Serverboy busted the doors down, and saw Doublestash laid out on the floor like a fat pancake. He was snoring still. “SERGE! SERGE!” It was no use. The noise of the dome blocked his voice out, plus there was the Walkman... He roared in defeat, then pulled the doors shut.
He tapped his earbuds, those long types that stick out of your ears. “Yo! You guys coming or what?!”
Yes, they were coming. They were expertly barreling down suburban roofs, just as before. “We’re almost there!” said Shadowee. (Well, Shadow said it too, but let’s not split hairs.)
“Did you buy those noise-canceling headphones I was crowing about?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
But this is no good... I need to get Sis into the dome, but neither the distance nor the altitude is correct! Thing is, it’s really hard on her when I do this... The voice in his head sounded really high-pitched and panicky.
“It’s okay, do it!” the sis reassured in high spirits, the both of them still in parallel motion on the two rows of houses walling in the target street.
“You sure?!”
“Do it!”
There was no time to ponder or debate: they were nearly past the dome! If somebody was going to get in there, it was going to be a shadow...
“Altitude disengage, distance: 45 feet!”
Shadow poofed into the street, while her brother remained on the roofs. They were still mirroring each other’s movements pound for pound, but Shadow wasn’t quite as bound to her bro as before: she got to have her own altitude... Still it was her bro who called the shots.
Now the sis was headed straight for the dome! She was full-on quarterbacking that final stretch, barreling down the street like somebody unaffected by solid objects. “Sis? Sis?! Slow down?! How about slow THE FUCK DOWN?!”
The poor boy was playing a sideways game of Tetris on the roofs, while Shadow was being tossed around like a ragdoll, even though there was nothing in her way except the dome. Now neither of them knew who controlled who, or what the hell was going on. “AAAAAAAAA!” he yelled. “AAAAAAAAA!” she yelled. “AAAAAAAAA!” he yelled. “AAAAAAAAA!” she yelled.
Before she knew it, Shadow had passed through the dome. She tumbled down along with her brother, who was crashing into a clothesline on a balcony. He tried to wrestle the clothes off, and Shadow followed obediently. When he got untangled, Shadow could finally take a gander around the place: it was fairly dark in there, some spots brighter than others, depending on what ungodly content Jonas was streaming at any given time.
Shadow clocked the sleeping beauty. “Serge!” She proceeded to run towards him, forcing the brother to find his way off the balcony. The challenge for him was to not piss off any old ladies docking on balconies, where he might knock over their plotted plants or even worse, be seen as a peeping tom.
“Don’t worry about him! He’s, um, he’s drunk!”
“What?!”
“Just get to the damned button!”
“Here’s the plan!” explained Serverboy in the van, conferring with the siblings. “Shadow passes through the dome, no problem, gun for the button, then you switch positions, given that she can’t actually press it. Capisce?”
Shadow listened to Serverboy and ran past the van. She was about to pass Doublestash when the screens, like a puzzle being assembled in real time, began painting a coherent picture of a boy in a dark room. The image repeated four times around the dome, and once on the ceiling.
Shadow gasped when she saw who the boy was: it was her brother! It must’ve been a recording from his webcam, mounted to his PC monitor. The screen was off. The only source of light was the webcam, but it was too dim to produce a human-sized shadow. “Shit!” said Serverboy, who saw what was going on through cam Doublestash.
He was a normal looking kid: snaggleteeth, roundish face, brown bangs, a green t-shirt of a giraffe.
He saw himself on the dome, too: the screens projected outward as well as inward. It gets worse: he landed on the balcony of their house! Oh, shit, he thought and nailed his noggin.
Soon their mother came out: the beast! “And what the hell are you doing home so early? BWAAH! What the hell is that?!” She pointed at the dome. “And why are you on there?!”
“Mom, I—“
“I—“ repeated Shadow. She gasped. “Mom?”
“Mom?” the boy repeated.
“Berry?” the beast said.
“Sis!” the boy said.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“EVERYONE!” rang out a disembodied Jonas. The screens still showed the boy, babbling something you couldn’t hear, for it was pressed under Jonas’s stronger volume. “You like it?” There was a crowd gathering all around the dome. ADM staff had been summoned for crowd control. They tried red-taping the parts around the dome and the saucer. The crowd murmured in concern. “What’s going on?!” “Step back!”
“I call it the Panoptidome!” He snickered and paused. “Shadow! No ... Berry! That’s your real name, right?” He paused again. “Your mother named you Berry because she thought they tasted bitter... That bitch.”
“What did you say?!” groaned the bitch.
“But your brother ... he loves you, right?” He puffed, mockingly. “Before you is a video call of your brother and his friends, chatting away in the dead of night... Hm? Why am I showing this to you?” He paused, dramatically. “Because I thought he should be the one to break it to you, not me... Heheheheh. Watch,” he grumbled.
“There are two types of delinquents in Perfect City: naturals, and those we call DIY.” Doublestash sent up the sharpie on the whiteboard. “Serverboy is a DIY, while you guys are naturals.” He scribbled their names under the right categories. “DIY means you are born with no special powers, so you make use of what talents you do have to create your own.” He shook the banana-phone. “Hence the banana-phone.”
“I sense a slight touch of mockery.”
“Not slight.”
“Asshole,” Serverboy whispered.
“As for naturals, we don’t know the source of their power... But we do know that a bad childhood is highly correlated with having them.” Berry and her brother exchanged looks... Well, they had no choice, but they probably wanted to, so whatever.
Doublestash sucked in his lips, looked floorwise. “Pain... Pain causes delinquency... The correlation also holds for DIY, though not as strongly.” He paused, looked sad. “Shado—” He caught himself off guard. “No ... Berry. It’s your mother who did you in.” He was grasping for words, choking up. “I want you to know ... it’s not your fault, that you became your brother’s shadow.”
“Still, it must be annoying to drag her around ... no offense.” Serverboy turned to the siblings to say that last bit. He was an asshole but an upstanding one.
“YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”
The brother smiled. “No, it’s fine... But it’s not annoying... My sister’s not annoying... He gently placed his hand on the desk, and his fingers were interlinked with his sister’s. They smiled at each other. Doublestash turned away, clearly sobbing.
“Yo, quit sobbing, old man.”
“I’m not! I’m solving equations!” He was scribbling nonsense on the whiteboard.
Shadow took off the noise-canceling headphones. “NO! SIS! DON’T!” The brother tried to force the headphones back onto her head, but struggled to keep her hands down. When did she get so strong?! Back in the day I would’ve gotten my way easily! After some bickering, she managed to lift them off away from hear ears, and then the brother gave out. They started huffing and puffing, but she brought that under control too.
It was not looking good for the brother: he was all over the place, and all over the dome!
By the way, and this might not be the best place for it, but I haven’t told you what Berry wore: she a wore pink t-shirt with strawberries, shorts and tennis shoes. The siblings were the types to dress casually, even in such a nice neighborhood as Second Best. Their mother would often complain about that.
Berry/Shadow was determined to hear his brother out: it was time. Jonas had cranked up the volume, and now everyone, the crowd, the brother, everyone, could hear it. There was no escaping the facts.
“Yo, where’s your sister, bro?”
“You can’t have shadows without light, you dumbass.”
The webcam saw him reclined in his gaming chair, his legs flung across the PC desk. Yet he was talking on the phone, a strange setup.
They laughed, he and some guys on the Concord call. Another asked, “Bro, why are you in the dark?! We can’t even see you!”
He smiled, seemed hesitant. “It’s Berry... Don’t tell her I said this, but she ... she can be a lot... I mean, I love her and all, but ... my mom was kinda right about her ... she really is just my shadow.”
“Boundaries!” yelled out another, pointing too, as if he had spoken God’s honest truth.
“Frankly, she sort of had it coming... If only Mother hadn’t beaten her that much, then maybe all this wouldn’t have happened.”
The video paused. Everyone was awe-struck. “What an asshole,” said a bystander.
A gentle stream of tears ran down Berry’s cheeks on either side. Strangely enough, the brother’s face was dry. He was frozen up totally, like the world had come to get him. “You are ... one terrible brother!” It was not Berry who said this: it was the mother, aka “the beast.” She was acting all high and mighty, ridiculous. “I... I... You are so grounded, young man!” She shook her face indignantly as she spoke, and her tone was offly gentle. No doubt she was putting on a show. After all, they had a whole crowd of neighbors watching.
She lowered to his level, and grumbled, “You clear my name, right now!”
He nodded. “I will clear up all our names,” he whispered. Then he took a giant breath, and yelled out, “SHE NAMED YOU BERRY BECAUSE SHE IS JEALOUS OF YOUR BEAUTY!”
“What?!”
“SURE, SOME BERRIES ARE SOUR, BUT SOME ARE SWEET! YOU ARE A STRAWBERRY, SIS!”
“What are you saying?!”
“THAT GUY IN THE VIDEO, YEAH, IT’S ME! EVERYTHING I SAID WAS TRUE!” He paused, everyone watched. “BECAUSE I’M WEAK!” He was choking up. “I HIDE IN THE DARK BECAUSE I’M SCARED OF EVERYTHING! I’M SCARED EVEN TO FACE YOU!” He took another deep breath, gathered his thoughts. “I’M THE MOST BITTER FRUIT IN THE WORLD! I’M SOUR AS SHIT!” He paused, wheezed. “SIS!” His voice was so loud it pierced even the dome. He paused, barely held it together. “EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE MY SHADOW, I will always walk in your footsteps.” He had lost his courage in that last bit. He practically whispered it.
“I will always walk in your footsteps!” rang out a guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses in the crowd. “Huh?” the brother said.
“I will always walk in your footsteps!” repeated a lady. Then more, and more, and more. Soon, practically the whole crowd was chanting, “I will always walk in your footsteps!” It was audible in the dome. Serverboy had come out of the van and placed his hand on Berry’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said back in that classroom.”
She smiled, sweeping tears. “It’s okay.”
He smiled, and nodded. “Are you gonna get us outta here?”
She smiled, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Berry!” Berry was suddenly in color! “You ... You ...” he was pointing at her. “You’re not a shadow!” Doublestash slept soundly through all this, by the way.
Berry played The Macarena on herself, then came to. “Go! Press the damn button! You’re quicker than me!” She nodded and ran for it.
Meanwhile on the balcony, amidst the crowd singing, “I will always walk in your footsteps!” the beast came out with a frying pan. She sneaked up behind the brother. “You really got strong, didn’t you, sis?” he whispered. The beast loomed over him and swung the pan down, but with a sly springing movement, he dashed out of the way and landed on the front lawn. The beast ended up smashing the frying pan into her plotted flowers. “MY FLOWERS!” She yelled long and loud as the crowd embraced the brother.
Jonas looked on nervously, from his geeky base of neon tubes. He was watching Berry gunning for the button, and she damned well pressed it.