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“What?” Pannych slowly raises her eyes to Nathanael, who takes another sip of tea as he points with his eyes to Phyr - she traces his glance, and sees the pained look on her best friend’s face. “What is he talking about? You said I’m a great teacher.”
Phyr says, “You are.”
“We were, until they fired us. In the middle of the day. In the middle of the school year. We were walked out of the building with our stuff in boxes - and we couldn’t even cry in our car, because it was impounded.”
“Impounded,” Vector asks. “What the Hell did you do?”
Nathanael sips his tea with a raised eyebrow and says, “We came out to everyone, couldn’t handle it when they told us the truth, then drank ourself stupid and got a DUI.” He turns to Pannych, her face agape. “We had a life, and then we ruined everything by trying to - how did you put it just now? - ‘be yourself’.”
“Hey, now,” Vector says, “Low blow, dude!”
“Lowlife is more like it!” While Nathanael retains his imperturbable calm, he dials up the contempt. “We had our dream job, then we pissed it away by coming out and driving drunk, and we don’t even know which one got us fired. Now we’ve been out of work for over a year, we have no prospects, no money, and no hope that any of that’s changing… so we went back to our fuckin’ comic from when we were a teenager. How pathetic is that?”
Vector shakes his head and asks, “What’s with all this ‘we’ shit? Why do you keep talking like you were there for all this?”
“Because I’m always there,” Thorn says, low and wicked. “I see everything we go through. I know exactly how pathetic we are, no matter how much this fuck-up tries to paper over it.”
Pannych looks at Phyr with eyes full of pain and tears. “But… you said… things were better…”
“They are,” Phyr insists, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Look at the hole he’s living in - he can’t even close the doors! The fact he’s way the Hell out here shows how much better you’re doing. So trust me, not this fuckhead. He’s a walking shitpile of your suicidal tendencies.”
“Ha! ‘Suicidal tendencies?’ You mean those widdoo bebby cwies fow hewp, like when we’d lock ourself in the bathroom with the windows closed and the vent off? And mix ammonia and bleach products in the tub while we ‘cleaned’? No, that’s not me - I’m not pathetic like that. I’m the part of us that manages to keep it under wraps, because I know it’s a bluff and we don’t deserve anyone’s attention over it. Suicide will only further traumatize the people we care about, and then The Cycle wins. No, what’s needed is much harder: to withdraw and live a quiet, anonymous life.”
“Jesus,” Vector mutters, “Is that bathroom stuff true?”
“It’s… I mean… you gotta…” Pannych chokes down a sob, then another.
“Don’t listen to him,” Phyr says to them both. “Remember what he just said about Devil’s lies? He’s using facts, but in sneaky ways to make you fall for his twisted bullshit!”
“Twisted? Ha! I’m the only one who sees anything clearly. I know we're a disaster, and everyone else is better off with us out of their lives. So if this pathetic farce doesn’t stop, then I’ll just kill you and the rest of the Influences myself, put all this garbage in the garbage, and forget all about it. And then we’ll finally be able to go back to living our life without screwing up anyone else’s.”
“Fuck,” Pannych blurts out between heaving sobs. “You really are humility corrupted.”
Finally, Thorn leans into his anger and lets his voice rise. “Corrupted? By what, exactly? Self-loathing is perfectly rational, if we just are a loathsome person. This sick fetish needs to be put to a stop, and all this self-important soul-baring is just embarrassing to watch.”
“It’s not a fetish,” Pannych says weakly. Her voice has conviction, but bare and raw - her heart is on its last legs. “I told you already - this is just who I am.”
“Who you ‘are’ is starting to look an awful lot like our mother. You see that, right? The penchant for the dramatic, taking out our issues on other people, always making everything about us?” Pannych breaks at last, and buries her face in her hands as she starts openly crying. “See? You know I’m right! We’ll never be free of her, we’ll never move on! We’re just gonna keep spiraling in on this narcissistic navel-gazing bullshit, until we can’t even lift our head to look in a fuckin’ mirror and see what we’ve become! For Christ’s sake, most of the main characters here are self-insertions - but of course Faith is named after her! And if you don’t surrender right now and let me take over, then I promise you, she almost certainly will!”
“No way,” Phyr says, “There are at least eight other ways this could go wrong!” But Pannych’s sobs just grow louder, and he sees that his gallows humor is not helping.
Thorn doesn’t let up. “Sure, cry to ‘humanize’ us - fuck knows we could use it, the way we talk about how great we are! As if anyone would give two short fucks. We’d be a goddamn Mary Sue if we weren’t so fuckin’ broken inside, but even that gets spun as the central conflict of the book - and hey, by golly, it’s all about us again! Don’t you ever get tired of the view from up our own ass?”
“Now hang on a sec,” Vector says. Thorn shoots him a look of acidic derision. “A memoir is actually supposed to be about the author; and some people just lead crazy, improbable lives; and knowing other daughters of narcissistic mothers, it takes real courage to-”
“Except we’re not the daughter of a narcissistic mother, we’re the bipolar son of a bipolar mother, who was a little over-disciplined and now milks it ‘til the end of fucking time!”
“A little,” Pannych asks, her fight coming back. “A little?! She was brought up on motherfucking criminal battery charges-”
“Of which she was acquitted,” Thorn says coolly.
“By reason of insanity!”
“Yet she wasn’t institutionalized...” he says with a raised eyebrow.
“Because the court system is fucked and they don’t know what the goddamn Hell they’re doing!”
“So you think we knew better than a pile of lawyers and judges, at nine years old?” He lets the question float for a moment. “I mean, even if we did - why would anyone believe us? Why should they? How is telling that story possibly worth our time?” The moment hangs. Pannych fumes. Phyr and Vector are speechless.
“This should be an easy decision,” Nathanael says, dropping the anger and adopting a soothing tone. “All we have to do is stop. It takes so much more work to keep going - and to what end? Let’s say we finish this book - then everyone will just know what a sick fuck we truly are, as we drag our friends through our traumas and drag our family through the mud. And for what, at the end of the day? To write a half-assed memoir inside a half-assed adventure with some half-assed allegory? We don’t have the time to do this right, or the skill to make it good, so just. Give. Up. Focus on getting a real-ass job, and then keep our head down and make a difference that way. We won’t hurt anyone else, and then, when it’s all over, we can finally die in obscurity like we deserve.”
“I’m just… really concerned. I mean, Ceena always flew off the handle at the slightest thing, and I hated that about her. I don’t wanna be like her. But… I kind of am. And I’m worried that I always will be. I mean, everyone’s got their buttons - right, Doc? But mine are kind of… worse. I clawed a kid’s face off once when I was ten, ‘cuz he knocked me down in a basketball game. I’ve put other kids in the hospital before that. And I stopped fighting in junior high, or at least fighting back, and it hasn’t gotten really bad for a couple years now - but it’s always still there, you know? I don’t wanna be like that, but it feels like… like they’re always giving me shit, you know? And it’s just teasing, I’m aware of that, and I shouldn't let it get to me - but that means they’re literally trying to piss me off, doesn’t it? Like, the whole point of it, to them, really seems to be that they can say and do whatever they want, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them, because anything that would actually stop them also gets me in trouble. And I know that. I’m aware of it. The grown-ups know it, too. But when I finally do something, they always take the other kids’ side - like, sure, this dynamic is awful, and the whole thing is unfair, but that doesn’t mean you actually ever get to do anything about it. You just have to take it, kid. Sorry. But there’s only so much I can take, like this tension just builds and builds, and finally the pressure’s too much. And everyone sees it coming, it’s exactly what they were fuckin’ going for in the first place, but everyone still acts like it’s somehow my fault when I finally… just…
“...snap.”
“ENOUGH!” Pannych screams as she rises to her feet and throws the tea service all to one side. Nathanael jerks back, grinning, but does not rise with her. “I may die in obscurity, but you die now!” She throws her chair aside and bolts for her weapon.
Thorn sighs before saying, “And that is why I can’t have nice things.” Phyr and Vector recover from her outburst, and move to retrieve their own weapons. “Push.” As Nathanael casts his spell, the long table flips up from the middle and catches the boys in the side. They were off-balance, just getting up, and so are carried across the room with the enormous piece of furniture, but Pannych has time to hear the commotion and ducks instinctively just as the table carries her friends overhead. She risks a look back at Thorn, who is now bolting for Usher, his helmet forgotten; then she leaps over the table to grab sword and scabbard as she skids to a stop, immediately reversing direction and drawing Hawkmoth as she leaps back over the table again.
She meets Thorn in the moonlight, grinning with his blade in hand, and they roll for turn order: first Pannych, then Nathanael, Vector, and Phyr.
She lobs her scabbard at his head in a gentle arc, forcing him to deal with the flying object as she does a diving kick at his knee. He is prepared, and bats away the lacquered projectile without taking his eyes off her - he is unable to dodge the kick entirely, only just able to lift his foot off the ground. But this means that, instead of destroying his knee, she merely kicks his leg out from under him; he tumbles easily into a forward roll to recover.
Nathanael gets his feet under him and swings at her on the diagonal - on the ground and facing up, she sees it coming and rolls hard to their mutual right, faster than he can track. Usher bites into the floor in a spray of sparks and marble chips.
Phyr and Vector, winded from the collision with the table, both lose a turn. Phyr took 9 damage from the impact, and Vector took 20.
Pannych springs to her feet and leaps at Thorn’s right side, seeking to slice into him obliquely in passing; he is ready for her, drawing Usher around with the pommel up to block. Spinning with the momentum, he lands a reverse kick to her backside for 4 damage and sends her sprawling on her belly.
Now facing her, Nathanael advances and swings in a powerful overhead arc - Pannych turns over to her back just in time, raising her blade in anticipation of the blow. Her parry is successful, but the move was desperate, her guard failing.
Vector tries to lift the table off of himself, but is unable. He tries squirming out from under it, and fails again. Phyr repeats his actions on his own turn, then says, “Dude, we gotta work together here!”
Still enraged, Pannych kicks her legs up and over her head to roll back into a coiled crouch, then springs forward in a rising lunge, her blade thrust straight at Nathanael. He pivots on his right foot, turning out of the way, but the tip of her blade catches on one of the straps of his breastplate and she slices into his side, dealing 17 damage. His dodge is also a counterattack, and he draws the blade horizontally across her torso as she lunges past him, dealing 33 damage and eliciting a startled yelp.
Still facing Pannych, her back to him, Nathanael leaps forward with another powerful overhead slash. Pannych anticipates it again, but can’t turn and parry in time, and she grunts in pain as her right arm is cut deep for another 33 damage.
Vector holds his action to wait for Phyr, and the two of them manage to lift the table together and get out from under it, but it takes the whole of their turn, and they still need to rush to the sides of the room to retrieve their weapons.
Pannych is sucking wind, but she gathers her composure and slides back to disengage, settling low into gedan to prepare a counterattack.
Nathanael sees through her defense and grins, then winds back his sword arm with a one-handed grip, his off-hand extended forward in counterbalance. Just as she makes that little twitch of adjustment that means she’s ready to spring into action, he says, “Push.” A wave of unseen force rushes from his hand, throwing her head over heels out of the moonlight and into the darkness, disarming her. She takes 6 damage from the rough landing as her sword clatters on the marble, and Nathanael chases after her.
Phyr and Vector both sprint for their weapons and manage to retrieve them, but only just.
Pannych reaches into her bag of tricks and withdraws her shuko, sliding her hands into the iron climbing claws as Nathanael approaches. He unleashes a flurry of all-out attacks, not fearing her shuko in the slightest. She parries, blocks, and dodges for all she’s worth, giving ground whenever she can, dancing around the fallen rubble. She manages to get a dig in here and there amid the onslaught, but for no damage. Finally, she catches him where she slashed his strap and sliced his side; the shuko bites into his exposed flesh for a whopping 5 damage. But her hand is caught, and she falters as she tries and fails to disengage. Her reward is an elbow to the face for 4 damage, followed by an inescapable armlock that he presses into a break for a further 33 damage.. Nathanael does not emerge unscathed, taking 17 damage himself as the claw tears free of his flesh. As Pannych stumbles backward, his hand goes to his side, just below the ribs where the shuko tore him up, and he winces silently before pulling his hand back, fingers bloody. He looks at Pannych, scoffs, and says, “Not good enough.”
At that very moment, Phyr and Vector have reached a range where they are able to hit Nathanael without serious risk of hitting Pannych, who can’t take another clean hit. They fire in his moment of distraction: Vector’s laser lands first, clipping his shoulder for 18 damage and staggering him; then Phyr’s blast catches him full in the chest, dealing 101 damage and throwing him across the room.
Pannych has fallen to a knee, and she spits up some blood as she struggles to contain the shrieking pain of her broken arm and just keep breathing. The boys rush to her, Vector casting Heal for 16 HP, Phyr helping her up and asking, “Are you all right?”
“Better now,” she wheezes. She looks around and says, “Where’s my fuckin’ sword?”
Phyr looks around the darkened room in vain, and Vector says, “Umm, I hate to ruin your moment - really, I do - but asshole ain’t dead yet…”
“Greater Heal.” Phyr curses as Nathanael gains 80 HP, his armor scorched but otherwise looking no worse for wear as he advances on the group.
Vector sights down his rifle and holds his action to sync up with Phyr again; Phyr advances on Thorn, Righty at the low ready, his left hand up as he casts “Flame!” and pumps 1,000 mana into it.
Vector, shocked, shouts, “NO!” - but too late.
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