly. Her legs could no longer keep her up; she sat.
The old owl nodded slowly. "Yes. Carrie, your icon of strength. Your avatar of protection. Your best friend, with whom you developed a romance. A plausibly imperfect, fulfilling, loving relationship with the aspect which could keep all the rest of them safe. A perfectly balanced group." He smiled softly.
"Hah. I knew it." Natalie held herself, shivering as she glared up hatefully. "I caught you. If they were all parts of me, then what about Jacent? He makes the entire fucking fantasy implausible."
"Indeed." He nodded seriously. "That was his job."
She rolled her eyes. "Now you're grasping at straws. Look at you panic. You know I've unraveled this whole theory."
"Think about it, Natalie," he responded patiently. "Your entire life was... believable. Life, love, accomplishment; it was a good existence for a teenager growing into adulthood. But it wasn't fulfilling." He shook his head. "Not for a ten year old girl."
Natalie felt a deep, heavy weight inside, like she'd just been caught in a terrible lie. "What...?"
"Your young mind and your mature projection became at odds. So the older you became, the stronger your desire became for... adventure. You wanted more than a normal life. But soon even your squabbles with Cedric- an unrealistic straw man by any stroke- could 't satisfy you."
"No..." she whispered.
"So you remembered some things differently enough that soon you had an entire world of strange things happening. Things that threatened this safe, loving fantasy world! And at center stage was yourself, in the role of hero. Savior. It was the perfect way to fulfill yourself and keep this peaceful structure." He stared out at the nature preserve in the distance. "But there was one aspect that you found deep within yourself, one that shook everything apart."
"No!" she pleaded breathlessly.
"Jacent Danger. Mythical comic book character, come to life. A man from a species long dead. A warrior in a time of peace. A tragic misfit with no possible good ending to the conflict he had been summoned to end. If he lost, the world was gone, and with it, all you had built. If he won, your world would remain with its smothering, crushing peace and perfection... and suffocate him, death by a thousand cuts against his every archaic nature."
"NO!!" she screamed.
He paused, his eyes full of sympathy. "You see, Natalie. Jacent represented your desire to break free of this fantasy world. He represented your childhood dreams left unfulfilled in this quest for normalcy. And the more you tried to make these two come together, the more the seams ripped apart. Until finally... you came back to us. Here. Again."
She choked on another 'no,' falling to her knees as tears streamed down her face. Her tiny voice sobbed, fitful little gasps of despair leaving her as she helplessly shook her head. "I-... I don't believe you."
He shrugged sadly. "It's just a theory." Everything on his or her face said otherwise, and as he took in a breath, she felt like she was about to be fired on. "But really, think about it. An entire alien invasion, set up just for you to try to repel? A fictional character who just happened to be a real person? Who awakened just in time to help you on your quest? Who fought a one-man war on ancient crime, yet remains not just cordial, but bashful in the face of lust for a species he couldn't possibly find attraction to?" He shook his head frankly. "The odds are not in Mr. Danger's favor for existence. I'm sorry."
Natalie Grayswift cried. And screamed. And wailed, out at the world. The sheer horrible injustice, and terror, and misery. All her work, her hard work to build everything she had... was gone. For what? A fake reality that shook itself apart after stealing her heart... only to break it.
"I... I wish I was dead."
"I know."
-
- -
-
A bowl of stew stared up without meaning, reflecting the face of a little girl. She sat in the communal eating area, nearly devoid of other people. Dr. Mauzer had said that eating with others would be good for her... but she couldn't imagine anything helping her. Not now. Not anymore.
"Natalie Grayswift?" A bored-looking orderly called to her.
"Hm?" She slowly looked up at the grizzly.
"Visitor for you." He stepped aside, revealing a tiny bat girl.
"Oh." Natalie tried smiling, but melancholy weighed down her mouth, ending in something ghoulishly impersonating happiness. "Hi, Sam."
"Hello, Natalie," Samantha stated carefully, as if the other girl might explode if she said the wrong thing.
"... I'm not gonna bite," she said half to Sam, half to her stew, which remained mostly uneaten.
The bat girl walked over slowly, having a seat opposite her. "Are you-... it's really good to-..." She frowned, making a small sound of distress.
Natalie sighed. "It's alright. I know what's going on. I'm just... it's hard."
Sam nodded subtly. "It is. It hit us all really hard."
"I'm sorry I embarrassed everyone," she spat angrily at the table in shame. "With how crazy I am. Still."
Her friend frowned deeply. "Natalie, we don't blame you... I mean, considering, we're just happy to have-... we're glad you're okay."
"Yeah." Natalie looked at the girl for a long moment. "Sam, I... would you... kiss me? Like on the cheek?"
Samantha fought confusion as she processed her request. "I... I just don't think it would be right."
The hint of a smile died on Natalie's face.
"I'm... I'm sorry, I have to go!" The bat girl tried to hide her tears as she ran out of the lunch room. Her sobs were heard from the hallway.
Natalie felt her stomach knot up with anguish. She pushed her bowl away and cried into the table.
-
- -
-
Seeing the Bullet was upsetting, so they placed her in a room without one. No SensRep therapy machine, no one-way mirrors, nothing but a bed, some toys and a cushion to sit on. She idly paged through a children's book about sharing, when something caught her eye on the bookshelf.
A thin book sat nestled between two hardcovers, calling out to her. It was Kid Comet #1. The very first issue. She gingerly opened the book, remembering the crisp pages and stylistic illustrations. She smiled softly, touching young Jacent's masked face. "Maybe it's better this way. At least you won't have to suffer through the future."
"It's your future, though."
She looked up to see Lorna. "Mom! I didn't hear you come in."
Her mother smiled and crouched. "How ya holdin' up, kiddo?"
Natalie ran into her arms, clutching her tightly.
"That bad, huh?" She pat her daughter on the back rhythmically. "It's okay, baby. It'll be just fine."
"I'm just so... everything's so sad. It's terrible..."
"I know, sweetie." She pulled back and held her by the shoulders. "But it'll get better, I promise. You've got a chance to live your life, to make everything right again."
Nat let out a quivery sigh. "Yeah. I guess."
She smiled encouragingly. "Hey. How about I take you out for dinner? Maybe the Burritojo? Dairy Bar? Burger Dictator?"
"Ugh," Natalie shook her head. "No more Burger Dictator for a long time."
Her mother laughed at that. "Alright, something else, then?"
"To be honest, I couldn't eat anything right now. Oh!" Her face brightened up. "Besides! You promised to take me to see Carrie!"
Lorna frowned. "Oh. Yeah, I did, didn't I?" She struggled to summon words to mouth. "Are you sure?"
"I know, you wanna spend time together," Natalie acknowledged, smiling softly. "But I just won't feel right until I see her once."
Her mother took a deep breath. "Of course. But, uh. Before we do, I have something for you." She reached into a duffel bag and pulled out a pink-sleeved, white hoodie, one cartoon skull giving an eyeless stare. "I heard you really liked it."
She gingerly took it, feeling the soft fabric against her cheek. "... Thanks, Mom."
Lorna helped her put it on with a smile. "No problem, kiddo. Ready to go?"
"Oh! Hold on a second!" Natalie walked back to the cushion and picked up Kid Comet #1. "I didn't know you for long.. but it was nice while it lasted." She closed the comic with a sense of finality, putting it back on the shelf.
-
- -
-
The night went by outside the windows of the mass trans, which Natalie watched. She looked at the city down below.
"What's on your mind, kiddo?" Lorna asked, taking notice of her daughter's silence.
"I dunno." She paused. "I guess I'm kinda worried. I mean, in that world, I couldn't deal with reality. I hated the idea of graduating and having to do some boring job forever. I guess I'm not cut out for superhero-... ing. But what'm I gonna do when I grow up a second time?"
"Oh, Natalie." She chuckled. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to. You could try boxing! Or some other kind of fighty thing, if you want. Hell, you could invent adventuring or something. I'll support you no matter what." She wrapped an arm around her.
Natalie smiled. "Thanks, Mom. As long as I've got my friends, I can deal with anything, I think."
"Oh, here's our stop," her mother noted as the train stopped in the residential sector. They disembarked with sparse few others, making their way down the midwalk toward the great bunch of buildings where everyone lived. The glow of street lighting was a sea of little stars with big glowing pillars of buildings with various moving designs shifting through the outsides of them.
Natalie looked around, taking in the familiar sights. Apartments, houses, midwalks, people taking late night walks. The double dotted lines of Ring Station stretched from one horizon to the other. "I can't wait to visit," she commented in almost a whisper.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, of course!" She nodded. "I mean, we're at least- friends, right? So things didn't go the way I thought. We've got time."
Lorna tilted her head.
"Sure, I mean, we'll wait a few years. But maybe it could work, you know?"
The older wolf blinked slowly.
Natalie turned her head back toward a pack of buildings. "Hey. Mom, why are we going this way? Carrie's house isn't that way."
Lorna frowned. "No. It isn't," she whispered, squeezing her daughter's hand.
Nat struggled to understand. What was going on? And then they walked toward it: A stairway going underground. As they descended the steps, a warm, fiery glow beckoned from inside. "Wh-... Why are we going here? I-... Is Carrie here??"
Her mother didn't say a word. The tunnel stretched on forever, cut with earth, paved with stone, and filled with people. They walked along the cavern for an eternity, finally approaching the centerpiece: a giant fire pit behind glass, separating the structure into four sections. Two sections were full. One was empty. And yet another, they turned to. "Mom, I don't see her!" Natalie's confused face looked up to her mother's for any kind of clue. Instead, Lorna looked past her, to the wall. To a plaque. With a name.
Carrie Oakenfield
2525-2535
"Wh-"
She remembered.
"N-"
The crash. She fell to her knees.
"N-No..."
The crash. That night.
"No! No, no, no..."
The night Carrie was hit by the trans.
"P-Please, no!"
The night Carrie died.
The night her heart crumpled.
The night she retreated, again, into madness. Just like then.
Just like back then.
"No..."
-
- -
-
"... I'm sorry."
Natalie said nothing. Lying on the bed back at the clinic, she didn't speak. Or move. Or breathe.
"I thought... I honestly thought you remembered, I swear."
Silence.
Lorna gently rubbed her daughter's head. It was like petting a corpse. "... If I'd have known-"
"It doesn't matter," Natalie's quivering, whispering voice responded.
"... What doesn't-"
"Nothing. None of this. That's why I came back here. She's gone. She's really gone."
Natalie cried into the pillow for the third time, shaking. Heaving.
Like a storm, it lasted an eternity. But she ran out of tears.
"I wish there was anything I could say."
"There isn't," the young girl angrily retorted. "This is the worst day of my life."
"I know."
"I want to die."
Lorna frowned in anguish. "Please don't say that."
"I do. What's the point of living? Everything I love dies, or is a joke, or just fake!" She went from whispers to yelling. "Everything! I'm not allowed to be happy! Oh you love your Dad, Natalie?? Dead! Oh you have a girlfriend who loves you so much, Natalie?? Gone! Oh, you want to see your best friend after losing -everything-, Natalie?! Dead DEAD FUCKING DEAD!!" she screamed, kicking the mattress and punching the wall and flailing in rage. "WHYYYYY?!" Out of tears, she buried her head in the pillow and screamed sobbing breaths of pure agony into the linen for what felt like hours.
Finally, exhausted, she trembled, face down.
"I know it doesn't make it any better," Lorna acknowledged through her own tears, a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "But your father loved you. And Carrie loved you. I know they did." She took a deep breath. "Nobody, especially no child, should have to watch one person they love die, much less two. I'm so sorry."
Natalie, eyes red, sniffling, looked up. "No?"
"No, Natalie," she assured her. "It was cruel for you to have to see Michael float out into space like that. That's horrible. And then Carrie?? It's just not fair." She shook her head.
Nat blinked a few times, then hugged Lorna tightly. They stayed that way for minutes, taking refuge in each other.
Finally, they broke the embrace. "... Are you gonna be okay by yourself? I can stay here. I'll call work-"
"No. It's alright." Natalie smiled faintly. "I'll be okay. I just need... some time alone to think about things."
Her mother nodded. "Okay. If you're sure." She smiled and kissed her goodnight. "See you in the morning."
"Bye, Mom," she whispered as the door closed.
She reached into her hoodie pocket.
Pulled out a knife she'd stolen from the kitchen.
And plunged it in.
-
- -
-
Morning came as usual for Hans Mauzer. Forms to fill out, reports to make, coffee to brew... all of that, to be sure. But all that could wait until he'd made the rounds. He'd said hello to patients conscious and not, in and out of SensRep therapy modules, or 'bullets' as the layman called them. They would say hello, or ignore him, or remain blissfully unaware of his existence. Some he was in the middle of working with, others had just arrived, and some were even returning.
This morning was reserved for one of the return patients, and he couldn't wait to see her. She was an imaginative girl, so full of potential. He wanted to make her better. He wanted to help her get her life back. And that was what he was going to do.
And then he saw that spunky girl slumped over on the floor, lying in a dried pool of her own blood.
"Natalie!" he gasped, rushing over to her.
"Mmnh?" Miraculously, she turned over and looked up at him. "Oh! Hey, Dr. Mauzer. Must've dozed off before I got to bed."
The old owl helped her to her feet. "What... what happened??"
She looked confused for a moment, then gazed over to the blood pool. "Oh! Yeah, sorry, got a little angsty last night, decided to let off some pressure." She cheerfully held up her hand, which had torn strips of blanket around it as makeshift gauze. "Got a little out of hand. Wop, wop~!" she fanfared her own failure comedically.
"Why didn't you call for help??" the doctor asked, concerned.
"Oh, I didn't wanna bother anybody. But on the bright side, you know what, I feel all better!" She met his surprised look with a knowing nod. "Not even denial, I checked! I just straight-up feel better." She took a deep breath and let it out, the smile never leaving her face.
"That's... unusual." He cocked a bushy brow. "You've been through a lot, what happened?"
"Well, y'know..." Natalie began pacing in a circle slowly. "Sometimes you just get so sad you need to wring all the sadness out at once. Talking to Mom helped a bunch, you know, 'cause she's always been consistently there for me and stuff. And your analysis really helped me put all the pieces together. Definitely a trifecta of mental healing."
Dr. Mauzer nodded slowly, his confusion finally yielding a smile. "Well, that's wonderful to hear!"
"Oh!" She held up a finger. "There was one other thing that really helped."
"And what was that?"
She giggled. "Well, I think it had to be... figuring out you're a big fat liar."
The owl's smile evaporated.
Her gaze became sharp, her smile predatory. "I really have to hand it to you, this whole thing was something else. Using my past in this place to fake a relapse, using the situation to make me sound crazy even to myself, driving me over the edge with the possibility of Carrie dying? Even that dumb look on your face right now. It was a masterstroke." She clapped sarcastically. "But now, I'm in charge, and the first thing I'm doing is leaving."
Mauzer let out a long sigh, rubbing his temples. "Natalie, you are very upset and I understand that-"
"You had me. You really, really had me for a little while there. But you know what happened? You blew it."
"Natalie-"
"You FUCKED UP!!" she screamed with enough force to make him stumble backward. "When my father died, I was at daycare. He died and I never saw him again. But I couldn't take that, so not only did I retreat into the Bullet... I fantasized about seeing him die. It was macabre, yeah, but I got to see him one last time in that scenario." She shook her head. "But that never happened. I just dreamed it did. Mom told me over and over I was away when he died, and I eventually took it on her word, but I never let go of that visual." She chuckled. "So. Imagine my... surprise when she said exactly the opposite? Had you asked Osoth for her memories, you'd have been convincing. But no, you took it all from my memories. My crazy, fractured memories." Natalie shook her head at the old owl. "And now you're in a lot of trouble."
He frowned. "Your psychosis is deepening. Please, Natalie. You can't believe a ten year old girl is going to overpower a staff full of grown adults."
"Oh!" She grinned. "Thanks for reminding me, hiding all the mirrors and polished surfaces from me was another great move. But y'know, interestingly, blood is pretty reflective. You can see your face in it. And another one, if you try really hard."
Mauzer paused a second. "Natalie, you imagined all of this based on your mother's very emotional misstatement. Now please, come back to the SensRep module and we can-"
"There is no fucking SensRep module! There's no Bullet, no clinic, and no room! I'm lying unconscious somewhere while you fuck around in my head, Mauzer! Or should I say, Dreamless Urgai?" The wolf girl grinned viciously. "The problem for you is, I still have my clothes on, which means there's something very special still touching me."
"Touching you?? Nothing is-"
Natalie suddenly pulled back and sent her fist through solid wall, a thundering crash making a two foot diameter hole in it and distorting the textured display paint image around the cracks and shreds. With a loud grunt and equal force, she ripped a handful of electrical cords out from it and held them in front of him, laughing. "How about THIS, Hans?! If I were a little girl, I don't think I'd be holding these!"
Mauzer winced. "Natalie, you're not holding wires; you're clutching fluff you tore out of your pillow."
She blinked, looked at her hand and gasped. "... Whooo said they were wires?"
Hans visibly shook, as if struck.
"Oh, SHIT." Natalie threw her head back and cackled, completely unhinged. "I caught you. I caught you! Caught you caught you-" She punched away even more sections of wall with every iteration, bits of constructive plastic and display paint flying in her wake. "-Caught you caught you caught you-" The bed was completely upended, the bottom of it slamming into the ceiling before landing on the floor in a broken heap. "-CaughtyoucaughtyoucaughtyouCAUGHTYOU!!" She grabbed Urgai by the collar and threw him into the corner of the ceiling, boost-crashing into him the second he hit and breaking them both through several layers of floor-to-floor structure.
Urgai lay sprawled out on the floor of the cafeteria. Slowly, he tried to get up. "The doctor... y-you're hurting him! His body-"
"HAH! You're not in Mauzer's body! You can't inhabit people. Echelon told me all about it. COME ON!" Natalie sent an uppercut right into Urgai's chin, once again boost-crashing into him. But the momentum didn't stop; she crashed him into the ceiling, the wall, the floor, up and out and over and over and over again, like a hyper-destructive pinball. By the time she stopped, the room was in shambles, her blood was ablaze, and Urgai's false body was in tatters, falling off of his liquid frame like it was badly glued on.
"P-... Please don't kill me..." he croaked. "You don't kill people, it's not in you- HRGK!"
Natalie stopped him with the heel of her shoe to his neck. "Do you think I'm fucking dumb? Of course I try not to kill people, but you? You could just do this to someone, anyone, at any time. You're too dangerous. It's pretty much my duty at this point to stop you for good."
"No! N-ungh-o! P-Please!" he gasped pitifully.
"Sucks being helpless, doesn't it?" She stared hard at the iridescent miasma of ink.
"I'll- hgck! I'll let you out of here!"
She nodded matter-of-factly. "Oh, you definitely will. But not yet. Before you do, I want you to swear allegiance to me. To Echelon."
He stared up fearfully. "I... I can't..."
"It's that or I kill you," she shrugged impassively.
"O-... O-Osoth-"
"-isn't long for this world," she finished, Echelon's flesh covering her own. "Your allegiance. Now."
Urgai trembled, but he couldn't decide if it was out of fear or awe. "... I swear."
For the first time since the beginning of this, Natalie smiled genuinely. "That's what I like to hear. Now get me out of here."
"But... but one thing."
"Hm?" She tilted her head as he gestured.
"The truth yet hides from you, mighty Echelon. I hope this does not prove a burden to you in the end."
-(_/
-(_/\_)-
\_)-
The first thing she felt was heat.
A warm glow entered her vision, orange and comforting. She slowly climbed her way out of an open box, standing up to see tunnels, a silent central pyre, and names on the walls. "The Hallowed Halls... how did I get here?" She nearly tripped as she exited what she finally identified as an old, abandoned and weathered SensRep therapy module full of holes and blackened, as if dragged out from a fire.
"You're a tough little sheila, aren't you?" She turned to see a tall, lanky, gaunt-looking vulture smiling down at her, a shovel across his shoulders. He was dressed as some kind of unsavory 1800s peasant, but his demeanor was friendly in an offbeat kind of way.
"Huh?"
"I didn't know if you were gonna make it or not. Found ya out there, took ya in here. Would've gone for the hospital, but y'know how things are out 'n about as of late." He gave an nonrhythmic cackling laugh that was sure to unsettle. "'M a little disappointed now. Just a little."
She blinked. "Why?"
"Well, I'm no doctor, so I set me skills at makin' a pretty marker for ya. In case ya didn't make it." He gestured at a square of smoothed-over metal between other grave markers, brushed evenly and coated with white display paint.
Natalie smirked up at him. "So... what're you gonna do with it now?"
He smiled back. "Dunno. I guess it belongs to you either way. You can do with it as ya like."
She thought about it a moment, and fished out her PET. After a few minutes, she finished, and walked out from the Hallowed Halls.
And in the firelight, a pink skull gave an endless, eyeless stare.
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