My X Mind

==Episode==
It was a hot summer day.
The sun beat down harshly on the tarmac as students left their last day of school until fall. Next to one particular high school was a pathway winding alongside a large ditch carved by a muddy creek that flowed through the middle of town. This path provided a convenient route for many teenagers heading home from school each day, and at the moment, it was naturally very busy.
Despite the large number of people walking through, none of them decided to do anything when a pair of teens grabbed one of the other students from behind and shoved her into the ditch, resulting in an eventual splash as she hit the water. Whether they simply didn't care or knew better than to say anything about it varied from person to person, but either way, the incident was ignored as if it was perfectly normal.
"Do everyone a favor and just drown yourself down there." One of the instigators spat. "The last thing we need around here is more people like you."
The students responsible for the assault walked off as the girl who had been thrown in the creek slowly pushed herself to her knees. Blood was dripping from several cuts she had gotten on the way down, and the fall had emptied the backpack she was carrying of its contents, which were now floating aimlessly in the water.
"...Why did I let them do that?"
Teresa gave up on getting to her feet, instead flipping over onto her back and letting herself float in the water as she stared up blankly into the early summer sky. Her irises were a bright red as opposed to their usual blue.
"I should've fought back."
Her eyes returned to being blue, albeit with a bit of a deeper shade to them than normal.
"But that wouldn't have fixed anything."
"They deserved it."
"Now I just sound like my mom."
"Like hell I do! Fighting back against a bully isn't the same as abusing a child! Am I stupid?!"
"Mom always said I was, so... probably."
"If I'm trying not to be like Mom, why am I taking what she says as gospel?!"
The environment around her began to fade way, leaving her floating in a stream of water with no beginning and no end, surrounded by nothing but a black void.
"...Why am I doing anything?"
----
Dana and Emilia waited anxiously inside the hospital room an unconscious Teresa had been brought to. Dana wasn't an especially stable individual under the best of circumstances, and seeing her daughter lying comatose in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV was rather vividly reminding her of seeing her husband in a nearly identical state shortly before his death.
She wasn't handling the situation very well.
"This is your fault!" Dana yelled in Emilia's face, pulling her in closer by the collar of her shirt. "If you hadn't made that damn watch, none of this would have happened!"
"If I hadn't made the CrossTrix, your daughter would be dead!" Emilia pushed her away. "It only started malfunctioning because of Oberon OS, and the entire reason Oberon OS targeted Teresa in the first place was because your abusive parenting made her vulnerable, so if we're gonna play the blame game, why don't you start by looking in a goddamn mirror?!"
Their argument was interrupted by a doctor opening the door to the room and knocking on it to get their attention.
"Please keep your voices down." The doctor said. "This is a hospital, we have patients trying to rest."
"Right, sorry about that." Emilia took a deep breath to calm herself down.
"Did you come in here just to tell us to shut up?" Dana huffed.
"No, actually, I was coming in here to update you on the results of the MEG scan." The doctor stated. "Your daughter seems to be experiencing a significant amount of abnormal neural activity in her frontal lobe."
"So she's having seizures?" Emilia asked.
"Yes, but there's more to it than that." The doctor replied. "To be perfectly frank, we've never seen this type of neural activity before."
"What do you mean?"
"An MEG works by recording the magnetic fields produced by the electrical activity of brainwaves." The doctor explained. "From what these fields indicate, large groups of the neurons in her frontal lobe are generating abnormally strong electrical signals and attempting to transmit them in two different directions at once, which ultimately leads to them malfunctioning and firing off uncontrollably."
"That would explain the seizures." Emilia sighed. "And unfortunately that just makes me even more certain this is happening because of Oberon OS."
"Is she going to be okay?" Dana asked.
"We don't know." The doctor answered her bluntly. "We've administered anticonvulsants, which seem to have helped somewhat, but the fact that she hasn't woken up yet is concerning. All we can do for now is monitor her condition and provide additional medication as necessary."
"Given how severe this is, is surgery an option?" Emilia asked.
"We'd like to avoid it if possible." The doctor said. "Isolating or removing the problem area would essentially require removing the entire frontal lobe, and given the unique nature of her condition, it's difficult to determine which- if any- implants would be effective."
There was a moment of silence in the room. Emilia wracked her brain for any useful information, trying to use her knowledge of bioengineering and anatomy to come up with a solution, but frankly, this was not her field, and she was completely lost on how to help. Dana, meanwhile, had a millions things running through her head, but only one of them stood out as something that needed to be addressed out loud.
"How long is she going to be here?"
"Until she either enters a stable condition or needs to be transferred to another hospital." The doctor said.
"And how long is that going to be?"
"I wish I could tell you." The doctor told her. "There are just too many unknowns. She could wake up in a few hours, a few days, a few weeks... or she might not wake up at all."
"Are you serious?!" Dana snapped. "Days? Weeks?! There's no way I can afford that, even with insurance!"
"You don't need to." An understated, almost monotone voice came from the doorway.
The three adults present in the room turned around to see Lucius Raivent standing in the doorway, hands held behind his back in a very formal manner, and accompanied by a somehow even more formal-looking Svelte standing behind him.
"Wha- who are you?" Dana demanded. "How long have you been standing there?"
"I just arrived." Lucius stepped forward into the room and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. "I am Lucius Raivent, CEO of Raivent Enterprises."
"The company that rents out those EvoLocks?" Dana squinted.
"That's hardly our only venture, but yes, one of our branches is indeed responsible for distribution of the EvoLock system." Lucius said. "Getting to the point, your daughter is a key witness in a case being filed against one of our competitors. Keeping her alive and mentally sound is in our best interest, so we've decided to fund her medical treatment for as long as necessary."
"So... what?" Dana's eyes narrowed. "You just see my daughter as an asset?"
"Does it matter? She's receiving treatment either way." Lucius said. "Besides... don't you?"
"I-"
Lucius, not waiting for a response, simply turned around and walked out of the room. Svelte gave them all a short bow before following him as he walked away. After a few moments, Emilia elected to walk out of the room after them.
"Lucius, hold on." Emilia had to jog a bit to catch up to Lucius as he strode down the hallway. "What was that about?"
"What was what about?" Lucius tsked, continuing to walk forward. "I believe I was fairly clear."
"I mean, yeah, but you made it sound like you only care about what happens to Teresa because it affects you." Emilia settled into a walking speed that placed her roughly next to Svelte, close behind Lucius.
"And?" Lucius questioned. "Would you rather I lie and say we have some sort of deep personal connection?"
"No, but there were better ways to tell the truth." Emilia said. "Dana might be rather... well, okay, she's just straight-up an awful person, but right now it seems like she's genuinely worried about her daughter for once. Objectively speaking, you were giving her good news, but sometimes you need a more emotionally intelligent approach."
"You're saying I should have been more delicate with the child abuser?"
"That's not the point here and you know it." Emilia scowled. "Between this and what happened with Anne, I really think you need to start thinking about what you say before you say it."
Lucius stopped dead in his tracks. Svelte stopped moving on the spot, while Emilia sort of stumbled into an awkward standing position.
"I don't know if you've somehow forgotten this, but I am the devil." Lucius turned around, wearing a stern glare. "In what world would I ever care about catering to the niceties of man?"
"Oh, come off it, Lucius, you're too smart to play dumb." Emilia gave him an equally firm glare in return. "If being the king of evil was really the whole basis of your personality, you'd be working with Messias, not trying to put him away for good."
"That's hardly-"
"Heck, just yesterday you told me pulling the Evolvyrns would be a bad idea because of how much they're improving society!" Emilia jabbed an accusatory finger at him. "What kind of devil intentionally facilitates new technology specifically designed to make the world a better place?!"
"What do you know about the devil?" Lucius hissed.
"I was raised by hardcore traditionalist Christians who sent me to a "troubled teens" camp for conversion therapy and kicked me out of the house when they found out it didn't work, so gee, I don't know Lucius, I might've heard a thing or two about the guy!" Emilia shot back, gesticulating with pinched fingers to try and emphasize her point without being too loud. "How many of those things were true, who the hell knows, but they were definitely enough to get across that the devil is a bad guy!"
"And what?" Lucius scoffed. "You think I'm a "good guy"?"
"I think you're a human, Lucius!" Emilia said. "You try to do good things, but sometimes you screw up and do bad things instead! That's what humans do! I don't know if bringing up the devil thing is just you trying to deflect or if you genuinely believe it makes you incorrigible, but either way, all you're doing is making it harder for yourself to improve!"
"I-" Lucius wanted to spit out a retort, but his mind came up blank. Any of his stock responses would currently come across more like denial or a flimsy attempt to skirt around the issue than a genuine rebuttal. He needed more time to sort everything out in his head. "...We'll continue this discussion later."
Lucius and Svelte abruptly began walking again and disappeared around a nearby corner. Emilia tried to follow them, but by the time she turned the corner, the two of them had vanished entirely.
"Oh, for pete's sake." Emilia grumbled. "I hate it when he does that."
----
Christine's return to Global Police HQ was rather unceremonious, as the coworkers she greeted on the way to her office all acknowledged her prolonged absence in one way or another but had too much work to do to discuss it any further. Waiting for her inside her office was her field commissioner and general assistant Lukas Burns, holding a large stack of paperwork in one hand and an armored briefcase in the other.
"Well, look who's back to the rat race." Burns handed her the stack of papers as she sat down behind her desk. "Congrats and condolences."
"Good lord, how many incidents piled up while I was gone?" Christine winced a bit as she took the pile of paper from him.
"Not many, actually." Burns said. "Most of that's an instruction manual."
"For what?"
Burns hoisted the briefcase he had been carrying onto Christine's desk and opened it up, revealing a set of folded and compressed body armor.
"New suit." Burns said. "Prototype was pretty good at keeping you alive, so the lab guys crunched to get the final design up and running after Future Crow wrecked it."
""Future Crow"?" Christine raised an eyebrow.
""Temporally Displaced Anomalous Instance of Class-A Suspect Malincious W. Crow" if you want me to be professional about it, but, eh..." Burns shrugged. "I'm not doin' that."
"Fair enough."
"Speaking of Crow, he got here early, so you could probably start that meeting a bit ahead of schedule if you want."
"Crow is here?!" Christine bolted up from her desk and began power-walking her way to the conference room, with Burns shrugging and putting his hands in his pockets before following her at a leisurely pace.
Christine burst into the conference room with such force that she almost ripped the metal door off its hinges. On the other side of the long, rectangular white table taking up most of the room were three CIA agents in identical suits; two men and a woman. It took a second to recognize him without his typical ragged clothes and unkempt hair, but the man sitting in the middle of the three was undoubtedly Malincious Crow, who currently seemed to be in the middle of a rather heated discussion on his smartphone.
"No, you should not just let him "do a little murder as a treat", he could screw up your entire operation!" Crow was practically screaming into the phone, clearly at the end of his rope with whoever he was talking to. "You tell that crab-legged fuck-" He paused as he noticed Christine enter the room. "Look, I'm gonna have to call you back, just don't let him run around doing whatever he wants. You give him an inch, he's gonna take the entire goddamn freeway."
With that, Crow ended the call, took a moment to breathe, and finally turned his attention to Christine.
"You just got a peek of what I've been having to deal with for the past decade." He grunted out in an exasperated tone. "You're late."
"You're early." Christine replied, sitting down across from him with an irritated look. "What are you doing here in the first place? Yesterday you said the CIA would have "the office boys" get in contact with us. You specifically said you hoped that was the last time you and I would ever have to interact."
"Yeah, well, sometimes people at our rank don't get told things until the last second." Crow grumbled. "I only found out I was gonna be their main rep at one o'clock this morning. Guess how much sleep I've had."
"Dumb idea on their part." Burns, who had finally sauntered into the room, commented as he sat down next to Christine. "Not sending in an actual diplomat is one thing, but sending in the one guy in the organization that's ever run afoul of the GP is like sending a lighter to stop a gas leak; you'd only do it if you were terminally stupid or an arsonist," He leaned forward in his chair a bit. "And the CIA's been found next to a lot of torched buildings."
"Right." Crow gave him a flat look before turning his attention back to Christine. "Look, I don't wanna be here and you don't want me to be here, so let's keep this brief." He pulled a thin folder out of a briefcase sitting on the floor next to him and tossed it over to Christine, who opened it to find several pages full of legalese inside. "The CIA wants the GP to pull out of the Triumvirate investigation and erase all their documentation on both it and me."
Christine froze, her muscles tensing up as her eyes kept moving, flicking around the pages she held at high speed and unfortunately confirming what Crow was saying.
"You can't be serious." Burns scoffed.
"He's serious." Christine muttered as she reached the bottom of the final page, which contained a filled signature line on the left confirming the document's authenticity and an empty signature line on the right meant to be signed by the chief of the Global Police. "They're out of their minds if they think that's going to happen, but he's serious."
"Well, I'll be damned." Burns whistled. "They at least give us a reason?"
"Apparently we're getting in the way of their own investigation into Sephtis Raivent." Christine looked up from the papers wearing a fierce glare. "You've been on the inside of his organization for well over a decade now, and you're telling me you haven't been able to nail this guy yet? This is the same man that took thirteen women's bodies and-" She paused to choke down bile that had started rising in her throat as soon as she recalled what she had seen in his mansion. "-My point is, he's not exactly subtle."
"Oh Jesus, do you mean the..." Crow drew out something in the air that looked entirely incomprehensible to everyone except for himself and Christine, who nodded in response. "...Y'know, even as someone who hates you and everything you stand for, I am genuinely sorry you had to see that shit."
"What are you two talking about?" Burns raised an eyebrow.
"Don't ask." Christine said. "And I mean seriously, don't ask, I do not want to think about it any more than I already have. If you're really that curious, check the unredacted version of the Raivent Mansion report."
"Don't think I will."
"Back on topic, yeah, no shit, we could book Sephtis at any moment on charges I didn't even know existed until I met the guy," Crow stated. "Thing is, he's got his hands in a lot of pots, and if we want those to go down with him, we need to play the long game. In other words, we need patience and subtlety, something your organization doesn't have."
"You-" Christine grit her teeth.
"I can see that necessitating the GP backing out of the investigation," Burns interjected. "But asking us to scrub our own records seems like a severe overreach."
"We just want to make sure your chief over there can't botch this like she botched the Oberon OS case." Crow said. "We don't need any more mutilated teenagers on our hands."
"You were the one who-" Christine shot out of her chair, practically frothing at the mouth, but paused as Burns tapped her on the wrist to get her attention and flashed her a quick hand signal Crow didn't recognize. Christine took a deep breath and sat back down, taking a moment to calm herself before addressing Crow again. "You know what, fine, let's say that logic checks out. What is the CIA going to do if we refuse anyway?"
"The US entered the agreement placing themselves under the Global Police's jurisdiction by choice." Crow said. "They can just as easily choose to pull out of that agreement."
"Either we stop working on this one case or we stop working on every case in the US permanently." Burns grunted. "Hell of a position you've put us in."
"Well, not me personally, the higher-ups." Crow tsked. "Regardless, agreeing to our terms means you won't be able to prosecute me for anything that happened during the incident involving Teresa Challice..."
He made a point of looking Christine directly in the eyes as he said this.
"...And you wouldn't be able to stop me if it happens again."
Christine paused, sighed, closed her eyes, reached towards the holster on her right hip...
...And pulled a pen out of her pants pocket.
"Fine."
Crow's firm stare suddenly turned into a look of blank confusion.
"...What?"
"We'll cooperate." Christine calmly signed the document, put the papers back in order, and slid the whole folder back over to Crow. "We're short on manpower for our investigations as-is."
"You can't be serious." Crow said. "That's it?"
"That's it." Christine replied. "I have a lot of work to catch up on, so unless there's anything else you wanted to discuss, I'm going to end this meeting here."
As they did not, in fact, have anything else they wanted to discuss, Crow stood up, placed the document back in his briefcase, and motioned for the other two agents to follow him out of the room. After waiting a bit to make sure they were gone, Christine let out a deep half-groan, half-sigh and slumped over in her chair.
"I don't think getting cut in half was as unpleasant as that." She groaned. "At least with my brain stem bisected I couldn't feel the pain of holding back all that unyielding rage."
"You did an impressive job of it, all things considered." Burns commended her while standing up from his chair.
"Well, it's not like they were particularly clever about it." Christine stood up and cracked her neck. "I'm not sure how they thought sending Crow here wouldn't tip us off to what they were doing."
"To be fair to them, it did almost work." Burns pointed out. "It was pretty obvious you were winding up to throttle Crow before I gave you the 'Caution' signal."
"True." Christine hung her head and sighed. "Thanks for that, by the way."
"Honestly, I'm surprised it actually worked." Burns tsked. "In the past you'd've probably just blown me off and beaten the hell out of him anyway."
"Let's just say that these last few weeks have been humbling for me and leave it at that."
"Noted."
"At any rate, I need to start on the paperwork for this ASAP." Christine stated as she and Burns exited the conference room. "Between that and all the paperwork you brought me, I'm probably gonna be stuck in my office all day, so I'm gonna need you to fill the Plumbers in on this for me."
"On it." Burns said. "Want me to come tell you when it's lunch break or are you planning on working through it again?"
"Oh, Emilia packed me a lunch." Christine said. "I can just eat in my office."
"You two are at the 'packing a meal for your significant other to eat at work' stage of the relationship, but given the lack of a ring on your finger, I take it you still haven't tried popping the question?" Burns raised an eyebrow.
"I... look, it's complicated, alright?" Christine scowled. "Since when do you care about my personal life anyway?"
"Since I started a betting pool that you'd be engaged by the time your suspension was over." Burns tsked. "Your commitment issues mean I'm out fifty bucks."
----
Teresa sat alone in the dark, clutching at her head. It felt like her skull was about to split open, like there were somehow two brains physically trying to occupy the same space. Her eyes turned red again, followed by her screaming and punching at the ground, only for them to turn back to blue a few moments later, upon which she began crying and rocking herself back and forth in the fetal position.
"I don't know what's going on anymore! What am I supposed to do?!"
"I just need to power through this!"
"Power through to what?! There's no way I can stop this!"
"There has to be a way! I have to figure something out!"
"Well, if you're looking for advice, I believe I might be of some assistance." A completely unrelated voice suddenly rang out through her head.
Teresa looked around wildly for the source of the voice and spotted what looked like Isaac in an orange pinstripe suit twirling around a cane with a comically-large crystal ball on the end of it standing just a few meters away.
"I-Isaac?"
"Not exactly." The newcomer wagged a finger at her. "I've got his face, but not his him."
"Who are you, then?"
"Just your friendly neighborhood insanity demon dropping in for a visit."
"Heard you might need some help in here, and by the looks of this place, I'd say he was dead on." The Jester knocked on what appeared to be nothing but caused a dull drumming sound anyway. "You've got enough demons up here to make an exorcist blush, and trust me, I know a thing or two about demons."
"Just answer the question." Teresa's eyes narrowed. "How do I know you're not a threat? I-I-I mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I'm sure you're lovely, I'm just a little nervous about-"
"Seems like you're of two minds about things right now." The Jester interjected. "Let's have the two of the one of you talk it out."
He leaned towards her, his arms seeming to cross a much larger distance than they should've been able to, and ripped her in half like a sheet of paper. Each half immediately grew back its missing half, creating two full Teresas; one with red eyes and clothing, and the other with blue.
"Wha- what the hell did you just do?" The red Teresa demanded.
"I-if y-you're okay with explaining it." The blue Teresa added meekly.
"I just made your own inner monologue a bit easier for you to visualize and engage with." The Jester said. "You've got a history of empathizing with other people better than yourself, so I figured this might be a good exercise in self-reflection."
"What are you, a demon therapist?" Red Teresa scoffed.
"Yesn't, mayhaps, though I'm certainly not a licensed one." The Jester tipped his hat. "I'm the Jester, "physical" manifestation of The Void I slapped together so I could interact with you mortals on your level, so to speak. Isaac just so happened to be the first guy to visit me before I put this little ditty together, so I decided to use him as a reference."
"Th-The Void?" Blue Teresa asked. "L-like, V-Void Energy?"
"Bingo!" The Jester snapped his fingers, creating a small cluster of fireworks that exploded in the shape of finger guns pointing towards her. "I'm the source of it! You got a bit of it in ya from fusing with Nova, so now I can visit you in your head! Neat, right?"
"No." Red Teresa scowled. "I still don't know you or trust you. How is someone I don't know having free access to my head a good thing?"
"If you wanna get technical, "something" might be a better term here than "someone", but that's neither here nor there." The Jester said. "I'm more of a skrunkly than a snooper, so if you want me to scram, I will; I'm just here because Napoleon thought you needed help, and I think he just might be right in thinking that thought."
"Wait, Napoleon sent you?"
"Not exactly; I simply picked up on his thoughts and decided to do a little intervening from on high." The Jester corrected her. "I don't actually get to do much around here- rules and regulations, you see- so when I spot a situation where I can help out with a bit of my tomfoolery, I'm all over it."
"What, are my problems entertaining for you?" Red Teresa snarled.
"The problems themselves, not so much; seeing you overcome them, yes." The Jester grinned. "I don't get to go on hair-raising adventures of my own- immortal fundamental force of the universe and all that- so I live vicariously through watching the exploits of those in the mortal realm, and your exploits seem to be leading into something big that I don't want to miss."
"...Right." Red Teresa rolled her eyes and turned around, grabbing Blue Teresa by the wrist. "Come on, let's-"
Red Teresa was interrupted by her blue counterpart abruptly screaming and jerking her arm away as soon as she grabbed it. The blue Teresa froze for a moment as she regained her senses, and proceeded to shrink back with an embarrassed look.
"What was that about?" Red Teresa scowled.
"I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Blue Teresa stammered out with tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. "I-I just- it was just- that's just-"
"It's just what would happen when someone touched me unexpectedly, I know that." Red Teresa interjected frustratedly. "I thought I was past that."
"Did you actually work through it, or did you just suppress it for the sake of being more functional in day-to-day life?" The Jester pondered aloud from off to the side. "Suppressing a trauma response and resolving the underlying issues behind it are two different things, you know."
"No one asked you!"
"But perhaps you should've." The Jester hopped into the air and began floating on his back. "Where were you planning on taking yourself just now, anyway?" He gestured lazily at them with his cane. "Do you even know where you are?"
"I-" Red Teresa thought about it for a moment, but ultimately came up blank. "Well, no, but-"
"But what?" The Jester rolled onto his side to look at her. "If you don't know where you are, you're not going to know where you're going either, and if you don't know that, I'm afraid you won't be waking up again."
"Waking up?" Red Teresa questioned. "Does that mean we're in some sort of dream world?"
"Well, it started out that way, but now that I'm here, it's more of a mindscape, though there's certainly some overlap."
"Okay, so how do I get out?"
"You don't." The Jester shrugged. "Not alone, at least. The two yous have to become one you again before you can wake up."
"Then why did you split me apart in the first place?!"
"Because if you continued as you were, you would simply continue having seizures until you died." The Jester stated bluntly. "Not the most satisfying way for a protagonist to go out in my opinion."
"And how does this help?!" Red Teresa gestured between herself and her blue counterpart.
"It gives you a chance to resolve your mind's physical issues mentally." The Jester tapped on his head. "Oberon OS's modifications to the CrossTrix added a safeguard that automatically activates the Nightmare transformation when the user's adrenaline spikes abnormally, and when that happens, it trips a protocol that attempts to load a secondary consciousness into the primary use position. When Oberon OS possessed your body, that secondary consciousness was the OS itself, but without it, the protocol is only able to load "unused" portions of the main consciousness; repressed traits, in practice. That right there is where you come from." He pointed his cane at Red Teresa.
"If I'm made of repressed traits, shouldn't I be the one who has that touch response?" Red Teresa pointed at Blue Teresa.
"That was suppressed, not repressed; it still happens, it just gets handled in the moment as opposed to being shoved down semi-permanently." The Jester cleared his throat. "Look, there's a lot of nuance I'm skipping over here for the sake of avoiding turning this into a full university lecture, and I've already had to lay out a significant amount of blatant exposition as it is, so just go along with me on this."
"Okay..." Red Teresa's brow furrowed.
"At any rate, if your outward consciousness and repressed consciousness remained separate, there likely wouldn't be any issues, but since you've been undergoing character development and allowing yourself to express your emotions more- which has been excellent to watch by the way, very proud of you- that artificial second consciousness has been mixing with the original and firing off an excessive amount of neurons at once, which is essentially Epilepsy 101. This keeps happening for long enough, and..."
The Jester whirled his index finger in a circle, summoning a floating brain in front of him. He proceeded to pull two jumper cables out of thin air and clipped them onto opposite sides of the brain, making it convulse with electricity for a few moments before it abruptly charred and turned to ash, dissolving away with the wind of a mysterious breeze that swept through.
"Well, you get the idea."
"So how do we- I- whatever- stop it?" Red Teresa questioned.
"By making up with yourself and merging back together as one!" The Jester crossed his fingers together to accentuate his point. "Each of you represents one of the conflicting consciousnesses created by the CrossTrix- wonderful alliteration if I do say so myself-, so if you two can merge together, the two consciousnesses will merge together too, restoring the single full consciousness your brain can actually handle."
"I-is that o-our only option?" Blue Teresa asked shakily. "I-I mean, I-I u-usually mess things up, s-so I-I m-might not be able to d-do this."
"Well, you're the only person in history to have ever experienced this specific set of medical circumstances, so your treatment options here are... we'll say "limited"." The Jester coughed.
"So basically it's either this or death?" Red Teresa asked flatly.
"Pretty much."
"Fine, then. This shouldn't be a problem anyway." Red Teresa turned to look at Blue Teresa and extended a hand. "Come on, let's get back to being one person already. After that, we can put this whole thing behind us."
Blue Teresa stared at her hand for a moment before hesitantly extending her own. The two of them locked hands, and...
Nothing happened.
"...Do we need to do, like, a fusion dance, or...?"
"I just said you have to make up with yourself." The Jester sighed. "Just holding hands isn't going to do anything."
"What is that even supposed to mean?!" Red Teresa snapped. "Make up with myself? Make up for what?!"
"Well, I can't speak for you, but if you don't have any problems with her..." The Jester gestured between Red Teresa and Blue Teresa. "I'd wager that she's probably the one who has problems with you." He performed the gesture in reverse.
"What?!" Red Teresa turned to face Blue Teresa, who refused to make eye contact with her and stared at the ground in shame.
"I've noticed you have a tendency to treat yourself as if you're lower than scum." The Jester slowly began fading from view, his final words echoing through the empty space they stood in as he disappeared. "Perhaps it's time to take a good, long look at what you really are."
----
After returning to Teresa's hospital room and speaking to the doctor about a few last things before they left, Emilia pulled out her phone and a USB cable and moved one of the chairs in the room closer to the CrossTrix. She flipped down a panel on the outside of its chassis to access its ports and plugged her phone in.
"Are you seriously charging your phone off that thing right now?!" Dana snapped.
"I'm accessing the CPU." Emilia replied in an annoyed tone. "Napoleon got the programming Oberon OS injected into the CrossTrix decoded, but I haven't had a chance to actually go in and change it yet. This isn't exactly the ideal programming environment, but it's the only thing I can really do for Teresa right now."
"Who's Napoleon?" Dana raised an eyebrow.
"Napoleon Eldridge." Emilia gave her an odd look. "Kid from Arizona? Uses nanomachines? One of Teresa's friends?"
"She has friends now?" Dana blinked.
"...Have you two talked at all about what happened over the summer?"
"Some things, but she doesn't talk to me much."
"Gee, wonder why." Emilia turned her focus back to her phone.
"I don't appreciate you taking that tone with me." Dana scowled.
"And I don't appreciate you being a horrible human being, but here we both are anyway."
"You don't even know me!"
"I know enough." Emilia looked up at her again, this time with a thoroughly annoyed expression. "Even beyond you being awful in every interaction I've had with you so far, I've heard enough from Teresa to know you're a piece of crap."
"Wha- she was talking shit about me?!" Dana hissed. "That little bitch!"
Emilia's muscles tensed up violently as she tried to resist the overwhelming urge to pick up her chair and beat Dana with it WWE-style.
"She wasn't "talking shit", she was making excuses for you!" Emilia snapped at her. "Every time her past came up and she described something you did that obviously constituted child abuse, she tried to come up with reasons that "it wasn't really that bad"! She loves you, even if she really shouldn't, and you being here tells me you at least care a little bit about her, so why do you keep treating her like the enemy? She's your daughter!"
"She might be my daughter, but she's nothing like me." Dana grunted. "She took entirely after her father."
"So what?!" Emilia said. "Did you hate her father or something?!"
"Don't you dare even suggest that!" Dana growled while jabbing an aggressive finger at her. "My husband was the most incredible human being that I have ever met!"
Emilia's anger had reached a boiling point, and in a moment of weakness, something slipped out of her mouth that she never would have even considered saying otherwise.
"If he was really that great, then maybe you should have died instead of him!" Emilia snapped.
"YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?!"
The room fell into a dead silence, only broken up by a nurse briefly peeking her head into the room to shush them.
"...Every single day, I wish that I was the one who died instead." Dana eventually spoke up. "You don't need to tell me that Teresa would've been better off with him. I know that."
"Then...why?" Emilia seemed bewildered by this response. "Just...just why?"
"Because when he died, I wanted to go with him." Dana muttered. "But I couldn't."
She looked over at Teresa.
"Something was still tying me here."
"You..." Emilia took a deep breath to try and calm herself. "Look, I can sympathize with having suicidal thoughts, and I'm sorry you had to go through what you did, but..." As much as she tried to, she couldn't conceal her disgust as she kept talking. "...You're pathetic."
"Shut up." Dana growled. "You don't know a damn thing about what I've been through."
"Yeah, and I don't care." Emilia scowled. "I know you've suffered, which sucks, but instead of learning anything from it, you just turned around and used it as an excuse to inflict suffering on others. On your own daughter. Being ignorant of pain is one thing, but experiencing it for yourself and then deciding to inflict it on someone else anyway is a level of selfishness I can't sympathize with."
"I didn't "decide" to do it," Dana said using finger quotes, "It just...happened."
"And you chose to let it happen." Emilia pointed out.
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?!" Dana snapped. "I can't just go back in time and undo everything!"
"There are a lot of things I want to tell you to go do right now, but if you're looking for something constructive, try supporting your daughter for once." Emilia said. "If she were to wake up right this second, what would be the first thing you'd say to her?"
"I'd probably yell at her for scaring me like this."
"I-" A vein began to bulge on Emilia's forehead, and she had to take a moment to calm herself down before replying. "Okay, why would you do that?"
"What do you think?! I'm worried she might die!"
"And how is verbally attacking her going to help anything?!"
"I'm not 'attacking' her, I just-" Dana twirled her hand around as she tried to think. "It's just how I express my emotions! It's how my parents expressed themselves to me, so-"
"Then your parents were in the wrong too." Emilia interrupted her. "You said your husband was the most incredible person you ever met, right? How did he express his emotions when he was concerned about you?"
"Well, he was...kind, and comforting, and supportive." Dana said. "But that's the kind of person he was. It's not the kind of person I am."
"And what's stopping you from becoming the kind of person he was?" Emilia asked. "You know you can change, right?"
"Uh, no." Dana rolled her eyes. "Look, I know you're some sort of expert biologist or whatever, but you're clearly no expert on people, because once they're adults, people don't change. Acting like they can is naïve."
"That's just...objectively not true." Emilia stated flatly. "I'll agree I'm no expert on socializing, but psychology and biology aren't exactly mutually exclusive fields. It's true that as you age, your neuroplasticity declines as your extant neural pathways stabilize, which makes it harder to change, but the brain is always capable of making new pathways with enough effort. People usually don't want to change, but they absolutely can if they apply themselves."
"You do realize that the average person isn't going to understand half of the terminology you just used, right?" Dana scoffed at her.
"Okay, then I'll summarize:" Emilia sighed. "It is biological fact that adults are capable of change. It is biological fact that you are capable of change. If you feel like it's too hard or you just don't want to, fine, but the idea that you are literally incapable of it is bullcrap."
"Even assuming that's true, how would I do it?" Dana scowled. "What, do I just wish upon a star to be better and voila, I'm fixed?"
"You change by forming and reinforcing new pathways in your brain." Emilia said. "You form and reinforce new pathways by doing the thing they're related to repeatedly."
"So, what, I just act like a nice person for long enough and I'll become a nice person?" Dana snorted.
"That's an oversimplification, but more or less, yeah." Emilia confirmed. She began to say something else, but was cut off by a beep from her phone notifying her that the CrossTrix's source code had been decompiled and was ready to edit. "Okay, look, if you're actually asking about all this in good faith, we can discuss it more later. Right now I need to focus on fixing the CrossTrix so something like this doesn't happen again."
Dana scowled at being dismissed like this, but ultimately held her tongue as Emilia turned her focus to working on the code. She looked over at her unconscious daughter, and her expression unconsciously softened ever so slightly. She was still fairly sure she couldn't change...but maybe not quite as sure as she was before.
----
Anne sat alone in the hospital's waiting room, nervously tapping her fingers together as she stared down blankly at the floor. Only a certain number of people were currently allowed to visit Teresa at a time, so all she could do was wait. She had gotten so used to dealing with physical threats that an issue she couldn't resolve by fighting back just felt... wrong somehow.
Another issue worrying her that she tried not to think about but kept nagging at her mind was the fact that if Teresa died now... she'd never be able to forgive herself. Not because she hadn't been able to do anything about it- if even Dr. Krauze, a walking encyclopedia of alien abilities that could potentially help- was stumped, feeling guilty about not being able to help wouldn't make any sense.
No, she was worried because of how she had treated Teresa.
They had only been on decent terms for a few months, friendly terms for a couple, and officially girlfriends for about two weeks. Before that, she had spent an entire school year helping Claire harass and bully her. She had never liked doing it, and Teresa had already fully forgiven her for her role in it, but the fact remains that for the vast majority of the time they had known each other, she had spent it making Teresa's life a living hell. If Teresa died now, and most of Anne's memories of the girl she loved were left composed of relentlessly psychologically torturing her...she couldn't even begin to describe the feeling of the dark pit in her stomach that appeared every time she thought about it.
The feeling of bile rising in her throat made her snap out of her trance as she began looking around the room for something, anything else she could focus on right now. This was when she finally spotted Lucius sitting in the chair next to her, making her jump a bit.
"Oh, geez, when did you-"
"A few minutes ago." Lucius stated dryly. "You seemed to be in deep contemplation, so I deemed it best not to interrupt you."
"Honestly, I think this was one of the few times interrupting someone's train of thought would've been helpful." Anne said. "Can't you read minds or something?"
"I can easily enter a sinful mind, but a mind occupied with thoughts of regret regarding one's sins is...not exactly part of my domain."
"Hang on, if you can't read my thoughts, then how did you know what I was thinking about?" Anne questioned.
"Call it an educated guess." Lucius said. "Your exact thoughts may be obscured, but your current emotional state would be readily apparent even without my abilities."
"Oh."
The two sat in awkward silence for a moment.
"Is...there any particular reason you're here?" Anne asked.
"Yes; I'm simply less confident about discussing it than I believed I would be."
"That's a first." Anne said. "Didn't know you could feel unconfident."
"In most situations, my course of action tends to be unequivocally correct, so there is rarely an occasion where second-guessing myself would be warranted." Lucius replied. "However, during our last conversation, at Dr. Krauze's abode, I failed to restrain my temper, and therefore may have handled certain parts of the discussion... poorly."
"Is this you trying to apologize?" Anne raised an eyebrow.
"Not exactly." Lucius said. "It's more so...an acknowledgement of wrongdoing."
"So...an apology."
"Apologies traditionally require an element of regret from the offending party in order to qualify as such." Lucius stated. "I do not feel regret in the same manner humans do, so presenting this as a genuine apology would simply be incorrect."
"You sure you actually don't feel regret and aren't just bottling it up like the rest of us?" Anne asked wearily.
Lucius didn't really have an answer for that.
"Look, you've obviously got your own issues going on, and I doubt you've ever really been in a position to relate to other people, so I can't really hold what you said against you." Anne paused for a moment, clenching her fists tight as she thought of Teresa. "Not like I haven't said worse."
"I see."
Anne lowered her head, resting it in her hands.
"...Do you make deals?"
"Excuse me?" Lucius raised an eyebrow.
"You're the devil, right?" Anne turned her head sideways to look at him. "I've heard about this whole "making a deal with the devil" thing from pop culture, but is that something you personally do?"
"It's something I could do in theory, but I have no personal interest in harvesting souls, so as of yet, I have not." Lucius's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"What if I made a deal with you to heal Teresa?" Anne asked. "I know it's a bit of a long shot, but-"
"Absolutely not." Lucius scowled. "I already told you that I have no interest in harvesting souls. Do you have any idea of the gravity of signing away the immortal essence of your very being?"
"I do, but..." Anne sighed. "I just... I've done so much harm to Teresa. I've put her through so much pain, and...I have no idea how to make up for it. Maybe if I make a sacrifice like this-"
"You'll make yourself feel better?" Lucius interjected dryly.
This time, it was Anne who didn't have a response.
"Whatever transpired between the two of you in the past, Challice clearly seems to have forgiven you for it already, so any drastic attempts to redeem yourself at this stage are going to serve no purpose other than assuaging your own guilt." Lucius tsked. "Losing her romantic partner would do nothing to help her mental state, and given her typical pattern of thinking, she'd likely blame herself for the whole affair."
"True." Anne mumbled. "I guess I'm just trying to come up with something I can do in this situation."
"Humans have been searching for ways to regain control amidst events they cannot truly affect the outcome of since they gained sentience." Lucius said. "It's hardly anything new, but I would recommend finding more productive ways to-"
Lucius abruptly stopped talking. Anne followed his line of sight to a tall man that had just entered the building whose features were obscured underneath a black cloak.
"Do you have your transformation lock on you?" Lucius muttered.
"Yeah, why?"
"Be ready to use it."
Lucius stood up and walked in front of the cloaked man before abruptly grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him outdoors. Much about Lucius was still an enigma to Anne at this point, but she had picked up on enough to know that physically accosting someone out of the blue wasn't exactly normal behavior for him, so she pulled out her transformation gear and quickly followed him outside. Having made it a good distance away from the doors, Lucius gave the man one last shove, sending him stumbling backwards a few more feet.
"Lucius, what's going on?" Anne asked as she exited the building behind them. "Who is this guy?"
"I don't know." Lucius replied, pulling the EvoGun out of his coat and aiming it squarely at the stranger. "I've never seen him before."
"It would be strange if you had," The cloaked man said. "But if you don't know who I am, then what are you trying to do here?"
"I have the ability to sense sinful intent." Lucius stated flatly. "To be perfectly blunt, I don't care who you are; entering a hospital with such overwhelming intent to kill tells me that letting you pass unimpeded would be a poor choice."
"Hang on, what?" Anne glanced between Lucius and the cloaked man in disbelief. "Who tries to commit murder in a hospital?!"
"I wouldn't call it "murder", necessarily." The cloaked man said. "More so deicide."
"That's even more confusing!"
"If there were any deities in that hospital, I would know about them." Lucius said. "And even if there were, one of the patients in that hospital is a rather crucial witness for a case my company is involved in, so I have no intention of allowing you to endanger them by picking a fight with a god."
"Cute that you're worried, but I'm a professional." The man snorted. "I only got paid to kill the one target; collateral costs extra."
"Forgive me if I'm not willing to place that much faith in your abilities."
"Frankly, your cooperation isn't a factor." The man threw off his cloak, revealing black and silver armor covering a spike-covered body that wasn't quite human.
"You're a Metamentian?" Lucius's brow furrowed. "How could you possibly use your abilities in a confined space without causing collateral damage?"
"I couldn't," The Metamentian tsked, "That's what the armor's for. Now, are you going to let me pass or are you going to die?"
"Neither, I'm afraid." Lucius took an EvoKey out of his coat pocket and loaded it into the EvoGun. "Burning..." He slowly raised the EvoGun into the air as his left eye turned black and flames began to seep out of cracks in his skin. "...Evolutionize."
Lucius fired, sending a flaming bullet ricocheting off the Metamentian's armor and right back towards him, allowing him to intercept it with a spinning kick. As soon as the bullet made contact, he became engulfed in a pillar of fire surrounding by burning chains, which quickly faded to reveal his transformation into a hellfire-empowered version of Detonation.
"Wha- since when can you do that?!" Anne exclaimed.
"Imbuing my transformations with the powers of hell has always been an option for me." Detonation responded. "It's simply not something I'm comfortable with."
"Then why do it now? You didn't even do it when we were fighting Nightmare OS!"
"Nightmare OS was using Challice's body; attacking it with hellfire would have destroyed her soul and left the AI unaffected." Detonation explained impatiently. "As for my use of it now, we're facing a Metamentian who claims he came here prepared to kill a god..."
He stopped talking for a moment as he intently studied the Metamentian's armored form.
"...And he was not lying to us."
"If you can tell whether or not I'm lying, then chew on this before throwing your life away by trying to come at me:" The Metamentian said. "If I don't kill my target, they could end up erasing you from existence."
"Um..." Anne looked over at Detonation.
"Once again, he isn't lying." Detonation stated. "But it's hardly uncommon for people to sincerely believe things that contradict reality." He turned his attention back to the Metamentian. "Do you have any proof of your claims?"
"Not on-hand." The Metamentian grunted. "But it's something literally called the "Anti-Life Entity", so that should tell you most of what you need to know."
An awkward silence fell over them for a few moments, with the only sounds of note being the half-interested grunts of the pedestrians that caught sight of these three odd-looking characters as they walked past the hospital.
"...I don't know how to tell you this, but..." Anne started. "The Anti-Life Entity got destroyed years ago. I mean, it almost got resurrected, but we were able to stop it. What do you think is left to do?"
"From what I understand, its consciousness still exists as a sentient AI called "CROSS"." The Metamentian said. "Need to kill that if you want to get rid of the thing for good."
"That's technically true, but CROSS is his own person!" Anne protested. "He actively rejected turning back into the Entity!"
"I can't speak as to the AI's personhood, but I will point out that as the CrossTrix's operating system, CROSS is necessary to keep it functioning." Detonation stated. "The person wielding the CrossTrix is in a rather precarious state at the moment due to an issue involving the device. Destroying the intelligence responsible for keeping the device functional right now would be reckless endangerment at best."
"Sucks for them," The Metamentian cracked his neck. "But that's not my problem."
"It's about to be." Anne growled and activated her BootLock, transforming into Silver Breaking Point. "I'm not about to let you kill my girlfriend."
"Oh, the person at risk here is your girlfriend? Wow, my bad, that changes everything." The Metamentian replied sardonically. "Here's a question for you, how do you think your girlfriend would feel if she found out you committed suicide?"
Silver Breaking Point froze, taken aback by the question. "What-"
"Because that's what making an enemy of me basically is."
"You-" She moved to reply, but paused as she noticed Detonation giving her with a flat look. "What?"
"You questioned my possession of an upgraded form?"
"Hey, I just barely got this thing!" Silver Breaking Point retorted. "You had an ace up your sleeve this whole time and never used it!"
"To be fair, does it really count as an ace up the sleeve if I'm still going to steamroll it?" The Metamentian interjected.
"Would you shut up?!" Silver Breaking Point snapped. "I know being a Metamentian makes you invulnerable to most things, but you've got no idea what our powers even are!"
"It doesn't really matter what they are." The Metamentian tsked. "I'm not exactly the type of Metamentian you're familiar with."
"And how do you figure that?"
"Because I'm not from the universe you're familiar with." The Metamentian tapped the side of his head. "I'm from a homey little place outside of spacetime called Apocalypse Earth. Nothing from any other world can hurt me."
"Apocalypse Earth?" Silver Breaking Point asked skeptically.
"He's still being truthful." Detonation informed her before turning his attention back to the Metamentian. "Just who are you, exactly?"
"The name's Igneoux." The Metamentian took a moment to crack his knuckles. "I'm a bounty hunter."
"I'd go into more detail, but I doubt you're going to be alive long enough to put that info to good use."
----
"If you've got a problem with me, let's hear it." Red Teresa folded her arms expectantly.
"D-do I h-have to tell you?" Blue Teresa asked meekly. "I-I mean, w-we're the s-same p-person, s-so shouldn't you a-already know...y-y'know?"
"The whole reason we're in this predicament is that we aren't syncing up, so no, I don't know!" Red Teresa huffed. "I'm pretty sure we both want to get this over with, so just say what it is so we can fix it and get back to normal."
"W-well, th-the thing is..." Blue Teresa gulped. "I-I think y-you're t-too much like m-mom."
"I'm-" Red Teresa stared at her in disbelief. "How am I like Mom?!"
"Wh-whenever you come out, we-we end up h-hurting people."
"Yeah, in situations where it's warranted!" Red Teresa said. "Name one innocent person we've ever hurt!"
Blue Teresa stammered a bit, trying to find the words for an answer, but ultimately found herself too nervous to speak. Instead of a vocal response, she ended up thinking back to one of their memories, causing it to manifest and replace the void around them. They now stood in the center of a city street, watching from a third-party perspective as their past self argued with Isaac in the aftermath of NeOhm's brutal attack on Fuviquo.
"And how did you protect them from the Evolvyrn?" Electrolite pushed.
"I transformed and went for her head as Skyjack." Teresa answered. "But that...that's different. If you hurt an Evolvyrn, they'll just transform back and be fine, but if you hurt someone who can't transform..." Teresa unconsciously rubbed the scar running down the underside of her left arm. "...You can't ever take that back."
"If you had a healing alien, you totally could, actually." Electrolite mused. "Still, I get your point. That's why you just have to use moderate violence like I said."
"I don't want to use any violence!" Teresa suddenly snapped. "What is wrong with you?!"
"I know a few people who could probably write a full list, but-"
"This isn't the time for more of your stupid quips!" Teresa had been pushed thoroughly past the breaking point by all of this. "You can't just be so flippant about everything!"
"I can be and I will." Electrolite tsked.
"Uh, Isaac?" Napoleon interjected. "This really isn't the time for-"
"'Appropriate amount of violence'? What is that even supposed to mean?!" Teresa continued, clenching her eyes closed and fists together as she yelled. "Who gets to decide what that is? You?! I am not going to start hurting people whenever I feel like it! I'm not going to be that kind of person! I refuse! I AM NOT GOING TO TURN INTO MY-"
The memory faded as their conversation in the past was cut off by the sudden rising of an airship out of the earth, returning them to empty space. Blue Teresa stayed silent as Red Teresa took a moment to process what her counterpart was trying to get across by showing this.
"So...what?" Red Teresa eventually said. "You think I'm just...arbitrarily choosing when to fight someone?"
"N-no, I-I know you h-have good r-reasons..." Blue Teresa gulped. "B-but...I-I'm sure Mom had g-good reasons f-for hurting us when she d-did it t-too."
"Wha-" Red Teresa threw her arms out to the sides in frustration. "If she had good reasons, why would we be afraid of turning into her in the first place?!"
Blue Teresa didn't have an answer for that.
"...Look," Red Teresa sighed. "You wanna know what I think? I think we're afraid of anger and violence because we were traumatized by those things, and you're trying to cope by just accepting that fear as fact."
"Wh-what else am I s-supposed to s-see it as?!" Blue Teresa questioned. "Wh-when has being a-angry o-or violent e-ever been a g-good thing?!"
Red Teresa's attempt at a response was interrupted by the space between them suddenly warping and tearing itself apart, just to reform into The Jester seconds later.
"Mind if I interject with my perspective as a higher being here?"
"What the-" Red Teresa shook her head out and shot him a suspicious glare. "Wait, have you been eavesdropping on us this whole time?!"
"That depends on how strictly you want to define 'eavesdropping'." The Jester shrugged. "I do hear the thoughts of any and every sentient lifeform, just not by choice. It's an inherent part of the Void Energy processing cycle, which- actually, we'll save that worldbuilding rambling for the supplemental material, going through all the details right now would grind this storyline to a halt."
"Would you stop referring to all this like it's some sort of soap opera?!" Red Teresa snapped. "This is serious!"
"Personally I take soap operas very seriously, but alright, I'll tone down the metafictional terminology." The Jester tsked, then turned to Blue Teresa and gestured to her red counterpart. "You see? Your other half got angry, but nobody got hurt; as a matter of fact, things have improved overall, as altering my lexicon is of little inconvenience to me and psychologically beneficial to her. She certainly could have been nicer about it, but normally that's where you would come in, so it's not entirely proper to blame her for it at the moment. If she hadn't felt any anger towards my behavior, she likely wouldn't have asked me to change it, even if it continued to have a negative effect on her, and nothing about the situation would have improved."
"Wait, was using that as a demonstration what you were aiming for this whole time?" Red Teresa raised an eyebrow.
"Not even a little, but I'm never one to skip out on a learning experience when it presents itself." The Jester chuckled. "What I really emerged to point out is that anger and violence aren't truly "bad" in and of themselves. They're traits every human has that evolved to help you survive."
He summoned his cane and snapped his fingers, causing the handle of it to disappear as the orb on the end grew larger and transformed into a miniature replica of ancient Earth.
"After the dinosaurs went extinct, I assumed Earth wouldn't end up producing any sentient life after all, so I became quite interested in it when I noticed a few apes beginning to develop a higher intelligence." The globe zoomed in, displaying a group of proto-hominids going about their lives. "Now, as much as you humans have come to care about protecting animals and the environment, I can assure you the feeling is largely not mutual, and the pacifists among your ancestors..." He hurriedly returned the orb to its original state as the hominids were suddenly jumped by a large predator. "Suffice to say it was more difficult for them to pass along their genes."
"B-but th-things are d-different now." Blue Teresa protested. "W-we don't have to f-fight off p-predators a-anymore."
"I'm sure you've never had to, but backwards masks are still worn for a reason." The Jester pointed out. "But more to the point, animals aren't the only predators out there. I'm sure there's one example in particular that comes to mind for you."
"Messias." Red Teresa's fists tightened in rage at the very thought of the man. "We've only ever been able to beat him by being angry, by being violent!" She pointed an accusatory finger at her blue counterpart. "Are you seriously going to say protecting people from him is a bad thing?!"
"...I don't know." Blue Teresa muttered. "B-being angry m-might not a-always be bad, b-but...it d-doesn't feel right e-either."
"It's not meant to feel "right"," The Jester said. "It's meant to warn you that something is wrong in the moment and give you the energy and motivation you need to survive. It's often an inappropriate response these days as threats become less physical and more abstract, but the emotion in and of itself isn't good or bad. It's how you channel it that matters."
Blue Teresa went silent, going over all this in her head as thoroughly as she could given the circumstances.
"...Y-you're right." She took a deep breath and clenched her fists in determination. "I-I still don't f-feel like you're right, b-but I know th-that you're right."
"Hey, that's a little something I like to call "good enough"!" The Jester grinned. "Okay then, with that out of the way, you two should be fusing back into each other any moment now!"
Nothing happened.
They kept waiting.
Still, nothing happened.
"...Okay, why isn't this working?" Red Teresa asked with a frustrated glare.
"I suppose there must be more than one issue you've been at war with yourself over." The Jester hmmed. "Well, that's all I can do for now, then. I'll give you two some more alone time to work things out."
The Jester disappeared in an explosion of confetti that faded from existence as quickly as it appeared.
"Alright then, what is it?" Red Teresa asked. "Whatever it is, I'm sure we can work it out."
"I-it's..." Blue Teresa hesitated for a moment before continuing. "...Anne."
"Anne?" Red Teresa blinked. "What about her?"
"You still have a grudge against her, don't you?"
The area was silent for a moment.
"I mean...why wouldn't I?" Red Teresa's brow furrowed. "Don't you remember what she put us through?"
"I-I do, b-but I-I don't think h-holding it against her is r-right." Blue Teresa said. "Sh-she's our girlfriend n-now. Th-there's no good r-reason to k-keep hanging on to wh-what happened before."
"No good reason?" Red Teresa asked incredulously. "I'll give you three!"
The two Teresas suddenly appeared inside a long school hallway lined with lockers. Classes were in session, and the hallway was empty save for three people. Red Teresa clenched her fists and Blue Teresa felt a pit form in her stomach as she recognized the memory they were in.
Two of the people in question were Claire and Anne, who were blocking the third person, Teresa herself, from leaving her locker. The past Teresa shrank back in fear, pressing her back into the cold metal of the locker door.
"Y'know, Teresa, after meeting you, I was starting to think "hey, maybe not all queers are degenerate pervs"," Claire said. "Didn't take you long to prove me wrong, huh?"
"Wh-what are you talking about?" The past Teresa squeaked.
"You went into the girls locker room with the rest of us after PE." Anne muttered. "If you're into women, isn't that basically the same as a guy sneaking in to look at us?"
"Ew, it totally is!" Claire remarked with a snide laugh. "I bet she was getting off on seeing us in the showers, too! Gross!"
"N-no, I wasn't!" Teresa protested. "I-I'm not a creep!"
"Sure you aren't, babygirl." Claire said mockingly. "Hey, how about next time, you go into the boys locker room so you can feel what it's like to get gawked at."
"I-I r-really don't th-think the teachers w-would allow that..." Teresa mumbled.
"Wait, were you actually considering it?" Claire laughed. "You really are a little freak, aren't you?"
"N-no, I-I just-" Teresa started to tear up. "I- wh-what do y-you want me t-to do?"
"Well, let's see..." Claire hmmed. "Oh, I got it! Listen up!"
She leaned in closer to Teresa, placing their faces just inches apart.
"I...want...you...to..." She spoke slowly and methodically, condescendingly stretching out every syllable. "...And this is coming from a place of love...kill yourself."
She stared intently into Teresa's wide, terrified eyes for a good few seconds that for Teresa felt like hours.
"...Kidding!" She suddenly leaned back and laughed, switching into a faux-cheerful voice. "Seriously, though, you're the freak here, you figure out what to do about it. Come on, Anne, let's get out of here before she starts picturing us naked or something."
As Claire turned to leave, Anne suddenly grabbed Teresa by the collar and pressed her even harder against her locker, making it difficult for her to breathe.
"I don't care what you end up doing, but if I ever see you trying anything weird on anyone in that locker room, I'm going to make you wish you were dead." Anne hissed.
"Wow, way to bring down the mood, Anne." Claire rolled her eyes as Anne let go of Teresa and turned to follow her. "Just spell it out, why don't ya?"
The memory faded, leaving the Red and Blue Teresas alone in the void again.
"Do you get it now?" Red Teresa asked. "Why I still have some resentment?"
"K-kind of, b-but Anne was b-barely involved in that!" Blue Teresa pointed out. "A-and besides, n-now know why she was s-so defensive about th-that kind of thing!"
"Alright, fine." Red Teresa scowled. "How about the next one, then?"
Their environment changed back to that of the school, this time in the cafeteria. Teresa had just gotten her lunch and was looking for an open seat, when all of a sudden, Anne knocked into her from behind, sending her sprawling onto the floor and knocking the contents of her lunch tray all over the ground.
"Woops, sorry about that." Anne said in a flat tone. "You were next to a trash can, so I guess you just kind of blended in."
Having hit the floor hard, Teresa's ears were still ringing as she reached out to try and pick up the tray, only for Claire to show up and stomp down on her hand, pinning it to the floor and making her yelp in pain. The commotion had attracted the attention of several students, if only for a moment, but none of them did anything to intervene.
"Dang, you're pretty clumsy, huh?" Claire began grinding her heel into Teresa's hand. "Y'know, the perv thing would be pretty bad on its own, but clumsy and a perv? C'mon, pick a struggle."
"I-... I'm n-not..." Teresa stammered out, trying to speak through the pain. "I-I swear, I-I'm not a per-"
Claire lifted up her foot and stomped down on Teresa's fingers this time, drawing out a more intense yelp from her. Anne noticeably winced and looked away when this happened, but she said nothing.
"Sorry, foot slipped." Claire said casually. "Gotta get going now, but hey, always nice seeing you~!"
The memory faded out as Anne and Claire walked away, with Red Teresa glaring at Blue Teresa as their environment returned to black.
"Every day, they did that. Every. Single. Day."
"O-okay, but a-all Anne did w-was knock us over, a-and she obviously wasn't c-comfortable with Claire g-going so far." Blue Teresa shrank back a little.
"And yet she kept knocking us over so Claire could do it anyway." Red Teresa pointed out. "Remember the day she wore cleats? We couldn't write with that hand for a week! Are you seriously going to tell me that isn't worth being at least a little upset about?!"
"I-I mean... I-I don't know, she's o-obviously changed, s-so I don't see the point in still-"
"Oh, come on!" Red Teresa interrupted her, sounding immensely frustrated. "Alright, look, I really didn't want to bring this up, but I honestly don't know what else I can do to convince you."
Their surroundings changed again, this time showing the outside of their high school sometime in spring, well after most of the students had left for the day. They were in an isolated area back behind the school, completely hidden from the street and difficult to see from most other angles.
"...Oh no." Blue Teresa's heart sank as the memory continued and they saw Anne dragging the past Teresa by the arm. She knew what was about to come next, but that wasn't going to make it any less painful to relive.
Anne eventually threw Teresa against the brick wall of the school, wearing a look of barely-contained rage.
"P-please, I-I don't know what I did, j-just tell me-"
"I warned you." Anne spoke in a quiet, venomous tone.
"Wh-what?"
"I warned you." Anne stomped over and used her arm to pin Teresa against the wall by her throat. "I warned you what would happen if you did anything to the girls in our class, and you didn't listen."
She pulled back her arm, allowing Teresa to slump to her knees and catch her breath.
"I-I don't know what you're t-talking about," Teresa wheezed. "I-I d-didn't do anythi-"
Anne kicked her in the side of the head, knocking her onto her side.
"Don't lie to me!" Anne snapped. "I know exactly what happened!"
She kicked Teresa in the gut, knocking the wind out of her, then dragged her to her feet and leaned her up against the wall before hitting her with a brutal punch that sent her back to the ground. She started kicking Teresa repeatedly, who feebly attempted to defend herself by crossing her arms in front of her face to block incoming kicks even as blood started to stream from her nose.
"P-please, I'm sorry!" She had no idea what she was even apologizing for; she just hoped that accepting responsibility for whatever she had been accused of would get Anne to stop. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
Even so, the assault continued for what felt like an eternity, until all of a sudden, Claire walked into the picture.
"Oh my gosh, Anne, I've been looking for you literally everywhere." She groaned. "Seriously, I almost thought something-"
She froze as she caught sight of Anne breathing heavily, standing above the beaten and bruised Teresa, whose cries of pain had turned into a silent sobbing.
"...You, uh..." Claire blinked rapidly as she tried to think of an appropriate response. "...Wanna tell me what happened here, or did you just kinda feel like going psycho today?"
"She went after Kimberly." Anne clenched her fists, speaking through gritted teeth. "She followed her into the showers after PE, and she-"
Anne paused, clearly too disgusted to even finish the rest of the sentence.
"...Kimberly told me herself." Her voice had become more subdued, but she was still shaking with rage. "I can't forgive anyone who would do something like that."
Claire just stood there, looking at her with a blank stare for a few seconds... then suddenly burst out laughing.
"Oh my gosh, you actually believed her?!" She continued laughing. "I told her to say that!"
The color abruptly drained from Anne's face.
"...What?"
"Yeah, I got her to go around telling people that by threatening to leak her DMs." Claire chuckled. "I just thought it'd be good for a laugh; I didn't think you of all people would fall for it."
"You..." Anne muttered, still reeling from what she had just heard. "How could something like that possibly be funny?"
"Well, you kinda either get it or ya don't." Claire shrugged. "Come on, let's go grab a shake or something."
"But...if it was a lie...then..." Anne shakily looked down at her bloodied fists and then over to Teresa, who was curled up and crying in the fetal position.
"Aw, lighten up a little, it's not like you beat up anyone important." Claire walked over and patted her on the back. "Besides, she's a queer, she probably would've done it at some point anyway."
Anne was led away by Claire, still looking shell-shocked, while Teresa was left bloody and crying on the pavement. The memory faded, and neither the Red or Blue Teresas looked unshaken after what they had just seen.
"You..." Blue Teresa muttered in a quiet voice. "...I spent so long repressing that memory. Why...why would you pull it back to the surface again?"
"To make a point!" Red Teresa said. "I love Anne too, but she's done so much to us that you've swept under the rug! How are we supposed to have an honest relationship with her if we can't even be honest with ourselves?!"
"...You want me to be honest?" Blue Teresa slowly began walking towards her repressed counterpart.
"Yes!" Red Teresa exclaimed, tossing her arms out in exasperation. "Repressing things is what got us here in the first place! If we want to have any chance of recovering-"
Blue Teresa suddenly slapped her across the face, sending her stumbling backwards.
"Hey, what the hell?!" Red Teresa groaned, rubbing the newly-tenderized spot on her cheek. "What are you doi-"
She was cut off as Blue Teresa hit her with a punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of her.
"If I'm being honest..." Blue Teresa clenched her fists tighter. "I wish you were dead."
Red Teresa's attempt to wheeze out a response was preemptively interrupted by Blue Teresa throwing her to the ground.
"All you care about is us." Blue Teresa hissed. "Keeping us safe, keeping us healthy, even if it causes problems for other people."
"That's what I'm supposed to do!" Red Teresa replied. "We're a human being! There's supposed to be a part of us that wants to keep us alive!"
"We're not human." Blue Teresa clenched her teeth. "We're less than human! We're trash! Garbage! We're not a person, we're just a- a walking pile of traumatic memories and mental illnesses!" She threw her arms out to the side in frustration. "We're useless! We're a parasite! Everyone else would be better off if we didn't exist!"
"...Yeah." Red Teresa slowly pulled herself to her feet, dusting herself off along the way. "Yeah, okay. Sure. You're right. You're 100% right."
The environment around them suddenly changed into a memory of Liberty Park, a moment frozen in time in which Dupligato was rescuing a child playing in the street from an oncoming car.
"That kid definitely would've been better off as road paste." Red Teresa said. "And his mom? Oh, infinitely better off after seeing her child turn into a red splatter on someone's windshield."
"That isn't-"
"Speaking of windshields, all those people we rescued from their cars when the Psikick Evolvyrn ran through them?" The scenery changed again to show Dupligato's shadow clones pulling people away from the burning wreckage of their vehicles. "Screw 'em, am I right? Heck, screw everyone we rescued that day. Especially these two."
The memory switched to show the moment earlier on that day when Teresa had shoved Anne and Claire out of the way of some falling rubble.
"Oh, yeah, Anne especially." Red Teresa nodded her head sardonically. "She would've been way better off without us."
The crumbling mall around them faded away into their memory of the dark road where they had fought Messias for the first time.
"Shame we were there to help back then, huh?" Red Teresa's expression grew dark as her sarcastic tone cracked. "She'd obviously be doing so much better if Messias was able to-"
"SHUT UP!" Blue Teresa screamed, lunging forward and grabbing her counterpart by the collar. "You- you-"
"I what?!" Red Teresa demanded. "Tell me! If you're so sure everyone else would be better off without us, tell me why!"
"THEY JUST WOULD BE!"
"WHY?!"
"I DON'T KNOW! It's just- it's what Mom always said! It's how she's always treated us!"
"If you're so afraid of turning into Mom, then why are you just repeating everything she did?!"
Blue Teresa froze.
"I..." She let go of her counterpart's collar and began to back away slowly. "I'm not..."
Her furious look melted into a blank stare as she eventually stopped moving and fell to her knees.
"No..." She tilted forward, placing her hands out in front of her for support. "No, no, no, you're the part of us that's like her. You! That-that's why I pushed you away!"
Her red counterpart said nothing.
"You're the one who gets violent! You're the one that hurts people! You're the one who-"
She looked up at Red Teresa and immediately stopped talking. An obvious welt had formed on her red counterpart's cheek where her slap had made contact. A loud ringing in her ears slowly began to mute the world around her.
"...You..." All the color slowly drained from her face. "I... No..."
She stopped holding her head up, allowing her gaze to fall blankly onto the ground.
"If... we're already like her..." Tears began welling up in her eyes. "...Then it's already too late."
"We're not like her."
Red Teresa squatted down to speak to her counterpart at eye level.
"She hurt us. We internalized that and hurt ourselves. That's not okay, but it doesn't make us a copy of her."
"Then what..." Blue Teresa looked up at her. "What does it make us?"
"Well, a traumatized human being, of course." The Jester's voice chimed in from nowhere.
What looked like a black hole suddenly appeared in the center of the mindscape and began turning itself inside out, warping in shape until it eventually coalesced into the form of the Jester himself.
"Trust me, you're a dime a dozen." He absentmindedly waved his staff around. "Your species as a whole has a ways to go when it comes to comprehending your own minds."
"You're still here?" Red Teresa scowled. "Are you just here to mock our 'underdeveloped species', or are you actually going to do something useful?"
"Hm?" The Jester paused for a moment before he suddenly appeared to have realized something. "Ah, apologies." His striped hat tipped itself at them apologetically. "I meant that in more of a 'you're not alone in your struggles' way, but in hindsight, I can see how it could have been misinterpreted."
Red Teresa kept glaring at him for a few moments before eventually sighing and letting her facial muscles relax.
"I guess it's hard to blame something like...whatever you are for not knowing how to be tactful," She grunted, crossing her arms in front of her, "It's just hard not to get annoyed by it."
"...I don't understand." Blue Teresa mumbled. "I-I repressed you because I didn't want to be confrontational, b-but you're the p-part of me that's t-trying to empathize with h-him?"
"Being nonconfrontational and being empathetic aren't the same thing, you know." The Jester pointed out, drawing a 'does not equal' sign in the air with his staff. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your distaste for confrontation comes from a place of fear rather than a place of caring."
The area around them changed to display the moment several months ago where Anne had initially apologized to Teresa, with The Jester whirling his staff around clockwise to fast-forward the memory until it hit the part he was looking for, at which point he stopped moving and allowed it to play out at normal speed.
“I-I’m sorry!” Teresa blurted out. “I really didn’t want to bring it up in the first pla-”
“Don’t apologize to me!” Anne snapped. “Do you have any idea how screwed up that is?!”
“I just...didn’t want to make you feel bad.” Teresa flinched.
“You- that’s my problem, not yours!” Anne said. “You can’t just let people get away with doing horrible things to you, Teresa! I wish I hadn’t done that to you, but I did, and you can’t fix that for me by just trying to ignore it!”
“I-I don’t know what else to do!” Teresa burst out, holding back tears. “You’re upset, I’m terrified, and I just want everything to stop!”
“Why would you be scared of me being upset?!” Anne asked, bewildered.
“Because when people get upset, they hurt me!” Teresa yelled, clenching her eyes shut.
The Jester snapped his fingers, pausing the memory and letting it fade back into the void, returning them to their blank surroundings.
"It's normal to be afraid of being hurt," The Jester said. "But if you treat everyone as a potential threat, I have to imagine you're more likely to be complacent with them than you are to truly empathize with them."
"I-I...I guess that m-makes sense, b-but..." Blue Teresa looked up at Red Teresa. "H-how can y-you do it?"
"I'm supposed to be everything you repress, remember?" Red Teresa said. "Not just the bad things."
"If my observations here are accurate, you're an empathetic person by nature, but your fear often overtakes your empathy, pushing it to the back of your mind as you focus solely on survival." The Jester mused. "I suppose what you truly need to examine here is how much of your kindness is genuine empathy and how much of it is simply a tactic you use to survive."
"...That...i-isn't r-really even a q-question." Blue Teresa hung her head. "E-everyone sees me a-as b-being nice, but...I-I'm just afraid. I'm so afraid. I'm...I'm a fraud."
Red Teresa took her counterpart's hands and gently helped her to her feet.
"Yeah. We're kind of a fraud." She looked into her own eyes. "But we don't have to be."
"W-will accepting you r-really f-fix everything?" Blue Teresa asked as more tears welled up in her eyes.
"Oh, no, hardly." The Jester interjected. "There's still much damage to be undone, but-" He tossed his cane into the air and caught it with his other hand as it transformed into a wrench. "You'll be much more well-equipped for the job."
"From now on, when we have to face things alone," Red Teresa took on a determined look. "Let's face them alone together."
Several seconds passed of Blue Teresa once again floundering for something to say and coming up short, and in the end, she settled for simply leaning forward and holding her counterpart in a tight embrace. Their bodies briefly began to glow before they suddenly merged back into one being in a blinding flash of light. Satisfied with a job (debatably) well-done, The Jester tipped his cap one final time and left. The mindscape itself began to change, slowly fading to white as Teresa, whole at last, finally began to regain consciousness.
----
"This is just asinine." Igneoux tsked, easily dodging each of Detonation Inferno's attempted blows. "You know even if you managed to hit me, you wouldn't actually do any damage to me, right?"
"Then why do you keep dodging?" Detonation Inferno questioned, each missed swing of his fist spraying venom across the ground.
"Armor's expensive."
Silver Breaking Point lunged at him from the side, swinging her sword towards his head, only for him to easily catch it between his fingers.
"You must not have been kidding about this being a new form." Igneoux scoffed. "You swung that thing at me like a club. You really think any experienced fighter isn't gonna be able to block that?"
"I was counting on it, actually."
Purple shattering energy traveled down the sword and into Igneoux, instantly shattering the armor covering his hand. He quickly let go of the sword and jumped back a ways before starting to shake out his hand.
"Gah, pins and needles!" He hissed. "Damn it, kid, I just said this armor is expensive!"
"I was really hoping that would work." Silver Breaking Point muttered as she regrouped with Detonation. "What now? Think you can nail him if I keep him distracted?"
"Possibly, but if his body's molecular structure is too durable to be broken apart by energy specifically designed to shatter molecular bonds, I doubt I'll be able to penetrate his skin to inject the venom." Detonation Inferno replied in a hushed tone.
"What about those bomb-looking things on your arms?" She squinted at them. "Okay, wait, they look like bombs from a distance, but up close they look like apples. The heck are they?"
"Given Detonation's inherent physiology, they're likely some form of grenade." Detonation Inferno stated. "Unfortunately, I've not used this form before, so I'm not sure of their exact effects."
"-And using untested explosives right outside of a hospital is probably a bad idea." Silver Breaking Point concluded with a sigh.
"You know I can hear you, right?" Igneoux tapped the side of his helmet. "Spatial sound amplification. Pretty basic alien tech."
"Does being able to hear us even matter when we don't have a plan?" Silver Breaking Point huffed exasperatedly.
"Fair enough."
"I do have a plan, I'm just not naive enough to discuss it out loud." Detonation Inferno snapped his fingers.
The asphalt around Igneoux suddenly burst into flames, creating a wall of clean-burning hellfire between the two parties. Igneoux squinted and used his visor to zoom in on the ground, revealing that the flames had erupted from the toxin Detonation Inferno's "missed" punches had been spreading earlier.
"You know what, it might've been pointless, but I respect the play nonetheless." Igneoux said. "That said, even if I wasn't invincible, I'm still made of rock, so I'm not sure what you were expecting this to-" He was cut off as he started to reach into the flames and immediately flinched back with a yelp of pain. "GAH! What the hell?!"
"Correct." Detonation Inferno stated.
"What is that supposed to mean?!"
"He's trying to say you just touched hellfire." Silver Breaking Point explained. "...I think. He's not the best at communicating things."
"Hellfire?" Igneoux hissed, waving out his burned arm in an attempt to cool it. "What kind of properties does this stuff have?"
"Simply put, it's a flame capable of burning both body and soul." Detonation Inferno stated. "Do you have the concept of hell on your "Apocalypse Earth?"
"Yeah, why?" Igneoux huffed.
"Then you are no more immune to the hellfire I produce than the average sinner."
"So what are you, then, some kind of demon?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Well, whatever you are, the fact that you're both semi-competent and have the power to hurt me means I'm gonna have to start taking this a bit seriously." Igneoux grunted, reaching down with his uninjured arm to unclip a fist-sized ball of some sort from his belt. "Can't say I didn't give you a chance to back out.
Igneoux tossed the ball through the flames. Silver Breaking Point immediately started drawing up a shield, but the ball detonated at the peak of its arc, creating a blinding flash of light and a contained shockwave that blew out the fire.
"...In hindsight, considering how expensive those are, that might have been overkill." Igneoux grunted to himself as the light faded to reveal that Anne and Lucius had been kicked out of their transformations.
"What was that?!" Anne demanded, squinting as her eyes tried to recover from the sudden flashbang.
"Technically it's called a Metamentium Life Drainage Bomb, but that's a bit of a mouthful." Igneoux waved her off. "Apt description of what it does, though. Absorbs all life energy in a customized range and funnels it into whoever threw it. It's Level 15 tech and banned in most timelines, so you should really just count yourself lucky you got to see one in real life."
"So you've gained the energy from our alien forms, then?" Lucius narrowed his eyes.
"Well-" Igneoux paused for a moment to take stock of how he felt. "Actually, no. There's a failsafe that prevents the transfer process if the energy absorbed is potentially harmful, but I'm not sure-"
The bomb abruptly cracked like an egg and burst into flames of hellfire.
"-Scratch that, I'm pretty sure that's what happened here." Igneoux sighed. "Guess I have to dispose of you manually."
"Alright, I'm just going to say it," Anne scowled. "I really preferred the other Igneoux."
Igneoux froze.
"...The what?"
"We've interacted with a different person that calls himself "Igneoux"," Lucius explained. "I admit I haven't personally had a full conversation with him, but I still second the opinion."
"That's not possible." Igneoux growled. "I've traveled half the multiverse, and not once have I ever met another Igneoux this close to the central timeline."
"Considering how vast the multiverse is to begin with, that hardly means much," Lucius said. "And it's not exactly the most complex moniker ever created."
"You know, I never put much though into it, but it really is just the word "igneous" with an 'x' at the end," Anne tilted her head slightly. "That's, um...kind of on-the-nose for someone made of rock, isn't it?"
"Especially for a Metamentian, seeing as they hail from a volcanic world." Lucius continued. "In our timeline, at the very least."
"Okay then, smart guy, what's your name?" Igneoux scowled.
"Lucius Raivent."
"So the guy named Lucius has hell powers, and I'm the one getting crap for having an obvious name?" Igneoux huffed. "Are you two just trying to annoy me to death, or what- what's going on here?"
"We're trying whatever we have to in order to keep you away from CROSS and Teresa." Anne growled.
"Oh, Teresa, is that your girlfriend's name?" Igneoux hmmed. "Well, if she does end up dying when I destroy CROSS, at least her name will look good on a tombstone."
Anne growled and raised her transformation lock again, only for it to be knocked out of her hands by a small pillar of rock summoned by Igneoux, who followed it up by snapping his fingers to create a shockwave of sound that knocked her and Lucius out on the spot.
"Have fun with the brain damage, idiots." Igneoux grunted, walking past their unconscious bodies to re-enter the hospital. "...Really didn't need to waste a bomb on that."
----
Teresa slowly opened her eyes and tried pushing herself up into a sitting position, immediately catching the attention of Dana and Emilia.
"Teresa!" Dana rushed to her bedside, leaning on the handrail for support. "You-" She caught herself as Emilia gave her a stern glare. "...Are you okay?"
"I...I think so." Teresa replied, somewhat surprised that she wasn't being yelled at. "Are- are you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Dana scowled. "Look, just..." Her grip on the railing tightened a bit. "Don't scare me like that, okay? I've got enough stress as it is."
"Did...I miss something while I was out?"
"Nothing you need to worry about." Emilia said. "I was able to remove the harmful modifications Oberon OS made to the CrossTrix's code, so you shouldn't have any more issues like this."
"Th-thank you." Teresa pulled up her left arm to look at the CrossTrix. "CROSS, how are you feeling?"
"Better with all that junk code taken out," The CrossTrix dial displayed a thumbs-up icon. "But what about you? You said you're okay, but I can't imagine going through all that was pleasant."
"It was...pretty awful." Teresa admitted. "I didn't think I'd be able to get through it, but...I guess I underestimated myself."
"That's probably one of the most optimistic responses I've ever heard from you." CROSS noted.
"I-I mean, it's not really optimistic, I'm just...trying to be realistic."
"Compared to how you usually approach things, that's optimism."
"Yeah, that- that's fair." Teresa cracked a faint grin.
"Well, isn't this wholesome?" A deep, gravelly voice grunted from the doorway. "Kind of making me feel bad I have to ruin it, honestly."
The four of them looked towards the doors to find Igneoux casually leaning against the door frame.
"I'm sorry, who are you?" Emilia's brow furrowed in confusion. "Did you need something?"
"I'm just a bounty hunter who's passing through." Igneoux gestured at the CrossTrix. "Just need to destroy the AI running that thing and I'll be on my way."
"Wha-" Teresa's eyes widened as she instinctively used her other arm to shield the device. "Why would you need to destroy CROSS?!"
"Money." Igneoux stated bluntly. "Guy who hired me made a big stink about an "Anti-Life Entity" or whatever, but I only really care about the 'hired me' part." He paused for a moment, then pointed a finger at her. "You wouldn't happen to be 'Teresa', would you?"
"Um...y-yes?" Teresa said. "Why?"
"Your friends outside seemed worried destroying that thing might kill you." He said. "That true?"
"Um...u-up until a few minutes ago, I think."
"Huh. Well, make sure to give your girlfriend props later, then." He grunted. "Turns out all that stalling she and the demon kid did actually paid off."
"My girl-" Teresa's eyes widened even further and she leapt out of her hospital bed at a speed that startled Dana and Emilia. "Where is she? What did you do to her?!"
"She's right outside the building next to the other guy." Igneoux shrugged. "There was some back-and-forth, but I ended up just knocking them out with a sonic boom. Should be fine if their concussions weren't too bad, but hey, even if they were, at least they're already at the hospital, right?"
Teresa's fists tightened.
"Mom, Dr. Krauze, g-go check on Anne and Lucius." She slowly pulled up the CrossTrix, eyes firmly locked on Igneoux. "I-I'll deal with this."
"Are you insane?!" Dana snapped. "You just woke up from a coma induced by multiple seizures! It's a miracle you're not dead, let alone walking around already! That talking watch is not worth dying over!"
"The watch isn't, b-but my friend is."
"Look, Teresa, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with your mother for once." CROSS beeped from the CrossTrix. "I'm glad we're friends, but looking at it objectively, having me around has seriously screwed up your life in a lot of ways. I'm not worth sacrificing yourself to protect."
"Now you just sound like me." Teresa pointed out while subtly adjusting the CrossTrix's number wheel. "My life was already screwed up, CROSS. Meeting you might have brought more problems into it, but if it wasn't for you, I-I wouldn't have been alive to have those problems in the first place. You're my partner, CROSS. I-I still need you."
"Cute speech and all, but your friends outside fought me two-on-one and still didn't stand a chance." Igneoux scoffed. "What makes you think you do?"
"N-nothing." Teresa replied, turning the CrossTrix dial. "But if I only fought when I thought I could win...I'd never fight at all."
She slammed down on the CrossTrix dial, transforming into Dupligato Titania and lunging forward at Igneoux faster than he could react, tackling him into his own shadow.
"Teresa!" Dana yelled as the two of them disappeared into the shadows.
"We'll just have to trust her and CROSS for now." Emilia took a deep breath. "I'm going to go check on Anne and Lucius like she asked. Come with me or don't."
With that, Emilia marched out the door and set off towards the elevators at a brisk pace. Unsure of what else to do, Dana eventually followed her.
----
As soon as they were far enough out of the portal to ensure he wouldn't get telefragged, Igneoux grabbed one of the horns on Dupligato Titania's helmet and flung her away, casually tossing her out a good fifty meters. Right as she made contact with the ground, she slipped into her own shadow and popped out of Igneoux's, performing a kick flip off the back of his head that she used to land safely several meters away.
"Okay, either I failed geography or you just teleported us somewhere impossibly well beyond a Yamineko's maximum range." Igneoux turned around to face her, gesturing at the dry, deserted wasteland that surrounded them.
"I did?" Dupligato Titania blinked. "...Actually, yeah, of course I did, Titania form. Do you know where we are?"
"Wha- we're in Death Valley!" Igneoux snapped. "You know, in Nevada? How did you get us here if you didn't know where you were going?!"
"I-I just kind of had a vague idea of wanting take you somewhere empty." Dupligato Titania said. "I'm just glad I didn't end up on the moon this time."
"...Assuming that's true, deciding to fight me might not be as obviously stupid as I thought it was."
He threw a hand in the air, summoning a rock spike from the ground directly beneath his opponent faster than the human eye could see; Dupligato Titania, however, was more than capable of spotting the attack coming and dodging out of the way. This repeated a few times until it sunk in that this clearly wasn't going to work.
"Okay, are you actually going to fight me or not?" Igneoux grunted impatiently. "If all you're planning on doing is running away, why are you even hanging around?"
"I don't want to fight you, but if I leave, you're just going to track me down again, aren't you?" Dupligato Titania stopped moving and stood tall, allowing the CrossTrix to generate a pair of solid light sashimono on her back.
"If you're still dumb enough to be wearing that watch, sure." Igneoux pointed at the dial on her chest. "Seriously, you're putting your life on the line here for no reason."
"I'm protecting my friend." Dupligato Titania pulled one of the sashimono off of her back and pointed it at Igneoux in turn. "That's reason enough."
"Oh, grow up." Igneoux rolled his eyes. ""Protecting your friend?" What are you gonna do, blast me with your rainbow sparkle friendship power? This is life and death, you realize that, right?"
"What are you, stupid?" CROSS beeped from the CrossTrix. "Forming social connections is one of the most fundamental parts of being human. Are you seriously going to argue that normal pack animal behavior is dumb because the word referring to it sounds kiddy?"
"You're testing my patience here, you really are." Igneoux growled. "Y'know what, screw it, casualties be damned, I'm ending this right now."
Igneoux put his arms out in front of him, curled his hands into fists, and forcefully slammed them together, creating an indescribably loud sonic shockwave that hit Dupligato Titania like a truck. The sheer force of the vibrations it sent through her body ripped apart her soft tissue from the inside and sent her flying backwards, eventually hitting the ground and being forced out of her transformation. She noticed Igneoux winding up to perform the same attack again and quickly reached for the CrossTrix, transforming into Burstbox Titania just in time to nullify Igneoux's sonic attack with her own sonic powers.
"Credit where it's due, you're the first person I've ever seen counter that move." Igneoux grunted. "Won't save you, but kudos."
"Something's wrong here." CROSS said. "Metamentians are strong, but a technique like that is absurd even by their standards."
"Like I already told your idiot friends, I'm not the kind of Metamentian you're familiar with." Igneoux sighed. "I'm from a different timeline. No alien from your timeline has any chance of beating me."
"...Okay." Burstbox Titania muttered.
She reached for the CrossTrix dial and reverted back to human, where she began fiddling with the number wheels on the back of the CrossTrix.
"Finally came to your senses, huh?" Igneoux crossed his arms. "Hurry up and get that thing off, I don't have all day."
"I-I'm not taking it off." Teresa mumbled.
"Then what the heck are you doing?" Igneoux asked impatiently. "If you're looking for a mercy kill, I'd be happy to oblige, but I'm gonna need the payment for that up front. I mean, obviously."
There was a faint clicking noise from the back of the CrossTrix before its back panel slid open, revealing a DNA Key that Teresa wordlessly grabbed and plugged into the center of the CrossTrix dial. Realizing that something was up, Igneoux moved to intervene, but was too late to prevent Teresa turning the key and slamming down on the CrossTrix dial, transforming in a flash of teal light. He quickly punched her new form, a blow that would've turned any normal being of flesh and blood into a red mist, but did nothing more than dent the armor of Teresa's current transformation.
"What the-" Igneoux's eyes narrowed. "What is this thing supposed to be?"
"A last resort."
BurstRock turned and slammed Igneoux in the gut, an attack that, to his great surprise, actually did something. He was sent flying backwards, and while he didn't have the biology necessary to have the wind knocked out of him, he did notice a crack form where BurstRock's attack had hit him.
"You little-" Igneoux righted himself mid-air and planted his feet into the ground, skidding to a halt. "When did you scan my DNA?!"
"Just now." The CrossTrix dial blinked on and off as CROSS began to explain. "The CrossTrix's scan mode doesn't require the use of the indicator light to function, so I took the liberty of turning it off."
"Crafty little scrap heap, aren't you?" Igneoux snorted. "Just one issue with this plan: you're using that DNA in a fusion, so even if you can technically damage me now, you're only working with half of my strength and durability. You still don't stand a chance."
"Did..." BurstRock tilted her head slightly. "Did the person who hired you not tell you what the CrossTrix is named for?"
"It's cross-themed, what more is there to get?"
"Well-"
"Teresa, wait." CROSS interrupted her. "Let him figure it out on his own, it'll be funny."
"Okay, you're acting way too confident for the situation you look like you're in, and I don't think either of you are capable of pulling off a convincing bluff." Igneoux's eyes narrowed as he slowly took up a defensive position and began reaching for his belt. "I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't trust it."
"Crap, he's not stupid." CROSS said. "Be careful, we don't know what he's got in that belt."
"The CrossTrix uses something called 'Cross-Fusion' when it combines DNA!" BurstRock blurted out. "It lets the fusion use all of its abilities at full power!"
"Wha- Teresa, what are you doing?!"
"I'm sorry, it's just-" BurstRock stammered. "He-he seems cautious, so I thought maybe telling him about the kind of power we have up front might convince him to back off."
"That's insanely risky!"
"Actually, it's a pretty good character read." Igneoux grabbed a flat, square-shaped device off the side of his belt and pressed a button in the center of it, causing it to split open and expand into a hoverboard. "I might still be able to overpower you based on our age difference, but I don't know enough about your roster to test my luck. I'll be back once I've done some more research."
Igneoux hopped on the hoverboard and attempted to fly off, but only made it a few meters into the air before a sonic blast from BurstRock knocked him off. He managed to twist around mid-air and land on his feet as his hoverboard drifted gently back to the ground nearby.
"Seriously?" Igneoux huffed. "Didn't you say you don't want to fight me?"
"I don't, but-" BurstRock stated a bit shakily. "I-I can't let you leave if you're just going to come back and try to destroy CROSS again."
"What do you want me to do, pinky-swear I'm giving up?" Igneoux laughed. "Cute, but that's not how this works. What's stopping me from just lying to your face and striking as soon as you let your guard down?"
"I hate to say it, but he's got a point." The CrossTrix beeped. "If he's willing to kill for money, I don't think being dishonest is beneath him."
"Listen to the watch, kid." Igneoux said. "Better to let me go now and keep your guard up than waste everyone's time trying to force me into some meaningless surrender."
"No!" BurstRock yelled, unintentionally cracking the earth beneath her. "I'm- I'm tired of this! I'm tired of worrying about more and more enemies all the time! I'm tired of knowing that at any second of any day, me or someone I love could get attacked and killed! I'm not just going to let it happen anymore!"
Igneoux stared silently at her for a few moments, wearing a flat look beneath his helmet.
"Then kill me."
"Wh-what?" BurstRock flinched back.
"I'm not going to give up on this job, so your options here are limited." Igneoux stated. "Either stop whining and let me go, or shut up and kill me."
"B-but I-" BurstRock stammered. "N-no, I can't-"
"You're so naïve it hurts." Igneoux scoffed at her. "What happened to "I'm not gonna let it happen anymore," huh? You're full of it."
"Teresa, I think we should just let him go for now." CROSS said. "We can talk to Dr. Krauze, get some sort of plan of action set up, maybe get the Plumbers involved, I don't know. You don't need to be dealing with something this heavy right now."
BurstRock gave no direct response, but she was visibly shaking. All of a sudden, she dashed forward and hit Igneoux with a sound-enhanced sucker punch to the cheek, shattering his helmet and putting a nasty crack in his jaw as it sent him stumbling to the side.
"No." BurstRock muttered. "He's right. I am naïve. It's what's put me and the people around me in danger before."
She aimed one of her arms so that the sound manipulation organ at the end was pointed directly at Igneoux's head.
"I won't let it happen again."
"Now this is getting interesting." Igneoux chuckled. "Question is whether or not you have the guts to pull the trigger."
"I will if I have to, but I don't want to." BurstRock reiterated. "Why are you so insistent on killing CROSS? He hasn't done anything wrong! No amount of money could be worth this!"
"I know a lot of people who would argue with you on that, but it's not like I'm solely in this for the money." Igneoux paused. "Well, I'm solely in this job specifically for the money, but the reason I'm not quitting has nothing to do with the money. Or your friend, for that matter."
"Then why?!" BurstRock pleaded.
"I don't have to justify myself to you." Igneoux snorted.
"Then how about you justify yourself to me?." A new voice entered the conversation.
Igneoux and Teresa turned their heads to find the Igneoux Teresa was familiar with approaching them with his armor fully deployed.
"I-Igneoux?!" BurstRock exclaimed.
"What?" The Metamentian Igneoux asked.
"What?"
"What is it? You said my name."
"N-no, I said his name." BurstRock pointed towards the human Igneoux. "Your name is Igneoux too?"
"Oh yeah, guess I told your pals my name, not you." The Metamentian Igneoux grunted. "Which begs the question of who this knock-off is."
"You don't recognize me?" The human Igneoux asked, then promptly smacked his own forehead. "Right. Duh. Helmet."
He pressed a button on his armor's control gauntlet, making the helmet retract and expose his face. Several moments of silence passed as the two Igneouxes stared each other down.
"...Well, I'll be damned." Metamentian Igneoux eventually said. "If it isn't the walking disappointment."
"Seriously? It's been almost a decade and a half since you died, and that's how you greet me?" Human Igneoux sighed. "I mean, I wish I could say I was surprised."
"Hey, it might've been that long for you, but me personally? I've been, you know, dead." Igneoux scoffed. "Shortens how much of that time span I've experienced, believe it or not."
"Fair, I guess." Human Igneoux said. "Now, would you mind backing off of Teresa? I don't need you sucker-punching her in the middle of a conversation."
"You're asking me to back off?" Metamentian Igneoux said incredulously. "She's the one with the metaphorical gun pointed at my head!"
"Igneoux, I'm not twelve anymore." Human Igneoux said flatly.
"Alright, fine." Metamentian Igneoux grunted, pulling a hand out from behind his back to reveal an armed MLDB he proceeded to deactivate and place back on his belt. "Won't lie, the fact that you're not as gullible anymore makes me an odd mix of proud and annoyed."
"What was that?" BurstRock asked, slowly lowering her arm.
"Something you can't defend against." Metamentian Igneoux stated bluntly. "Quick tip: if you ever feel like you've got someone trying to kill you cornered, try to make sure they're actually cornered. You are comedically easy to lead into a trap."
"And you're unbelievable." Human Igneoux gave him a stern look. "Seriously, you come back to life- which I'm really going to need you to explain- and the first thing you do is sign on to assassinate someone?"
"A job is a job, kid." Metamentian Igneoux grunted. "How did you even find out I was back, anyway?"
"Come to think of it, how did you find us?" BurstRock asked.
"Lucius called Isaac who called me." Human Igneoux stated. "Igneoux was the source for my Rockoustic DNA sample, so I had the Ultimatrix reference that to track down his genetic signature."
"Lucius?" Metamentian Igneoux paused. "Oh, right, the edgy kid. Not the kind of person I figured you'd be associated with."
"I've only met him, like, once." Human Igneoux shrugged. "We just know some of the same people."
"And I'm guessing that includes her." Metamentian Igneoux jabbed a thumb at BurstRock. "I'm not particularly interested in the details, but I'm assuming you'd have an issue with me killing her watch buddy and/or her."
"I'd have an issue with you killing anyone!" Human Igneoux snapped. "What is your problem?!"
"I'm a bounty hunter." Metamentian Igneoux stated. "This is my job. If you've got a problem with that, you're free to try and stop me, but don't think I'll go easy on you just because we worked together before."
"Igneoux, I need you to understand something." Human Igneoux pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, then gestured at the Ultimatrix. "You know what this is. You know what it does. If I were to transform into Rockoustic and then evolve, what do you think would happen to you if we fought?"
"Are you trying to threaten me right now?" Metamentian Igneoux chuckled. "Please, you couldn't even handle accidentally killing someone that was actively trying to murder you. What makes you think I'm gonna take you seriously?"
"Again, I'm not twelve anymore." Human Igneoux scowled. "I might not have turned into a crappy cynic like you, but I'm not above putting you back in the ground if I have to. I'd rather work with you than against you, but I'm not going to make believe that you're a good person."
Metamentian Igneoux silently stared him down for a moment, scanning his expression for any hint of insincerity.
There wasn't any.
"...Huh. Guess you really have changed." Metamentian Igneoux grunted. "Fine, I'll drop the contract," He pointed at his human counterpart. "But you owe me one."
"As long as it doesn't involve doing anything illegal, fine by me." Human Igneoux sighed.
"...So, um..." BurstRock made a noise equivalent to clearing her throat. "Does that mean..."
"Yeah, yeah, you're good to go." Metamentian Igneoux waved her off. "Run along."
"Sorry about him." Human Igneoux said to her. "You should head back and let everyone know you're alright. I'll catch up with you after I'm done talking to Igneoux."
"Yeah, about that." CROSS beeped. "We can't just go around calling both of you Igneoux, it'll get confusing."
"Let's have that conversation another time, okay?" Human Igneoux said. "One thing at a time."
BurstRock nodded and reverted to Teresa, who launched Cross Bullet and hopped aboard. The two Igneouxes watched the hover train take off and fly east, both remaining silent for the few moments it took for it to disappear below the horizon.
"Who puts a train in an Omnitrix?" Metamentian Igneoux questioned.
"Dr. Krauze definitely has unique taste." Human Igneoux commented before turning his full attention back to his Metamentian counterpart. "So, you mind explaining how you're not dead?"
"Heck if I know." Metamentian Igneoux shrugged. "One moment I'm dying, the next I'm waking up in this timeline in the middle of nowhere."
"Well, the fact that you remember dying rules out timeline manipulation at the very least." Human Igneoux hmmed. "I'm gonna have to look into this."
"Before you do that, I'm gonna have you fill me in on what I've missed, because clearly," Metamentian Igneoux gestured at him. "I've missed a lot."
"It's a bit much to explain all at once, but I guess I can give you a rundown on the basics." Human Igneoux sighed. "First thing's first, here's what happened with Dethrogue..."
----
The Cross Bullet touched down in front of the hospital Teresa had been admitted to, and once its doors opened Teresa was able to see Anne, Lucius, Dr. Krauze, and her mother all gathered just outside the front doors. Anne spotted Teresa first and ran over to her as she hopped out of the train, throwing her arms around her in a tight embrace that Teresa swiftly returned. To Anne's surprise, Teresa suddenly stood up on her tiptoes and gave her a confident kiss on the lips, which she quickly returned in kind.
"Are you okay?" Anne asked when they eventually separated. "Dr. Krauze said you had just barely woken up when that black-armored Igneoux got to your room. Lucius called Isaac to get the Igneoux we know to help, but-"
"I'm fine." Teresa interrupted her with a quick peck on the cheek. "I-I wasn't sure how things were going to turn out for a while, but o-our Igneoux showed up just in time. I-I hope I didn't worry you too much."
"She asked if she could sell her soul to heal you, so I'd say she was at least somewhat concerned." Lucius tsked as he walked up next to them. "Honestly, no sense of self-preservation, either of you."
"You're one to talk." Anne said. "You helped me hold off the Metamentian Igneoux, didn't you?"
"I'm not quite as fragile as the ordinary man."
"W-well, thank you anyway." Teresa said to him. "If he had gotten to me any earlier, I-I probably wouldn't still be here right now."
"...Fair." Lucius awkwardly adjusted his tie and walked off.
"...H-hey, Anne?" Teresa turned her attention back to her girlfriend. "D-do you think we could talk in the Cross Bullet for a minute?"
"Um-" Anne was caught a bit off-guard by this. "Well, yeah, of course."
Right as they started to board, Teresa froze at the sound of Dana calling her name.
"Teresa!"
She turned around to see Dana approaching her with a stern look. Her muscles tensed up, instinctively preparing her to receive a slap of some kind, so she was stiff as a board when her mother stopped in front of her and unexpectedly pulled her into a hug instead.
"M-mom?" Teresa stammered out in surprise.
"I know, this feels weird for me too." Dana mumbled. "Just...whatever you do, don't die on me, okay?"
Teresa nodded and Dana let go of her, stepping back a bit to let her board the Cross Bullet. As the train doors closed and it took off into the air, Dr. Krauze walked up next to her with her arms folded.
"That seemed pretty different from your usual interactions for someone who apparently can't change." Emilia noted.
"I don't remember asking for your commentary." Dana growled.
"Stop whining, it's a good thing." Emilia rolled her eyes. "It means there might be some hope for you after all."
----
"So...what is it you wanted to talk about?" Anne asked.
She and Teresa sat directly across from each other in the seated section of the Cross Bullet's passenger cabin. Teresa was looking down and fidgeting nervously with her thumbs, but eventually took a deep breath to steel herself and looked up at Anne.
"W-while I was in that coma, I...remembered some things that I had been repressing until now." She shifted uncomfortably. "...S-some of them involving you."
Anne's heart sunk. Things she had repressed? Considering everything that had happened between them, it made sense, but the implications were unsettling.
"Things like...what?" She asked with no small amount of trepidation.
"Like...what happened behind the school."
Anne's breath caught in her throat.
"So...this whole time...you didn't remember that happened?"
Teresa could only manage a slight nod, but the confirmation alone was enough to make Anne's blood run cold. The entire time they had been friends, the entire time they had been together, Teresa didn't know about the worst thing Anne had done to her? What did that imply about their relationship? Was it even valid? Had she been taking advantage of her this whole time?
"I-in hindsight, i-it makes you asking me to beat you when you apologized make more sense." Teresa mumbled, eyes pointed at the ground. When she didn't get a response, she looked back up to find Anne shaking and looking like she was going to be sick. "A-Anne?"
"I... I'm sorry." Anne put her head into her hands as a massive pit formed in her stomach. "I'm so sorry. I should've known better. Of course all of this was too good to be true."
"Wh-what?"
"You wouldn't have forgiven me if you had remembered everything I did, right?" Anne looked up at her wearing an expression of utter despair. "Is our entire relationship just built on the fact that you didn't know better?"
Teresa hadn't quite been prepared for this response, so it took her a minute to think of what to say before she replied.
"...I don't know if I would have forgiven you at the time." She admitted. "But after everything we've been through together... I don't think it changes anything between us now."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... I've changed. You've changed." Teresa pointed out. "You went from trying to hurt me to putting your life on the line to protect me. I-I'm not bringing up what I remembered because I think it ruins our relationship, I'm bringing it up because I want to deal with those feelings directly. I want to heal from what happened so I can pour my entire heart into loving you."
"Are...are you sure?" Anne's expression changed from despair to some mix of relief, surprise, and confusion.
"You tell me."
Teresa got up from her seat, kneeled down on one knee in front of Anne, gently took her head in her hands, and brought their heads together for a passionate kiss. Afterwards, Anne was left staring at Teresa with stars in her eyes, while Teresa's face turned a bright red as her usual flustration caught up with her all at once.
"You were able to do that without NeOhm." Anne observed breathlessly.
"Y-yeah," Teresa squeaked out softly, too flustered to use her full voice. "I-I can't believe I did it either."
She climbed up into the seat next to Anne's and shoved her face into her shoulder, still blushing her head off. Anne smiled and placed an arm around her, gently leaning into her and allowing her own head to rest on top of Teresa's.
"Th-this isn't making me feel any less embarrassed!" Teresa squeaked again.
"Do you want me to move?"
"...No."
The two of them sat like that in silence for a while, content just to be in each other's company.
"...Hey, I don't want to interrupt, but," CROSS's voice eventually sounded over the speaker system. "Where are we going, exactly? I've sort of just been cruising up and down the Rockies, but the sun's going to set soon back home."
"O-Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that." Teresa said, her and Anne lifting their heads up. "A-Anne, do you know where you're going to sleep tonight? I-I'd be worried if you slept out in the park again."
"...I don't know." Anne sighed. "I should go back home and settle things with my mom, but after everything that's happened, I don't know if I can handle just going back to how things were."
"W-well...what if they don't?" Teresa said. "M-maybe you should tell her how you feel."
"But how I feel is awful." Anne said. "I know she's a victim of Messias too, but I can't stop thinking all these terrible things about her, even things I know aren't true. What she did hurts a lot, but that doesn't mean I want to hurt her back."
"I know how hard it is to tell someone you love that they hurt you," Teresa took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "But in my experience...r-running away from it definitely doesn't make things any better."
"...Yeah. You're right." Anne went silent for a moment, staring off into space as she thought hard about something. "Alright, I'm going to talk to my mom. But before that..." She looked up at the speakers embedded into the ceiling. "Hey, CROSS, you can change what clothes people are wearing after they transform, right?"
"Yep." A checkmark symbol scrolled by on the pixelated LED display near the train doors.
"Then I have a favor to ask."
----
Anne and Teresa stepped out of the Cross Bullet together, emerging onto the sidewalk of a suburban neighborhood as the sun began to slip behind the mountains on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. Anne's clothing was different, now consisting of a short tank top version of her previous shirt, now with a white stripe running across the center, worn underneath a deep-blue sleeveless vest paired with denim cargo shorts that stopped a bit less than halfway down her thighs.
"A-are you sure about this?" Teresa asked. "I-I remember what you said about how showing skin makes you feel uncomfortable."
"It is making me feel pretty anxious, but...I think I can handle it." Anne breathed deeply in and out. "A long as I'm going to be confronting my problems, wearing something I actually want to instead of something I feel like I have to seems like a good first step."
"Honestly, the most concerning thing here is that you want to wear cargo jorts." CROSS chimed in from the cabin speakers. "You're making it work somehow, but I seriously thought you were joking when you brought it up."
"Hey, they're durable, they're easy to wear, and most importantly, they've got pocket space." Anne retorted. "Do you have any idea how much of a pain it's been trying to carry around my transformation lock in normal women's pants?"
"Not personally, but I get your point."
The CrossTrix core hovered out of the train and landed on Teresa's arm, deploying the rest of the gauntlet as the Cross Bullet shrunk down and returned to its launch port in the device's chassis.
"D-do you want me to go up with you?" Teresa asked, glancing at the front door of the house they stood in front of.
"Thank you, but this is my house; my mom." Anne gave Teresa's hand a reassuring squeeze. "I need to do this myself."
Teresa nodded and let go of her hand, staying behind on the sidewalk as Anne began walking up the driveway to her front door. She paused in front of the door itself, hesitating for a moment before taking a deep breath, steeling her nerves, and knocking on the painted wood. After a few tense moments of silence, there was a shuffling sound from inside the house as someone approached the door. It swung open to reveal a rather ragged-looking Mary, who spent a split second starting to give a routine greeting before actually seeing who was there.
"Anne!" Mary's eyes widened as soon as she saw her. She immediately grabbed her in a tight bear hug and started bombarding her with panicked questions too quickly for her to actually answer. "Are you okay?! What happened?! Where have you been?! Why haven't you called?! Do you even have your phone on you?! What-"
"Mom, calm down, I'm alright." Anne interrupted her. "I just...had to think about things on my own for a while."
"Oh, do you have any idea how worried I was?!" Mary pulled back, revealing her eyes welling up with tears of relief. "I thought you might be...I thought...just don't do that again, alright?!"
"I...didn't think you'd care this much." Anne admitted.
"Of course I do!" Mary said, half-sobbing. "What would make you think I don't?!"
"...It's what happened the last time I saw you." Anne looked at the ground, having difficulty making eye contact. "When I tried talking to you about Messias, you downplayed what he did, and when he actually showed up...you stood aside to let him take me." She began to tear up herself. "I love you, but I... I don't know if I can trust you after that."
"Anne..." Mary's half-sobbing started to turn into full sobbing. "Anne, I-... I-..."
Her attempts at a response were drowned out as she broke down into a sobbing, incoherent mess, holding tight to her daughter as if her life depended on it as she bawled her eyes out.
"I'm sorry!" She managed to choke out through the tears. "I'm so sorry! I-I was so scared, I-I wasn't thinking, ev-everything came back to me at once, I- I- I-" She was cut off by her own tears again as another surge of emotions swept through. "It happened again! I was too afraid of him to protect you again!"
"Mom..." Anne was barely holding back her own tears at this point. "What...what did he do to you?"
"You shouldn't have to worry about that!" Mary wept. "You're my baby! I'm supposed to keep you safe!"
While all this was happening, Teresa continued to watch quietly from the sidewalk, keeping an eye on her girlfriend with a mix of confusion and concern.
"CROSS?" She said quietly. "I- I have a question."
"I might have an answer." CROSS replied, keeping the CrossTrix's speakers at a low volume. "What's up?"
"I-I'm just a little confused." Teresa said. "Is it...normal for a mom to care about their kid this much?"
"Generally speaking." CROSS stated. "There are some unfortunate exceptions, but being protective of and nurturing their young is pretty universal among all great apes, including humans. You take a lot longer than most animals to reach maturity, so it's a necessary trait for ensuring the survival of the species."
"Oh." Teresa went silent for a moment. "I guess..." She absentmindedly rubbed the underside of her left arm. "I guess that makes sense."
"I'm so sorry." Mary continued sobbing into Anne's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
Anne gently placed her arms around her mother, returning the hug.
"Mom, it's..." She paused as she tried to find the right words. "Well, no, it's not okay. None of this is okay. It's messed up beyond belief, but...it's not hopeless, either."
"You say that, but if he comes after you again, I..." Mary paused to shakily catch her breath. "...I'm probably going to fail you again. I'm not...I'm not strong enough. I've never been as strong as you needed me to be."
"...Yeah. I know." Anne stepped back, keeping her hands on Mary's shoulders as she looked her in the eyes. "So I'm going to be strong enough for the both of us."
"What?" Mary looked at her with confusion.
"When Messias came after me that day, I sunk to my lowest point, but..." Anne reached into one of her larger pockets and pulled out the Silverpoint DNA Key. "I also reached one of my highest. He's not as untouchable as he thinks."
"You...fought him?" Mary asked. "And...you won?"
"Eventually," Anne nodded. "But not by myself. I'm not sure anyone could beat him alone, but luckily..." She turned and waved Teresa over. "I'm not alone."
"Who is this?" Mary asked as Teresa made her way over to them with a shy, awkward gait.
"This is Teresa. She's..." Anne took Teresa's hand as she arrived next to her, and the two exchanged a glance with a light blush. "Well, she's my girlfriend."
"Your-" Mary's eyes widened. "Anne, I-I had no idea you were..."
"I know." Anne sighed. "It's something the church doesn't approve of, so it's probably not something you approve of either, but... I can't just keep my hiding my feelings for the rest of my life. About her, about you, about anything. If I want to be strong- strong in the real way- I have to face them head-on."
"Um...h-hi." Teresa greeted Mary weakly. "I, um, w-wasn't r-really expecting this to b-be how we m-met, b-but, um...hi?"
"H-hello." Mary stammered. "I'm sorry, this is...this is a lot for me to take in at once."
"Guess we might want to save where the new clothes came from for later, then." The CrossTrix beeped.
"Did...did your watch just-" Mary gasped and covered her mouth as she finally noticed Anne's new outfit. "O-oh my gosh, Anne, what are you wearing?! That's so much skin!"
"Is it?" CROSS asked. "Seriously, I don't have skin, I wouldn't know."
"I mean, yeah, compared to my normal clothes, but it's not really inappropriate." Anne said. "Like, sure, the shorts are kind of short, but they're just short shorts, not short-short short shorts."
"It's less that they're skimpy and more that you're built like a stick insect." CROSS commented. "You're like 75% leg."
"Okay, that- that last part felt unnecessary." Anne looked a bit miffed.
"I think her legs are perfect! Teresa blurted out before abruptly freezing and starting to sweat bullets as she remembered she was standing in front of her girlfriend's mom. "I-I mean, p-perfect at d-doing leg things, l-like, um, w-walking, from, uh, o-one place to a-another, a-and, um, I'm just going to stop talking now."
"I'm sorry, it just-" Mary said to Anne. "It makes you look very...promiscuous."
"Wh-what is that supposed to mean?" Teresa bristled at the insinuation. "They're normal clothes!"
"Actually, Teresa, by the standards of our church, they are pretty scandalous," Anne placed a hand on Teresa's shoulder, then turned her attention back to her mom. "But that's the problem. Our church's standards are what influences and enables people like Messias. I don't really know where I stand on religion at the moment, but I can't keep following a set of rules that justifies and protects my abuser."
"Those rules exist to protect you from people like Messias!" Mary protested. "Men like him can't help themselves! All you're doing by dressing like that is encouraging it!"
"What?!" Teresa abruptly snapped, much to the shock of everyone there. "M-Messias started molesting her when she was a kid! A kid! Being eight didn't stop him, but- but what, some long sleeves will?!"
"You told her about all this?" Mary looked at Anne.
"Of course she told me!" Teresa kept going before Anne could respond. "I-I was there when he started coming after her again! He- he kidnapped us and burned off most of her skin with a blowtorch trying to torture her into giving him "permission" to rape me! The clothes she's wearing aren't going to change anything! He's a monster!"
"He what?" The blood drained from Mary's face upon hearing this. "Anne, is- is that true?"
"...Yeah." Anne mumbled uncomfortably. "I don't...really want to think about it."
"That man..." It seemed like Mary wanted to say something, but was forcing herself to hold her tongue, biting down on her lower lip. "...It's true that Messias is...a unique case, but unfortunately, to some extent, that's just how men are."
"No, it's not!" Teresa's expression had graduated from annoyance to outright anger. "CROSS, Lucius, the other Techs, Napoleon, so many of the people that have helped us are men, a-and none of them act even remotely like that! Y-you're just generalizing an entire group to make excuses for bad people, a-and then acting like it puts Anne in the wrong for dressing how she wants! I-it's not right!"
"Mom, I know it's hard to accept something that goes against the ideas you have faith in," Anne took her mother's hands. "But right now, I need you to have some faith in me, too."
"I...I don't know, Anne." Mary looked ashamed, confused, and concerned all at once. "I just want what's best for you."
"What's best for me right now is to be true to who I am." Anne said. "I still don't know exactly what that is, but I know it includes this. It's scary, I'm not going to lie, but for the first time in years, it feels like I'm finally doing the right thing."
Mary closed her eyes, her brow furrowing as she appeared to be deep in thought.
"... Alright." She eventually opened her eyes and looked back up at her daughter. "I'm not sure what the right thing to do is, but...it's obvious that what I've been doing hasn't worked. I want to protect your smile, and even if we disagree on how to do that...I'll support you however I can."
"That's all I can ask for." Anne threw her arms around Mary, who returned with a tight hug, and with emotions running high, they both almost immediately started crying into each other's shoulders.
Teresa's anger completely evaporated, and as she quietly walked back to the sidewalk to give Anne and Mary some space, its place was taken by...well, a happiness for her girlfriend, of course, but also a resounding hollowness she couldn't quite explain.
"CROSS?" She whispered to the CrossTrix. "A-am I missing something?"
"What do you mean?" CROSS responded quietly.
"I-it just seems like Anne's mom ch-changed her mind really quickly."
"She didn't, really," CROSS pointed out. "She just said she'd support Anne even though she disagrees with her."
"Y-yeah, but that isn't..." Teresa's knee-jerk reaction was to deny that a parent would still be supportive if their child defied their expectations in any way, but the more she mulled over it while trying to think of a way to put it into words, the more she realized there wasn't much informing her idea of how parents might act other than what she saw from her own mother. Not wanting to generalize, she decided to give up on the point. "I-I guess...there's just a lot I don't understand."
"Considering your circumstances, that's entirely understandable." CROSS said. "The progress you've already made is honestly impressive."
"...Maybe." Teresa sighed. "I-I know that I've grown, I just...I wish I felt like I've grown too. I made some amazing leaps today I never thought I could, but I don't feel happy about it."
"You're feeling bad about making progress?"
"I-I'm not feeling anything about it." Teresa said. "Everything worked out for the best today. I know I should feel happy about it. I want to feel happy about it. Right now, I am happy for Anne, but when it comes to everything I did, I-I just feel...hollow."
"That's probably down to your low dopamine." CROSS stated. "Can't do much about that without treatment, so try not to beat yourself up over it. If it helps any, you should know I'm proud of you."
"Th-thanks, CROSS." Teresa managed to crack a bit of a smile. "That...actually does help a bit."
----
"-And then she tossed it into the sun, which its regeneration factor evidently wasn't strong enough to save it from." It had taken several hours to get through everything, but Human Igneoux finally finished summarizing the most significant events he had participated in up to this point.
"Doesn't surprise me. Even I'd have some trouble at the center of a star." Metamentian Igneoux tsked. "Guess she was holding back in our fight more than I thought."
"As rudimentary as the CrossTrix is compared to our tech, it's got solid functionality, and Teresa practices with her aliens more consistently than any other matrix user I've ever met." Human Igneoux said. "Granted, it seems like she's mostly doing it as a way to avoid her problems, but that amount of training is gonna pay off eventually no matter what the motive is."
"Makes sense." Metamentian Igneoux went silent for a moment, looking like he was thinking about something. "...But something about all this is bugging me."
"What is it?
"Well, you remember when you said Teresa wasn't originally supposed to be a Tech and got manipulated into being one by that OS?"
"Yeah, why?"
"See, that got me thinking," Metamentian Igneoux folded his arms together. "Because I'd visited plenty of other timelines before I ever showed up in yours, and you know what I didn't find in any of them?"
"Um-"
"A Tech." Metamentian Igneoux stated. "Which is interesting, because according to you, they're a universal constant that show up all over the place in our little pocket of the multiverse."
"So?" Human Igneoux asked. "I doubt you were going up to every Omnitrix wielder you met and asking them about their nickname."
"True, but there's an interesting little omission to your story that makes me think there might be more behind that." Metamentian Igneoux said. "You said that you fought Dethrogue to a stalemate where both of you used up all your powers and he ended up dragging you through the Gateway of Reality with him when you tried to stop him because you were a twelve-year-old trying to grapple a grown-ass man- hilarious visual, by the way- and he ended up poofing out of existence because his heart's true desire was to be with his family in death. Did I get any of that wrong?"
"No."
"Interesting, interesting, because the way it's phrased, it sounds like you went through the Gateway of Reality too, but you skipped out on saying what happened when your heart's desire got granted," Metamentian Igneoux stated. "And from my perspective it's just a bit funny that before you went through that gate, you were the only Tech, but afterwards, suddenly there are Techs everywhere." He leaned in close to his human counterpart with a suspicious glare. "Heck of a coincidence, isn't it?"
"I..." Human Igneoux stopped to think for a moment, then let out a resigned sigh before continuing to speak. "Look, it's not like I meant for it to happen, okay? I think what happened to Dethrogue proves you don't really have control over what desire the Gateway grants."
"Then why are you trying to hide it in the first place?" Metamentian Igneoux snorted. "If it's not actually your fault, who gives a crap?"
"You try telling someone that their entire life would have turned out differently if you hadn't screwed something up." Human Igneoux said. "You think they'd forgive you for that?"
"You think I'd care about forgiveness?" Metamentian Igneoux scoffed. "If you ask me, as long as you've done right by yourself, you don't owe anyone an apology for anything."
"Yeah, that's kind of the problem." Human Igneoux sighed. "Just so we're clear on this, I'm not going to stop you from going off and doing whatever it is you do when you're not causing problems for me, but I'm not going to let you fly around committing murder, either."
"Whatever you say." Metamentian Igneoux rolled his eyes. "But before I head out, we need to get this name thing taken care of. I'm the original, so I don't have any plans on changing mine."
"Well, I still go as "Tech" in my home timeline, but everyone in this one knows me as "Igneoux", already, so changing it now would be pretty inconvenient." Human Igneoux argued. "You're from Apocalypse Earth, so why don't we just call you Apocalypse Igneoux?"
"...Normally I'd reject the idea on principle, but that actually does sound cool enough that I'm willing to allow it." Metamentian Apocalypse Igneoux hmmed.
"Hey, you're an alternate version of me, so I figured some of our tastes must line up." Human Igneoux shrugged.
"Not really how that works, but you guessed right on this one." Apocalypse Igneoux tossed his hoverboard to the ground and climbed aboard. "You still owe me one, so let me know if you manage to find anything regarding how I got resurrected out of nowhere, okay? I want to know if it's exploitable."
With that, he took off into the night sky, ascending straight upwards in a vertical shot towards the stars.
"So that's who you got the name from, huh?" Alvono commented, poking his head out of the Ultimatrix. "Surprisingly accurate to how you described him."
"Yeah..." Igneoux seemed lost in thought.
"Something up?"
"I'm just kind of concerned." Igneoux said. "If he came back to life, and we have no idea how or why..."
He tilted his head up to face the heavens, looking out into space with a somewhat worried expression.
"There's no telling who else could be out there."
----
== Major Events ==
* The Void makes his Tech Cross debut.
* The original Igneoux is revealed to have been resurrected through unknown means, making his Tech Cross debut.
** He is hired to destroy CROSS by an unknown third party, but is eventually coerced into giving up on the hit.
* Detonation Inferno debuts.
* Oberon OS's harmful modifications to the CrossTrix's source code are erased, making it safe to use again.
* Teresa scans the original Igneoux's DNA, effectively obtaining a DNA Key for the original Rockoustic.
** The Rockoustic/Apocalypse Metamentian DNA Key is used with Burstbox to create BurstRock, the second Cross Fusion to appear in the series.
* The two Igneouxes are reunited for the first time since the original's death.
* More of Dana's psychology is revealed and she begins to show signs of not being completely irredeemable.
* Anne adopts a new outfit and finally returns home to talk things out with her mom.
== Continuity Notes ==
===Tech Cross Continuity===
* Teresa's flashback at the beginning of the episode reshows the first scene from episode 1.
* Christine references the unknown object Sephtis Raivent crafted from the remains of women he used for demonic summoning rituals, which she came across in episode 8.
* Lucius's apology refers to the argument he had with Anne regarding Messias in Silver X Soul.
* Lucius and Rebooted Igneoux have only met one time- during the final battle with Nightmare OS- and have never been formally introduced, hence both expressing their general unfamiliarity with each other.
===Franchise Continuity===
* The Jester makes his first appearance in a series since 2019's Project Deca and first reappearance in a Tech 10 project since 2016's Tech 10: Star Spirit. He is the physical avatar of The Void, a sentient pocket dimension that serves as the source of Void Energy, and only appears to people who have been exposed to Void Energy, which Teresa gained after fusing with Nova Eldridge in Star X Lovers.
** The confusion between The Jester and Isaac stems from The Void using Isaac's appearance as a reference while crafting its physical avatar after their first meeting in Tech 10: Rebooted.
** The Jester introducing himself as an insanity demon is his most common method of explaining what he is to humans, despite it being a drastic and not particularly accurate oversimplification of The Void's actual role in the universe of converting Kunenga Energy (which is largely responsible for the existence of sapient life) into Void Energy, which can cause mental instability and psychosis in sentient lifeforms if too much Kunenga Energy is taken from them at once.
** The non-interference policy mentioned by The Jester has been explained in previous series as coming from "the big man upstairs". Whether this statement refers to the Abrahamic God specifically or just a higher power in general is left unclear.
* The original Igneoux makes his first appearance in a series since 2011's Tech 10: Combalien Evolution. He's a version of Isaac Logical from the temporally-isolated Apocalpyse Earth who was initially introduced as the "final boss" of the first Tech 10 series before switching sides and assisting Tech during CE's unfinished "Gateway of Reality" arc.
** His line "Please, you couldn't even handle accidentally killing someone that was actively trying to murder you." references an episode of CE where Tech accidentally kills a bounty hunter that was sent after him due to not understanding the powers of a new alien the Ultimatrix glitched him into. The series didn't last long enough to properly address the incident, but it was implied to be a traumatic experience for him.
== Cultural Notes ==
* Anne's complaint about having difficulty carrying around the Silver Break BootLock stems from the general issue of women's pants often having either superficial or non-existent pockets. This is common knowledge among people who interact with women in real life, but with my audience being Ben 10 fans, I figured an explanation was warranted.
* As referenced in previous episodes, the specific church Anne's family belongs to is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, typically shortened to "the LDS church" among members but most often referred to as "the Mormon church" by the general public. As is unfortunately common among US religious denominations, they have a long record of homophobic teachings and rhetoric, and while their current official stance is that being gay is not a choice and therefore not inherently a sin, they still view any form of homosexual activity as sinful. Even openly gay members are still expected to marry someone of the opposite sex and lead a heterosexual lifestyle, hence Anne's hesitance in revealing her relationship with Teresa to her mother.
** Their religion is also the reason behind Mary's reaction to Anne's new clothes. LDS modesty standards prohibit women from showing their shoulders, knees, and midriffs, with church leaders having infamously referred to women who fail to meet these standards as "walking pornography."