To be completely dominated by pure negative emotion was still new, fresh for Jackie. As she nervously dug her thumb’s nail into the side of her right index’s nail, felt shame course through her entire body—her blood boiling within her veins due to being in this shitty situation… All of this simply gave her the fuel to make this impeding speech.

And gave her the much-needed justification for what she was going to do after it.

“You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it more than me—you’ve just confirmed that fact, sir. I don’t want to blow smoke up my butt—r-rather gas myself up, but… I was honor roll. Won constant awards for educational and physical excellence at such a young age. The first thing that any adult says to me after exchanging a few words with them, ‘you’re so mature for your age!’ And that… And that means the things that people often forget about. One of them being awareness. I’m so painfully aware of things.”

Jackie slowly gained confidence, planting both hands on the table as she met Leech’s eyeline.

“So I see what you see: an insurmountable threat that everyone’s too broken to meet—when we have to meet it. An outside force that has every allegiance to every nation on the planet, and not at all handling things as they should. Depravity, sloth, and selfishness given justification to be the norm instead the very thing that we also have to fight against—a living nightmare for people like you and I: trying to remind everyone that we’ve suffered through worse and did just as impossible things throughout history—but no one willing to ignite that passion inside of themselves anymore! Everyone’s drowning in their own misery and not at all thinking about how that has effects! Throwing it all away, giving up! ‘The world was always doomed—life was always bad! Screw it! Fuck it!’”

Jackie found herself breathing heavily, glancing across the suddenly small room she was in. Now acutely aware that she forgot how much these walls bolstered the loudest echoes, as now there was such silence that a pin could drop.

She lowered her gaze to the table, the energy depleted. “So what that makes us…? The stupid kids whose crime is being born at the wrong place and the wrong time…? My life. My whole life… From the jump, people gave up, and as a result, is nothing but this… Dread and shittiness. And it doesn’t have to be this way. We can fight. We can stand for something, everything. Even if it ends in failure… At least we tried.”

Jackie looked back up to the Captain. Directly into his eyes. “I want to try. And damn it, I will.”

There was a tangible pause. But this was different. Jackie felt this being… Constructive. The Captain nodded, softly. Rest his chin against his palm, as the rest of his fingers cupped his face.

“… Now I have to think about what I’m about to say,” Leech responded, calmly. Eerily so. “So, the rest of ya’. Say your reasoning. Why?”

Jackie looked to her “co-conspirators”. It’s been years, since they all properly bonded. This entire plan was baked with unease, and for Jackie, it was the fact that the girls that she was once friends with… Did they change? Stay the same? How much, for each extreme? She was just as interested in this as Leech was.

“Well, my reason’s not as Oscar-worthy as Jackson’s here,” Maddie had a hand in her jeans and crooked her thumb at whom she was addressing. She then did a hand-based shrug with said hand, throwing it up into the air before letting it hit the table. “But it’s simple—it’s literally the reason why you threw those other kids into the hole: I just wanna get it over with. I either die horribly by getting all stretched out by space fuckery, or I get powers to not deal with that shit. Think of it as that huge knife you fucks grabbed from me before shoving me in here—you need it to survive living in a city—any kind of city!” Maddie then raised both of her hands, fingers spread, palms out as she swayed them about. “Don’t go crying all at once guys—I know it was a whammy! Holding that in for… 3 minutes and every second was a weight on my poor, small, barely beating heart--!”

The Captain simply shifted his gaze onto Aiko. Not at all entertaining Maddie’s “acting”.

It took a good while for Aiko to realize that stare. She came alive again, staring back as she set her hands on her lap.

“I’ll keep it terse,” Aiko blandly continued her fixed gaze at Leech. “I like jumping off things. Sometimes take good bumps, but terrible for my body. siVis is basically superpowers. I, Kobayashi Aiko, would benefit from said powers. Not only take bumps a lot better, but can jump even higher and do things I haven’t attempted because it’d kill a normal person. I would like that a lot. So I did what I did.”

Captain Leech trained his gaze at Tracy, who looked to be physically melting at being called next. Jumped in her seat, making Jackie think if she either was anticipating being called up, or was watching the other chats—sweating—trying desperately to string together her story.

“S-suuuurely you’ve seen my show—m-my old show?” Tracy laughed with chittering unease. “A-as a child actor—er, um, in the past tense, if it wasn’t clear—okay, you have to act like yourself. Which is very, very, very confusing on its own as a direction, but it breeds some level of authenticity. Tracy Baldwin’s reaction to the Shift happenings—making my show one of the first to directly acknowledge it for children—was basically my reaction to such things! Haha, so it’s a redundant question of sorts—just watch one of the episodes and you’ll see, is all--!”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“…Hmm,” the Captain made Tracy stiffen in panic, complete with a very pained whimper. But there was no follow-up, as he simply looked to River. But instead of looking back… River moved her head towards him. She sort of stared past him.

“Maybe getting ancient cosmic abilities finally evens me out,” River answered curtly. “I get to finally be a great worker—a useful whatever in society, versus a mediocre one that’s on the verge of breaking. That’s basically it, sir. Sorry for wasting your time, on behalf of everyone here.”

Jackie was the one who definitely felt sorry. For her former friends, for Leech. For the fact that it was so clear as day that they were all so scarred, and here she is, whining about her own problems. She wanted to sit in her chair. She wanted this plan to somehow fail, so they could get the help that they needed—before it was all too late.

But given how the world is now, and has been for all of their collective lives… Maybe there isn’t any, now.

However, what she thought at that moment didn’t matter. But what Leech was going to say, as Jackie fixed her gaze back on the man.

What the young woman saw was a giant of a man shaking his head so gently.

“…What can I honestly say…?” the Captain’s tone was crippled by the weight he felt in this situation. Such gravity to it, that Jackie felt pangs of sympathy from afar.

“All I can say…. And importantly, what I need to do, is call your parents. Family. Whoever truly cares about each and every one of you, and get you far away from this place before it’s too late. I’m not talking before the Meta Crisis happens—taken as read. But they need to save you all. Save you from doing something truly horrible.”

A quick swing of his massive arm ensued, to catch the attention of everyone present sans him. Working as intended.

“And I’m not saying you all have the potential to become the next Unabombers or anything like that: my job to be some out-of-touch stiff with power, I don’t fucking care about right now. The unwritten, but never more true aspect of the job: to be a sentry of good and undo wrongs in this utterly wrong world, is what I’m doing right now. What I’m saying is—you girls don’t want this. None of this. You want to be above everything—yet you’re getting into the very darkness you all are clearly scared of.”

He then stared off into nothing. The sort of expression River had previously, but this had tangible emotion. Hurt, that added so much age to this man’s barely visible face.

“And if you get so much as hurt… Truly wounded during all of this… Oh, no no no no… You all aren’t ready to witness that, be apart of that. Experience that, when it happens… I was trained. I seen ‘normal’ warfare, served dutifully. And I wasn’t.”

Leech proceeded to grab his helmet, tuck it under the arm, and turned his back to the girls to head out the door.

Such glacial movement, for something that hasn’t even happened yet, felt like it was happening in lightspeed for the girls in question.

Jackie had to be quick.

She slammed her hands against the table.

“That’s not a solution--!”

“What--?!” Leech snapped his head towards her, swung with his entire body.

“THAT IS NOT A SOLUTION! AND YOU KNOW IT!” Jackie’s throat already felt raw, to come up with this faked rage. Molded from actual desperation and fear.

“Then what is?!” Leech commanded. “Let you girls waltz outta here, when the Shift is happening minutes or seconds from now?!”

“Then why are you calling our parents or whatever?”

Attention and eyes were directed at Maddie, who nonchalantly had her arms crossed. Jackie wanted to kiss her for it.

“I’m not telling them to come now,” Leech tried to be the logical one in a mostly illogical and overemotional place. “—I’m telling them what happened and what we need to do to prevent this from happening again!”

“And that’s you banking on the fact that our supposed ‘love ones’ give one iota shit about us,” Maddie somehow blandly but scathingly pointed out.

“—And not only that,” Jackie jumped in, quickly. “Nothing is accomplished! You’re putting us back into our rooms until we ‘think’ about what we’ve done! Back in our heads—back thinking about how all this doesn’t fucking matter anymore! All you’re doing is resetting us to zero when we want to do something—!"

Everyone but Leech jumped in their skins once more, when he slammed his helmet into the ground.

“THEN ALL OF YOU LINE UP!” he roared and commanded. “‘CUZ YOU’RE GOING IN THE HOLE UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION!”

This was bad. Jackie knew that pressing the issue was going to cause things to escalate against them. Fighting or telling the girls to evade a man who could snap and the walls trap them wasn’t a good scenario either. And this plan wasn’t going to work if they end up in that damn hole.

She hoped Aiko does something out of pocket, or River becomes the “true” voice of reason, allowing things to calm down—

Tracy gasped this harrowing sucking, gargling rasp as she clutched at her chest. Everyone went still at the display, all to watch her tumble out of her seat, and twitch sporadically on the floor.

“What the hell’s happening--?!” Leech immediately rushed for the still spasming girl writhing on the white floor. “What conditions does she have—we know there was panic attack issues and alcohol abuse, but--!”

“Iunno man, lookin’ like you caused a celeb death to me—” Maddie quickly commented on, also out of her chair. “Good job, Conrad Murray—”

“Give me my helmet—quick--!” Leech thrust his massive arm and pointed at it. “I’ll call for help and…”

Jackie saw his face awash with dread. It donned on him.

Why did it finally don on him?

“…You wasted time…” Leech barely got out the revelation.

The walls, meant to hold back any Shift-level force that came this Fort’s way, began to reverberate with sudden stress. Rocking so violently, Jackie couldn’t hear anything beyond groaning that echoed endlessly in this chamber, and couldn’t see anything beyond wavering vision.

But she smiled. The tightest, and most genuine she had in a loooong time.

She staggered, grabbing Leech’s helmet as she put it onto her own head.

“GIRLS!” Jackie roared out the command. “LET’S GO!”

Everyone that wasn’t Tracy began to rush toward the trembling walls, and began slamming repeatedly into them.