It was the dawn of a new day. Not a special day, to any of the Toxic-Winters in earnest, just a day like any other. The progression of daily events took its course in the way that all days in their house must by necessity: Without a moment’s rest, and with much undue fanfare.
Roxie was always injecting those things into their lives, whether they liked it or not, and today was no exception. She aimed to slide down the steps in the way an excited adolescent might, but missing the banister by a hair, she bungled the attempt and only by sheer performers grace managed to avoid falling down then in a bone-jarring series of thumps and bumps. Her bare feet slapped the first stair they found purchase on, and when her body yawed forward, she took the whole bottom of the flight in one great leap.
The end result was that she stuck the landing, but instead of trotting the momentum out leisurely, she was forced to vault again straight up and over Leslie, who found herself at the base of the stairs, which ultimately proved one leap too many for even her impressive fortunes. She cleared her youngest daughter easily enough. Still spry and limber, she didn’t have any trouble with that. It was more the back of couch that proved too high of a hurdle, and the devious piece of living room furniture viciously hooked her ankle as she tried to get over.
At the sound of the ensuing crash, everyone stopped what they were doing, all in various stages of undress and in the midst of preparing for their otherwise routine morning.
Sabotage, the one who had beckoned unwitting Leslie into position in the first place, got a front row seat to the whole thing from the back porch, with her face pressed against the glass, busted a gasket laughing. Nobody could really hear it through the insulated door, but she was fogging the pane nearly opaque by the time Lexie cleared the stairs and found her mother’s legs sticking up over the back of the couch where any sane person’s head should have been.
“Are you alright, mom?--” Lexie gasped, stopping herself short, and trying to maneuver Leslie cantankerously aside so that she could progress, but before she could do that, Sabrina came down right behind her, eyes all for Roxie and bumped her solidly in the back. Lennox, behind her, in only his underpants, careened into her, and the whole process began anew, this time with Lexie arched over her tumbled younger sister, while Sabina tried not to make any sudden movements that might send the whole heap tumbling, while Lennox flailed about on top of them much to the opposite effect.
Roxie chose that moment to pop back up exuberantly. “Yeah, I’m awrite!” She said, rubbing her head and squinting. When she finally opened her eyes and looked at her family, in human pyramid, she snorted. “Wot are you lot doing?”
Everyone hissed and yelped their version of who bumped into whom, and what had caused this human traffic pile-up, while Sabotage, unseen outside fell onto the paving stones she was laughing so hard.
“Nevermind!” Roxie shouted bouncing on the couch cushion, before bolting. “It don’t matter! The cut came today! The final cut!” She threw open the front door with a shriek, just as Leslie managed to wriggle her way out from under Lexie, who promptly collapsed under their weight of her mother and brother.
Sabrina, who righted her son with a gentle, telekinetic heave-ho, drew her eldest daughter's ire. “Why didn’t you just do that from the beginning?!”
Sabrina shrugged. “Why didn’t you?”
Lexie didn’t have time to feel baffled before Roxie came barreling back inside from the postbox, brandishing a large manilla envelope, “Nicky left me a voicemail last night. The label finally finished mastering on it. I’m so excited I could just bust!” She yammered, whapping the package back and forth at anyone who would look at her, which of course, was everyone, in greater or lesser forms of annoyance.
Lexie, irritated and finally up off the floor, snarled. “What is it?”
“Roxie and the Toxics Reunion Tour: Live at Saffron Grande Theatre!” her mom shrieked, shredding the packaging with one awesome rip. A full size LP record in it’s cardstock sleeve fell with a slap onto the floor, and Leslie grabbed it before Roxie could.
“Lookit!” the littlest Toxic-Winter cried. “Mommy! Sissy!” She held the record, which was, to her, massive, in both fists, before her mother, and even though the cover was hidden from her, by Leslie’s eager grasp, Roxie nodded appreciatively.
“Yup!” She said with a grin.
Lexie, who could actually see the sleeve-cover from where she was standing, broke into an unrepentant grin. It was a massive, candid photograph of her and her mother playing together, and both of them aggressively posturing toward one another in the throes of a very fiery rendition of a song that they’d often played when Lexie was first learning her instrument, and thus, knew well enough to clown around a bit while they were at it, playing it fast and loose as they provoked the crowd.
“They recorded that bit, too? After the encore?!” Lexie squeaked.
“I made ‘em didn’t I?” Roxie grinned even wider. “Why do you think it took so damn long to get a copy? Fuckin’ label kept trying to send it back to me, saying they couldn’t get the levels right for that bit, so I kept tellin’ em, I wouldn’t put my bloody name on the record if they didn’t figure it out!”
She spun the record in Leslie’s hands, who allowed this graciously, and indicated the final track with her finger. It read: “Radioactive, Feat. Lex Winter-Toxic 4:31”
Lexie’s grin settled into a smile, until Roxie moved her finger up a bit and indicated the track two previous to that, “Rebel Rebel, Feat. The Misfits 4:47”
Lexie wanted to grin even harder than she had before, but it was physically impossible, and so a laugh of pure joy escaped her mouth. She hadn’t even intended to play that song. In fact, she’d only ever played it just a few times, but, her Mom, with an impeccable sense of performance, and evocative social magnetism, had conducted them all into doing it with just a few smiling gestures and stage whispers, before they all sang the chorus round-robin, each meaning something a little different each time, though the lyrics didn’t change a bit.
Roxie had sang it to her, meaning it as praise, then she had sang it to Tammy, meaning it as a sort of saucy come-on, and then Tammy, most evocative of all, had sang it to her mother, as a declaration of identity and extension of forgiveness, making Billy let go of her guitar and cry on stage.
Roxie had cut her mic by that time, of course, but soon enough, even she, along with all the others in both bands were huddled around Tammy and Billy, with their instruments clattering together and poking exposed ribs as they slung arms over each other.
Of course, her mom was still her mom, and could only be sweet for so long, without turning nasty, so it was no surprise to anyone that she’d very shortly thereafter gone right into a particularly sultry rendition of “Rebel Yell” in the direction of the offstage anteroom, right where her mum was standing unseen by the crowd and refusing to allow Roxie to coerce her out onto the stage no matter how lasciviously she or the rest of the band who had the guts to join in the attempt cried “More, More, More!” during the chorus. It was no surprise either that this had made it onto the album as the track between the two aforementioned.
Lenny, stuffing his head under his older sister’s shoulder, blew a whistled gasp of awe, at the appearance of his sister and her band. “Cool, Lex!”
“Yeah. Your sister’s big-time, now. Got her name on a record that’s about to be Platinum by next week, and everything. Hopefully she won't forget her sweet old mom when she’s living the high-life, eh?” Roxie teased.
Lexie wished it wasn’t a school day. Or at least, that if it were, her mom wasn’t one of those old-school gear-head musicians dead-set on maintaining the integrity of the analogue sound. She wanted to take it and show her bandmates, but there was no way she was going to find a record-player at school.
“I’ll pull the old turntable out while you’re at school, and we’ll listen to it when you get home. Bring your little girlfriend too, I’m sure she’d like to hear it--plus I want a guitarist’s perspective on this solo in “Poison in Your Days...” before I send it back for approval.”
Sabrina, who this whole time had been considering something unrelated, as she picked Leslie up and held her on one hip, now ushered everyone along. “Come on. Still plenty to do. We can’t all be shiftless rockstars with no obligations, and too much time on our hands.”
Lexie, remembering that she was probably now behind schedule, and headed toward the door with a spin and wave.
Roxie winked. “Seeya later, kiddo.”
Sabrina whisked the kids back upstairs, and had them dressed and brushed and down again in short order. “My mother and father wanted to see them today, while I’m at the Gym.”
Roxie shrugged. Sabrina’s mum and dad weren't the hands-on sort, being more the watch-esoterically-from-a-distance type, but then, from all told, Sabrina had been a very troublesome child, so that was probably for good reason. It was good that they were showing an interest, and in Roxie’s mind it was overall positive that the kids spent time with people who possessed the same talents they did. And besides, she liked Mr. Winter just fine. He was actually sort of a sweet old man, even if his wife was a total ice-queen.
She bent down, and nearly embraced Lennox, before recalling that he was going through that boyhood stage where he didn’t want to be hugged and kissed quite so much. Instead, she just hunched until she was even with him (which, for her, wasn’t so far, really) and then asked him a question. “How bad are you going to annoy your grandmother today?”
Lenny’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Real bad.”
Sabrina scoffed audibly, but Roxie only held out her hand for a quickly slapped pair of low-fives, as though neither of them could hear her. “That’s my boy.”
“I’ll see you when I get home?” Sabrina asked, taking Lennox’s hand.
Roxie nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be here.”
“Plans for this evening?” She asked, as though she didn’t already know. If her mind reading wasn’t the giveaway, Roxie’s smirk as she looked her wife over from head to foot, certainly was.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Pray tell.” Sabrina smirked.
“I’m in a pretty fantastic mood right now, so aside from rockin’ your world like it ain’t ever been rocked, the sky's the limit.”
Sabrina looked like she might laugh, if she were any more than very technically capable. “You always say that.”
“I always mean it. Am I ever wrong?” Roxie shrugged, with a self-satisfied look.
“You’d think after twenty some years, you’d be out of tricks to pull out of your sleeve.”
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. You just gotta keep coming back to bed wiv’ me to see what I’m gonna do next!”
As Lennox was now taking an interest in the deeper implications of their conversation, Sabrina took that as meaning it was time to line up and leave. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”
Roxie waved with her fingertips. “Bye Leslie!”
“Bye-bye” Leslie responded, waving her whole arm.
“Seeya baby. Love you.” Roxie added for her wife’s sake, before Sabrina and the kids were both gone in a blink. With a whoop, Roxie stole off to the garage, to listen to her new album.
Sabotage, who was only now just recovering from her amusement at her earlier gag, had a devilish thought.
Maybe today really was a special day. Maybe today was the day. Maybe today, was when she would finally wreck Sabrina’s life again, just like old times. Maybe today was the day she would bring not just Sabrina, but all of Sabrina’s little progeny, crashing down to earth, as well.
She let herself in, already plotting the idea that would make such a wreck of four lives, that nobody would be able to say that Roxie’s fate wouldn’t seem like a kindness, by comparison.
Roxie was terribly satisfied with herself, and it showed, as she pulled the great hulking turntable out from where it was normally stowed in the cubby beneath the bar top. It became a sort of terribly shameful dance, which any normal person would have stopped instantly if anyone else had come into the room, but Roxie, even as she heard the door open, only wiggled her hips, and stepped more briskly in tune with the song nobody could hear but her, as she engaged the rectangular device like an awkwardly shaped dance partner.
It came up, and she, as though being dipped, reared way back, and then spun before placing it on the counter. It wasn’t that she didn’t see Sabotage coming in, but rather, that she saw no need to acknowledge her. Sabrina had made it clear that she was to ignore the girl if at all possible, and she’d kept right on doing that, dutifully, to no negative result since first learning about it. To her, it was like Sabotage was a harmless poltergeist that made a negligible amount of trouble, and was otherwise no more harm than an annoying younger sibling. Not that she’d ever known what that was like, until now, but she didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
She went right on ignoring Sabotage even as she placed herself neatly at the counter, and folded both arms expectantly. She even asked a question, which was uncompromisingly bold, for Sabotage. She very frequently talked to Lexie and Sabrina (though there was never anything nice to say, it seemed) and when she did talk to Roxie, it were only ever about the two of them in some way, and hardly ever outside their presence, being that it was typically meant to insult one of the two of them.
“Whatcha doin?” Sabotage asked, both hands cupping her chin, and smiling that sinister smile of hers. It was a lot like Sabrina’s smile. Exactly like it, really, save for unbound by whatever scruples and tact that kept Sabrina in line. Her teeth were magnificently white, and sharp-looking in that perfect way, but Roxie only shrugged, and said nothing.
“Must be nice,” Sabotage said, with what sounded like jealousy. “Getting to do whatever you want, all day, every day.” She pointed a finger at the turntable. “All your toys, and your baubles, in your big house, all to yourself.”
Roxie just slid her record out of it’s slipcover and planted it over the pin with a smile. It wasn’t any matter to her, really. She would just drown Sabotage out, eventually. Roxie had made a lifestyle out of ignoring the bad in favor of the good, after all.
“Shame nobody gets to see what happens.” Sabotage whispered, eyes lighting with extraordinary humor.
Roxie blinked. That sounded a bit severe. Sabrina had told her there was no need to worry about Sabotage, right? She chuckled uneasily, as she lifted the reader arm, and made to set it on the outermost groove of the bright-red vinyl.
“Even so, you’ve gotten real lucky, haven’t you, Roxie?”
Realizing she’d placed the record A side down, and wanting to save side B to listen to with her daughter, she pulled it off, to flip it over. But then, when her fingers wrapped around it, she couldn't see the turntable anymore. She couldn’t see anything anymore. All she could feel was that hard plastic disk in her hands, and all she could hear was Sabotage’s voice in her ears.
“I’m getting very tired of this, Roxie. I feel like I’ve been ignored quite long enough.”
Roxie couldn’t feel the record in her hands, instead she felt the transceiver in her hands, similar and plastic, but altogether more emotional. Grimsley was on the other end, his voice tired and stressed. “We find him, Roxie. We find him,” His Kantonese was terrible, and his long, strained syllables were harder to understand than ever. She would have told him so, if she hadn’t been expecting this call for weeks.
“Zinzolin.” she said, confirming, while everyone else in the Van could only wonder at what the exotic sounding name meant. She was already in tears, but it didn’t matter. That dog was the one responsible. That animal had overseen the whole affair with Marlon, and stood there, laughing behind his cold-eyed Triad cronies while she thrashed on the floor with her hair on fire. “Where?”
Grimsley went quiet for a while. He wasn’t supposed to say. Their job was to turn them over to the International Police when they found them, but since when had it ever happened that way? She didn’t care for the double-standard, and she certainly didn’t care for it where she was concerned. “WHERE, you fuck?!” she roared, as she slammed the breaks and sent Billy and Nicky sliding out of their seats, as well as upsetting a fair amount of the equipment in the back with a cacophonous clang. “I want to know, NOW!”
Billy tried to reach for her arm, and stop her from flying off the handle, but she wrenched away, putting the wrist device back to her ear. She shoved, with her off hand, and pointed silently and severely back to the passenger seat, where Billy had no choice but to sit compliantly.
Grimsley read off the address, which she knew of, and saying no more, she slapped the transceiver shut, tore it off, and threw it into the back seat. She engaged the clutch, the van backfired, and she hammered the accelerator, pressing everything that had been upset by the sudden stop back into place, people, music gear and all.
Billy tried to ply her, at first. “Roxie, we’ve gotta be at this venue in a half hour.”
“I don’t need that long,” she spat.
“What’s going on?” Nicky queried, with something like worry, though Nicky were always the most laid-back of the three.
She didn’t say anything to that effect, however. It was best they didn’t have any clue. They could frame their guesses however they wanted. It wasn’t up to her how people saw it, all that mattered was settling things, now.
They drove to a part of the dockyard that stretched the width of Virbanks shoreward side, which neither Nicky or Roxie had seen more than passingly. Billy, however, knew more than a little about it’s reputation. She tried to grab the wheel again, but Roxie sledged her wrist away, and barreled in, until she had pulled all the way to a shipping warehouse. The squat gray building didn’t look ominous, but then, Roxie’s behavior more than made up for it.
She threw it into park and jumped out without a word. She walked a full orbit around the van, seething and cursing before she popped the back doors and dug out her gig bag. She didn’t even look at her bandmates as she pulled off her dress and slung it viciously into the open cargo-space. Standing there in underwear and boots, she tore out all of her league attire, and began laboriously dressing herself in it. The others knew this was a bad sign.
None of them knew explicitly what she did in that getup, but both knew it was far from good. She stomped on the fatigue pants, besmirched with dirt and oil and crust of a thousand grimy escapades, and then the tunic, with its sharp aggressive lines and badges, black and wrinkled by it’s hasty stowing. Then, worst of all, she slid on those gloves. Thick and leather, they suggested dishonesty, and hard dishonesty at that. As though not only were it brutal, heavy work to be done with them, it was also important to leave behind no trace of who’d done it. The satisfied look as she tugged them down over her wrists and tightened the straps over bunched sleeves said all that needed to be said.
“What are you gonna do?” Nicky implored.
“Whatever it is, it’s not worth it!” Billy added.
Roxie exploded at them. “You’re not worth it! This whole fucking thing isn’t worth it! You two don’t know a fucking thing! Shut your stupid-ass mouths!” She slammed the doors shut, and stormed around to the driver’s seat again. She ripped the keys out and threw them at Billy “Take the fucking van and go to your dumb-ass show! Neither of you understand a damn thing, and I don’t need either of you! Get lost!”
When Billy collected the keys from her lap and blinked at Roxie, wounded, the rocker only grit her teeth “I said go! Get the hell out of here! GO!”
The guitarist shoved her out of the van, as she took over the driver’s seat, and they glared at each other as she slammed the door shut. Tears fell angrily, tires squealed, and Billy sped off.
Roxie turned and walked inside. There were two people there. One she wanted to see, and one she didn’t.
Zinzolin. And Lenora.
Roxie protested immediately. “Get out.”
Lenora, of course, balked. “No. The International Police are already on their way.”
Roxie stormed the area where they were sitting, with folding metal chairs and a small table. If she didn’t want to go, Lenora would just have to explain it to the police without an alibi, then. She kicked the chair meant for her aside, and shoved the table at full speed. Lenora sprang and tumbled clear, but Zinzolin, who couldn’t, being cuffed to his seat, was knocked over backward with a heavy crash. It sounded like the fall had broken something. Probably his hands, seeing as how they were pinned underneath him at the time. At any rate, his scream of pain was much louder than Lenora’s of protest, and when she thereafter tipped up the table and dumped it on him, she couldn’t stop watching his pained visage thrash about, even as she tried to wrestle Lenora off.
The other gym-leader was bigger and taller by half, and not so young as she was, either. She held Roxie powerfully off the ground even as she kicked and screamed, and there was very little the rocker could do to break free.
Fortunately, she didn't need to. A fourth party interceded. Maybe not explicitly on her behalf, but it did intercede.
A person they both regarded in every way as superior to them, stepped slowly into the room from the opposite side, his demeanor quite relaxed in spite of the obvious devastation he’d come in to witness. But that was the thing about Red. He didn’t pass judgements on anyone. Anyone save Plasmas.
He looked at the scene, as if he were rewinding it back to square one. He didn’t frown, or smile for that matter, but instead, nodded his head accordingly. “This is it, then. The last of them.”
Lenora let Roxie drop in a heap. “He’s the last remaining Sage! We need to turn him over to Interpol. That’s non-negotiable! If we can't end this squarely, and with dignity, then we’re not any better than them!”
Red said nothing, so Roxie interjected. “This fucking slime put a bullet in my friend! You’re gonna tell me I don’t owe him for that? You’re gonna tell me I don’t get my eye for an eye? You’re spineless! You’re the reason these arseholes ran amok all over Unova in the first place! Soft-handed ninnies like you are what got us here! Hilda! Marlon! They don’t mean anything to you?!”
Red sighed, before Lenora could get started. “Enough.” He said with a wave. “Lenora, you’re needed at League HQ. There’s nothing for it. Clay wants to see you. Please save your protest.”
Lenora grit her teeth so hard Roxie could hear them. The gym-leaders glared at eachother, then Lenora stormed out.
Red looked at her, then, heaving and sobbing. “What will you do, then?”
Roxie gnashed. “Just what I came here to do.”
Red didn’t not, but he did make something like an allaying sound in his throat, as he fixed blue eyes on the moaning sage. “It does have to end, Roxie. But how it ends is your decision, ultimately. It isn’t a scar that will vanish overnight, Roxie. You decide whether the wound is left ragged, or whether it is sutured in due process, but you know just as clearly as I do that a wound that goes undrained will grow infected again, in either circumstance... I only urge you to think it over. But regardless, I leave it to you.”
He gave a small bow, in the Kantonese way, and then turned. “Farewell.”
Roxie wondered, at that time, whether she would see him again. She hadn’t. Nobody ever had.
But it was a small wonder, at that time. She barely heard anything he said, and only after years of thought, had she ever recalled him saying anything of temperance. In fact, he may as well have said “Go ahead.” since she was so angry at the time, she hardly waited until he was out the door before she was dragging Zinzolin from under the table. It was a mighty effort for a girl so small, but hardly a trifle in regards to the seething hatred she felt, she dragged him all the way to the wall, and tipped the chair against it.
“P-please! Show mercy!” the Sage begged her.
But Roxie didn’t care for sob-stories, and she didn’t care for cheesy movie lines either, where the hero and the villain exchanged a last few contrite barbs with one another, before finishing the act.
“I watched you kill my friend.” She said, plainly, fishing in her pocket. “All I wish is that some of your friends were here to watch me kill you.”
The garrote was a nickel-plated bass-guitar string, shiny and new. A bass string might’ve been a bit thick for the job, but Billy replaced her strings so rarely that she didn’t want to risk the damn things snapping on her when she went to use it. The thick wire felt different, and yet familiar in her hands, as she coiled it around his throat and drew it snug.
“Please,” Zinzolin begged her, “Please don’t do this!”
“Shut up.” she demanded quietly, and put her knee on his shoulder as she jerked backwards and pulled the steel wire tight.
It crimped his windpipe with a sound like an egg being crushed, and she held it there, for what felt like forever. She’d been responsible for death before, from far off. Explosives, of course, once in a battle gone awry she and her Velocipede had dealt a death-blow to an unlucky Plasma grunt, even, but this was different.
It was a strange thing to watch a person die, up close and personal. To see all the life drain out of them slowly, from eyebrows, to lips, to quivering arms and kicking legs. Like slowly, ever so slowly, watching them turn into a wax statue of themselves.
This was a person, another human life, and through those eyes, where the soul should have resided, she wanted to see blackness. She wanted to see all the evil deeds of his life, laid bare for her to pass judgement on. Instead, what she saw was herself, staring back, her own eyes blazing with cruelty in those glassy white orbs.
And that should have made her sick with herself, but it didn’t. She wasn’t that kind of person. She wasn’t vindicated, she realized, but she was still satisfied.
That waxen face, eyes and mouth swollen and purple would stick in her mind until she was dead, she was certain. She didn’t feel like she’d cast off a burden by choking him to death, she didn’t feel Marlon’s spirit laid to rest, or anything corny like that. She just felt heavier.
But that too had its benefit. That was fair, the way she saw it. What was one more thing, if it balanced the scale? If it set things aright, finally, and at long last? So what if it didn’t make everything better? So long as it made it equitable.
She un-twisted the garrote, and spat in his face. Maybe she really would see this man in hell, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she thumbed the ball on her belt, and spun it off onto the floor.
“Weezing,” she said, as she turned towards the door. “Fill this whole place up with gas.”
She was good at blowing things up, and so, she only did what came natural, to protect herself, to protect the league, and to bring a close to the waning days of the war in just her own way.
Nothing from the investigation ever came close to linking back to them, though Roxie never questioned that, since InterPol was notoriously wishy-washy on the whole issue, and honestly the League was allowed to spin the thing however they wanted, but it really did seem ironic, if not downright funny that the second-biggest explosion of the whole conflict should have come right at the end of it.
In with a bang, and out with a bang. And maybe, in the end, that was Unova’s way of healing, even if it hadn’t been hers, really.
Sure, she’d gotten back with Billy and Nick. They’d both forgiven her readily enough. Blow-ups and make-ups happened between them all the time, but, something about her had just never made it back over center. Everything had seemed tainted, somehow, after that, even though she stood by the fact that she’d done right. Like somehow a different person had exited that warehouse than had gone in it, and try as she like, she just wasn’t as good at living Roxie’s life as the one before had been.
And then, she supposed, that was when the drugs had came, for better or for worse...
Roxie felt the record bending in her hands, as both limbs feared to let go of it, and at the same time, wanted desperately to find something, anything else to hold on to, as she felt the floor jilt sideways beneath her feet. She was falling, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“You were lucky then, too. Lucky, even when you were unlucky. Even though that followed you for so long, you just kept right on rolling, didn’t you? You were so brave! So tough! Sabrina was too, you know. Until it caught up with her. And your problems caught up to you, too, didn’t they?”
She’d been in the waning hours of her twenties when those days finally came. The years when all the hard partying, and the blackouts and the night after night with someone new finally began to reflect the mileage incurred, on her body. It had been a week since she’d been able to stand to eat anything of worth. A hard course of valium had stripped her stomach-lining, so now anything she ate made blood weep out of her throat every time she hiccuped. The pain from anything other than sugary gas-station snacks, or, for that matter, more valium, just stripped all the joy out of eating, and so now she felt lethargic and tired any time she wasn’t railed out of her mind on stimulants.
Which, fortunately for her, was almost always. Liquor burned all the way through, but she was still drinking, and so really the only thing she saw fit to cut from her life was the sex. She sent the call-girls home with only slapped asses and meagre come-ons, and wallowed in the bedsheets with a snuff spoon and not much else.
It was a terrible time in her life. She remembered it was between tours, and with the label withholding on a fourth LP, there was nothing at all to occupy her time except more substances, all of which hurt more than they pleasured, and none of which helped anything save the trouble they’d left behind in the first place.
Still, she’d thought, laying there in the hotel room she’d been at for nearly four weeks, it was better than thinking about Billy. Anything was better than thinking about Billy. Going to sleep and never waking up, would have been better than thinking about Billy.
And that, she guessed, was where the trouble had really began. Because the more she laid there and swallowed pills, and the more and more lonesome she got, and the more and more her stomach and head and throat and eyes and teeth hurt, the more and more reasonable that started to sound.
At first, she would just say it for a lark over some imagined misfortune or slight. The liquor store bill ran too high, or the petrol station was closed when she went out for ragecandybars at three in the morning? “Guess I’ll just kill myself.”
Then it became a pervasive thought, like an excuse, or rationale, or simply a better alternative than doing things. Nicky wanted to practice? Danny needed her to negotiate with the label again? “I’d rather kill myself.”
So it was no surprise really, that when, not a week later, when her and Ollie had gotten into it over playing some of Billy’s old tabs during their next show, and she’d stormed out of the rented recording space, she had gone straight back to the hotel room, and the first thing she’d said when she closed the door behind her was “I’m going to kill myself.”
And, doing what any self-respecting human-being would have done in her place, she assumed, she gathered together everything she could in the suite, shook out every duffle, turned every leather pant-pocket inside out, looked under every piece of furniture for dropped pips, and poured them all out onto the bathroom counter. It was like a treasure trove, a rockstar of anything less than her caliber’s paradise, she was sure. She found ludes in her old guitar case, and diazepam, and three different candy-colored types of ecstasy, some pokemon-tranquilizers she’d taken to get some sleep in on the road once, and even some good old fashioned black-tar heroin she’d bought but never used.
She had supposed there was going to be that moment of hesitation, of second thought before she went about the process, but then, before she knew it, her stomach was sloshy just with the water she’d needed to down half of the impressive collection assembled, and she was too bolstered by their on-creeping effects to care. She fell in the bathroom, once all was done, and she had to crawl on hands and elbows to get back to the bed, which appeared to her as though someone had nailed it upright to the wall, at that point, but she got there, and as she laid down, and quietly worked the lighter under tinfoil, listening to the opium bubble and hiss, she fell asleep heavily, and with syringe in hand.
But, as the story obviously went on from there, the sleep had not been a permanent one. Instead, she woke up with eyes that felt like they’d been bleached in the sun, and her skin clammy and cold in her extremities, but that had certainly been Nick pounding on the door, wanting to know what she was doing before rehearsal. She tried to blink the milkiness out of her eyes, after screaming him off, and just laid there, feeling miserable and sick, and wondering how she was going to explain the half-burned mattress to the hotel staff. She knew she had to find something to break her funk, and that if she didn’t it would be right back to this tomorrow night.
“Nick!” she hollered, hoping he was still there.
Faithfully, he was. “Yeah?”
“Let’s do a short tour, mate. Some place we ain’t done in a while.”
“Kanto?”
“Yeah, luv. Sounds good.”
“I’ll tell the guys. When you wanna go?”
“Right now,” she affirmed.
“Alright.” Nicky said, with wariness, but he was soon off all the same.
And, in a blatant violation of everything she’d said in the past, and everything she’d swore she’d never do, Roxie realized that she felt another feeling then, along with the misery, and that was, even worse, nostalgia. When you hit the end of your rope, and the ground was nowhere in sight, one was left with only once choice, and that was to climb back up, after all. But what did a person like Roxie do, who’d been burning hers on the way down?
She opened her gear, looking at the old contacts and addresses, and of course, chief among these were the several she’d suspected of still being able to reach Billy by. They had all been well pulverized by hate-filled messages, and wordy diatribes of emotional transgression by now, in various fits of drunkenness, but that had been some time ago. She looked at the old messages.
The second to last had been sent a year ago. It just said “i hate you. i wish i never knew you.”
Billy hadn’t sent a response. A few hours after than one, evidently when she had cooled off a bit, she’d sent another. “everything sucks without you.”
She contemplated sending another one, but then, she’d sworn that off, hadn’t she? Just the thought of that made her mad--at Billy, at Ollie for bringing up Billy, at herself for being so pathetic. She tossed the gear across the bed, and rubbed her face.
She did pick it up again, eventually but rather than text Billy, she texted another old friend she’d sworn off, and tried her luck...
“oi holly its roxie,” she typed, “this is this still ur mobile number right cunt? show tomorrow in lavender. kanto tour. be there yeah?”
She sat there in uncertainty for a while, but then her phone had buzzed back.
“Be there.”
The rest, as they said, was history. Two days later, she’d met someone who’d turned everything around, and given rise to a different, but altogether sort of commotion in her life.
“Do you not see how lucky you are, Roxie? You’ve made it so high, after being so low!” Sabotage crooned in her ear, as the garage bubbled back into view. “You have EVERYTHING. A loving family, a successful career, three impossible children and a f--” She stopped short. “Well, suffice to say, you’ve been quite fortunate.”
Roxie blinked, and tried to get up from where she’d tumbled down to the floor, but there was nothing for it. She tried to stand, but when she put her arm under her, deliriously, not realizing she was still holding the record, it snapped under her weight and she collapsed again, amid shards of red plastic. “But, that got me thinking...”
Roxie looked up at Sabotage as she rounded the bar, and stood casually beside her. She found it in herself to hiss. “About what!?”
Sabotage chuckled. “Everybody loves an underdog, don’t they Roxie? The little guy? The one down on their luck, right? If someone like Lance wins a championship, nobody bats an eyelash, but if someone like you can clean up and fly right, well, everyone sprouts a giant hardon!” She made a rude gesture, and Roxie, in spite of herself, laughed.
“What would you know about it?” She asked, feeling like her lips were growing cold. They stung when she tried to open them. She vaguely realized she was bleeding from her nose, but everything felt so far away and quiet, that she didn’t bother to wipe it away.
“Oh, I’m learning. I’ve spent a long time, learning. You’ve got to remember, this has been a big change for me, Roxie. I’m used to being in Sabrina’s head. That’s a simpler place. The stakes are higher, but for the most part, everything is straightforward. You’ve made me realize something, though, about the nuances and complexities of the outside world.”
“What’s that?” Roxie asked, fingers scraping for some lost fragment of vinyl, something sharp, something she could put to use, but as soon as she caught hold of one, Sabotage just laughed at her.
“Please,” she implored. “Let’s not pretend, here. You couldn’t hurt me even if I let you try. You may be a killer, but you’re not on my level, girl. You’re just a child, here, treading a field of nightmares at my whimsy.”
Pain exploded all over Roxie and she dropped the shard, curling tight into a ball. Every moment of stomach pain, of flaring, burning agony she’d ever felt pulsed through her in a second, and left her spasming. Her tongue retreated into her throat, and she gagged, sputtered, and then took one shaky, sobbing breath. Then she wailed.
This wasn’t right! This couldn’t be right! Sabby had said that she wasn’t supposed to be able to hurt anyone! What was happening?!
She slapped at the ground trying to get a handhold on something to crawl away, but her fingertips slid uselessly. Sabotage, satisfied, resumed her original thought.
“You made me realize, that it isn’t always the direct solution, that’s best. When I was forced out of Sabrina, all I could think of was how BADLY I wanted to kill that bitch! And that’s hardly my fault--I mean, that’s what she MADE me to do, you know?!--but here I am, on the run, and then I find myself in her daughter! I think wow, isn’t this fortunate!? Because even though her and Logic keep everything locked down tight, I know good and well that all I have to do is wait patiently, for that special springtime in every young lady’s life!”
“No!” Roxie cried.
“Yes. YES!” Sabotage grinned exuberantly “Love came first, that little shit, but all I had to do was snatch one of her little hangers-on, and play the guise once I’d skinned her alive, didn’t I? And it took foreeeeeeeever for little Tammy to come along, and open the door, but once she had, baby, I was IN! Well, Lust was anyhow! And so I played those little midnight games as much as she liked, and all the while, I’m planting my little seeds, quietly. Nothing disruptive, nothing too obvious, just enough, juuuuuuust enough, that this little body of mine would be allowed to grow, without them noticing! Because you see, I realized, through watching you, Roxie, that it was never them I needed to get back at. It was never them I needed to hurt. Not directly. Not by a long shot.”
Roxie cursed, and fought to her elbows, which made Sabotage smirk. “You see, you’re not perfect, Roxie. You’re not even close. In fact, you’re so flawed, someone should write a book about it. But in spite of it all, in spite of almost everything about you, you mean EVERYTHING to them. A mother’s love, a wife’s comfort? What can replace those?! And coming from someone as beautifully unique and special as you? Come on, now. It’s a no-brainer.”
Sabotage marched over to her, and heaved her up off the floor, with both hands in the crux of her arms. “You were the one, Roxie. From that moment on, I knew you were the one I would have to kill when the time came. For all my effort to make Sabrina fucking murder you herself, in the end, I'm glad she chickened out.”
Roxie slumped against her. "What are you even talking about?" she murmured.
Sabotage's teeth shone in the overhead light. "That's right. You don't even remember that, do you?"
All Roxie knew was that she wanted to throttle Sabotage. She wanted to bear her down to the ground and strangle her to death. It wasn’t a passing thing, it wasn’t old experience she relied upon, it was just an animal urge, a protective instinct gone awry. She thought of Sabrina and of Lexie and her little children, and she wanted to protect them any way she could, and right now, that meant living, or at the least, making sure Sabotage came with her to hell.
She lifted her hands slowly, like they were cast in tungsten, like they were chained to the earth beneath, and still she lifted them, while Sabotage watched. Her blue fingernails grazed Sabotage’s collarbone, and encroached on that pale little throat so much like Sabrina’s, and she urged them further, but that was the extent of their strength. Weeping, and with a scream of spent effort and pain, she dropped them, unable to bear the weight any longer.
“How does it feel, to have come so far, only to lose out, now, when it mattered? Is it better, or is it worse? To have lived this pretty little life? To have fallen into this happy little accident, out of all the terrible mistakes you could have made, just to get caught up in the end, by a fight that was never yours to win or lose? Tell me how it breaks your heart to know you’re going to die, just when life was at it’s best! Cry for me! Scream until you die!”
Roxie’s tears fell heavy and hot, like there were a smelting pot in her face where her brain should have been. Everything trickled away. Soon, it would all be gone. All her happiness, all her energy, all her willpower, until she was empty. Until she was just a corpse, and nothing else.
She didn’t want to die, but more than that, more than anything, she didn’t want to die knowing that she’d given this awful thing what she’d wanted in the end.
“I don’t regret...anything.” she said, feeling so tired as she said it, that she nearly let herself go to sleep before the thought was complete.
Sabotage, laughing, threw her to the deck, and rocked her from her repose with sheer anguish. Again and again, until all there was was screaming, and thrashing, and finally, she died on the floor with her knees curled in, hoping for a comfort from all the misery and pain she’d known in her life, that only came when it was all over, and death, at last, took her graciously.
That was, after all, the way Sabotage preferred her victims to die, if she couldn’t have them do it willingly.
In tragedy, there is always a first to know. And that knowledge, in it’s terrible gravity, is always compounded by its suddenness. No one would ever know this better than Sabrina did.
“So my thinking is, that eventually we will have to standardize with--” Lance had begun, in his prologue of sorts to the “surprise” visit he’d tried to spring, which seconds ago she’d been only merely annoyed with.
Whatever laborious point he was trying to get at, was forgotten though, and suddenly dwarfed, like a candle in the sunlight, by the pain that realization brought with it. She dropped, literally, straight to the floor on both hands, and screamed like she was being torn in two. A part of her, really was. The long, hideous peal of a sound was like no human or pokemon could make on command. It was a special sound, of a voice that had never once saw need to voice it’s wounding so loud, or for that matter had any at all to voice. How rare a thing, the howl of a demigod.
Lance, for all he was worth, for all the dragonbreath and hellfire he’d faced in his life as head of the Blackthorn Dragon clan, even he leapt backward at the sound, and covered his ears. The sound went on forever, inhuman, and bizarre, like the wailing of a child who had just learned. And then, the sound, and it’s emanator were gone, like they’d never truly been.
Lance stood in the empty Gymnasium, shivering, even though everything he was stood in defiance of it. There was no force on earth he’d yet encountered like it, and none he would ever again.
Lexie laughed, just like she always did when her girlfriend made that face. It was, after all, very recently that her mother had come to regard Tammy as more than a blight on her happy ignorance of Lexie’s love-life, so she guessed it still stood to reason that there would be some hesitance. She just couldn’t help but chuckle when she watched Tammy’s lips kink up like she’d found a tidbit of something sour in a bite of food, when she gave her usual, almost disinterested endorsement of “Sure, I guess.” to the notion of returning to her house for a listening session with none other than the object of that discomfort
They told rallied versions of their memory of the even, as they walked home--about how the concert hall had been so loud it felt like it it would shake apart, about how both of them had forgotten the notes, by heart, but remembered them somehow by finger alone, and even more about how incredible it had been to share the stage with their parents--not as their parents!--but as living rock legends!
They told with some variance however, when it got to the part where they’d performed Rebel Rebel, however. Lexie found herself gushing about how they’d all dropped what they were doing, and grabbed each other, and the crowd had whooped and whistled and cheered, without the slightest impatience, but Tammy’s interest fell in an unexpected place:
“Your mom knew that was going to happen.” Tammy said, with a sort of dry-humored accusation in her tone. “She plays the fool, but she’s not as dense as she lets on.”
Lexie stuck her tongue out, but only a little. “You can’t live with Psychics and still be blind to other people’s body language, Tammy.”
Tammy froze, and looked back at her. “You’re not seriously going to tell me I looked like I needed a hug, are you?”
Lexie waved off the bravado. She was psychic, so the false-irritation didn’t phase her. “So what if you did? Must have, if even mom picked up on it.”
Tammy considered that. “Maybe I am giving her too much credit.”
It was Lexie’s turn to stop in her tracks, arms akimbo. “Maybe you’re just that transparent!”
Tammy looked like she wanted to glare back, but a laugh made her lip quiver before she could get stony again, and so she let it out.
It was good for a gag, Lexie knew, laughing as well, but it really was true. She couldn’t name how many times her mom had dove headfirst into a sticky situation, where she really had no business at all, but somehow managed not only to salvage it, but also, to make herself the center of whatever was going on, like a firewall, stopping between the fuse and the powder keg. Who was to say that she couldn’t just as easily take something almost entirely about her, and push it into someone else's lap until they were forced to take charge of it and all the fortunate consequences thereof?
Her mom wasn’t a psychic, but she knew when to make a scene, that much was for certain.
She carried that belief with her, warmly, all the way home, as they took the rest of the trip in amiable silence. Today was going to be an awesome day, all told, she was just sure of it.
She would look back on that moment, and wonder why, wonder how she hadn’t known, how Sabotage had kept so much hidden from her, right up until the end, and it would indeed be quite the opposite feeling, carried with her to bed on many a sleepless night.
They made it to the porch, before Tammy snagged her wrist. “Can I, uh...” She looked embarrassed.
Lexie quirked a brow “Hm?”
“Well, it’s just, before we were at school, and...I don’t really want to in front of your mom, it’s...”
Lexie tried not to laugh, when Tammy made that face again. “Super weird, isn’t it?”
Tammy nodded, frowning.
In answer, Lexie placed both hands on the front Tammy’s jacket, and stood tip-toed, with her eyes closed. Rather than getting the kiss she expected, a sneering hiss came over her shoulder.
“Oh, look who showed up first,” said Sabotage, voice sounding glutted and satisfied, just by speaking those words. “Little Lexie.”
She turned, slowly, and with contempt. “Go away,” she groused.
Normally, though, there would be some backhanded comment about her little clandestine smooch here on the front step, though, wouldn’t there? Instead, what she got was a low, guttural moan of a laugh, as Sabotage wheeled back out of the doorway, and called for her. “Wait till you see! Wait till you see what I’ve done this time!”
Some shitty prank, no doubt. Thumbtacks on the bottom step, a bucket of paint propped on an open door, something of that nature.
Lexie groaned. “Can you wait here?” she asked Tammy. The last thing she needed was for Tammy to fall and give herself a goose-egg on the head from a greased floorboard, during what was really the first amicable visit with her mom. Or worse, to totally fall and look like a moron in front of her girlfriend for no reason other than that Sabotage was an asshole.
Momentarily, she thanked Arceus that Tammy hadn’t come to pick her up for school this morning, and bore witness to the great circus act that had been. She rubbed her face in annoyance as she followed after skipping Sabotage. “Not that this house isn’t a constant three-ring show.”
She rounded the corner with her hand still wearily rubbing her eyes. “Sabotage, I swear, if you’ve put mouse-traps on the top liquor shelf where mom can't see them, again I--”
When she crossed the threshold of the garage, Sabotage wheeled on her suddenly, slapping both hands hard against her face, and locking it in place. “LOOK!” she demanded, angling Lexie’s eyes over her shoulder.
And then she laughed, while Lexie took the longest, deepest breath of her life, afraid, petrified, certain that another one would never come.
The scene was a nightmare, embossed over reality at knifepoint. Her eyes followed the trail of broken plastic back to it’s source. Back to a thing she couldn’t understand. A thing that shouldn’t--couldn’t be real.
She shoved Sabotage hard in the stomach and ran, sliding over sharp red vinyl and sticky red fluid one and the same, not realizing that she was choking until she finally caught her breath again and it slammed into her chest like a heavyweight punch. “Arceus! ARCEUS, MOM!!”
She tried to jostle her mother back to consciousness, back to a roused state, in a panic, but her face and hands felt no warmer than the floor. Her head only lulled off to one side, and the dried blood under her nose told her that it had been this way for far, far too long. She felt her hands lose all ability to operate, and still she just pawed uselessly, trying to find something, anything useful for them to do, but there was nothing.
She wanted to call for help, but she suddenly couldn’t breathe again, and it was if all the forces in the world had suddenly forced her down to her stomach, across this pitiful thing on the floor that had just this morning been her living, breathing mother. There, with her face stuffed in her mother’s shoulder, she began to heave.
A silent, but violent motion, from the pit of her gut, to the back of her throat. A misery that was too large to break free without tearing its way out of her, struggled violently for release. She shook, and she trembled, but there was no sound she could make that could suffice.
Her mom was dead. And Sabotage, who had only just now crept back into her perception at all, she realized, was laughing.
It was a terrible thing to plan for, and an even worse thing to execute, but there really came a time in everyone’s life where they needed to hit something so hard that not even all the psychic power in the world would make due. Sabrina’s life was certainly no different.
Even up here, high on the Silph Tower, the wind didn’t dare beat upon her, only gyred and whirled at arms length, wary of her anger and hurt. She had a lot of both.
At a question of physics, there was a simplicity to force equalling mass times velocity. Even a psychic yielded to those rules, in ways others failed to appreciate. She might break bones or wrench spines at a whim, but these were things any human could accomplish with the right knowhow. What she wanted, however, was more than that. What she wanted was utter, gross destruction. What she wanted, was to inflict damage, and pain that nothing human could ever hope to conspire. That was what Sabotage had driven her to.
She stepped off the safety rail and dove, like a swimmer.
The air split, forced away by an unseen wedge of mental energy in front of her, removing wind-resistance from the equation. Falling in vacuum, meant that this was only a contest between gravity, and her own natural fear of the hard stop at the end.
And she had no fear of the hard stop at the end. Not because she knew it wouldn’t happen, but because a part of her didn’t even care if it did.
She fell faster and faster, all of the very long way down, from so high that the streets looked like a blank grid of gray, until she could hear the hush of ten thousand looking upward, waiting for what seemed inevitable.
She didn’t deny their attentions. She screamed as she fell, but not for fear, and certainly not for them. Her scream was for Roxie. And so too, was the hard stop at the end.
Lexie felt like she was helpless. And that, for all the things she’d felt in her life, was an odd feeling. She had never felt useless, or weak, or even inept before. She was talented and graceful at everything she tried. She’d gotten that from her mum. But those wells seemed like they had run dry in the face of what she was going through, and the sole remaining thing she’d always been blessed with, her determination, well...
The person that had come from was dead underneath her, so it didn’t seem much help either. She could only lay there, sobbing, choking, desperate to scream out, but unable to do more than murmur.
What had she done? What in the hell had Sabotage done?!
She bit her lip and her teeth sank in, filling her mouth with a coppery taste. She wanted to get up, she wanted to stop that insane laughter, to use her power in all the ways her mother had always implored her not to: to hurt, to maim, to kill, but...
Her mom’s head rested in her hands, and even though it was senseless, even though she knew it was pointless, she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t bring herself to let that head of white hair touch the ground again. If she did, then...
Then it would be over. Then she really would be gone. Forever. She would never see her again. She would never hear her say her little “Oi!” when she was cross, or ask “Wot?” when she didn’t quite get what was being said, or call her “Luv,” or “Dahling” ever, ever again. The second she let her touch the ground again all that would disappear from her life, and all there would be, was the painful memory of it all, to cry over.
She hunched low over her mom, and took her head into her lap, and she knew she really would scream, then, she knew because she could feel it building in her chest. It was coming out whether she wanted it to or not.
But then, she realized, that wasn’t it at all. The feeling in her chest wasn’t something on it’s way out. It was something on it’s way in.
She turned to the door, just as Tammy was coming around the corner. Lexie didn’t give her time to gasp. “GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! RU--”
A bright flash. A sudden rush, then a deafening bang, that stole everything: sound, breath, and vision.
Lexie had read once, when curious on the subject, that time had not existed before the dawn of the universe. That wasn’t necessarily the case, the book had said, but everyone figured that to be close enough to the truth, since the beginning of everything must’ve been so cataclysmic that nothing before it had any observable consequence on what came after.
That was a lot like what her mum’s arrival was like. Nobody was quite certain how she’d done it, and maybe she had gotten a great deal of momentum going even prior to teleporting into the garage, but once the deed was done, only one thing was certain: Sabrina had come home, and she’d brought a shitload of fury with her.
As it was, the collision had put Sabotage through the corner of the garage wall, studs, pipes and plaster, like it was wet paper, just a few feet to Tammy’s right. The floor had missed most of the devastation except for a strip of the subfloor ripped out by sudden and fierce contact. The kitchen, however, resembled a new outdoor living space, The bar had been so splintered that it might’ve been more recognizable as four very small tables at one point. The refrigerator had blown out into the pool, where it was now capsizing, and a huge gouge was taken out of the back patio, the massive concrete pavers buckled and thrown like tumbled playing cards. Beyond, the fence was shattered, and finally, not much farther than that, stood her mother, implacable and fierce.
Sabrina looked down at the terrible thing she created, and stomped on it’s throat, even where she’d left it, slammed a half-meter into the earth. She leveled her hand at its evil, smirking face, and showed her teeth before she fired ten heavy kinetic blasts, each pounding into Sabotage with a flash of glowing lavender-white light, and the whine of hot waste-energy as it sizzled the air between them. The whole neighborhood shook, and the pit of earth grew deeper and deeper with each one, and somewhere, Sabina must've lost herself in the act, because when the smoke cleared...
So too did all trace of Sabotage.
Tammy was the first to shout “Look out!” and it was only before a support strut for the second story floor fell out of the ceiling, and clipped her on the shoulder, but all the same, it was probably the only thing that saved Sabrina from Sabotage’s reprisal.
Sabotage’s own hand lurched in from her periphery, it’s palm a beacon of angry red fire, bound for Sabrina’s face, but the psychic was gone in a flash, teleporting up to the rooftop, and out of harm's way, as a beam of sheer energy lanced across the yard, through space her head had formerly occupied.
Rather than try again, Sabotage only whirled, and turned the beam on it’s axis point, like she were casting a flashlight across a darkened room. It vaporized the lawn in a semicircle, leaving behind an arc of scorched earth. The surface-water in the pool flash-boiled and spit angry steam into the air. Most terribly, the beam carved a rough, burning line across the second story, that combusted readily and without delay.
This couldn’t be right. Sabotage couldn’t have gotten this strong so fast. That blow should have killed anyone! How was she still standing, much less fighting?!
“Don’t you get it?!” Sabotage hollered. “I’ve already won!” The former facet was injured, of course, blood trickling down from under a black hat now crushed, dress hopelessly shredded, and legs a crisscross of gouged cuts over a patchwork of bruises. But she didn’t seem severely wounded, or even all that impeded by what injuries she did have.
“You and me, Sabrina, we’re going to dance this dance forever, don’t you see? No matter what happens, I’m always going to be here, and I’m always going to wreck things. I’m still a part of you, and I always will to be.” She smiled wickedly, while the whole house burned. “And the truth is, you still want me to be, or you’d have tried to kill me a long time ago, when you still had the chance.”
Sabrina did not respond in words, because there was nothing worth saying. The anguish she felt, the hatred that burned inside her was too elemental, too raw for language to meaningfully express. The only thing that would settle was violence. The only thing that would satisfy was death. The only thing there was, for Sabrina, was to see that miserable part of herself writhe and die. She reached without looking, behind and to the right, hand seizing something distant and heavy.
Tammy, who had run outside at Lexie’s behest, holding her throbbing shoulder, saw Roxie’s bike twitch only once before it crumpled under unseen pressure, into a gnarl of heavy leather and rubber and steel. Then, it ripped into the sky, and down again, in one terminal arc over the house like a streaking comet curving around the sun..
The impact blew debris and fire in all directions, like an exploding mortar, but again, Sabotage was gone before it arrived. This time, Sabrina wheeled, but it was still too late. The overhand blow punched her straight down through the shingled roof and further. The force of impact was devastating, and hardly a preamble to the one that followed it, as Sabotage, high overhead, simply fell after her, landing knees-first on her chest, with monstrous result.
They tore at each other, laughing and screaming, as the burning frame of the house turned to cinders and smoke all around them. Down, down, through roof and ceiling, then the second story floor and first story ceiling again, with Sabotage’s impressive psychic strength lending more pressure than her inconsiderable weight ever could have. Sabrina felt her back collide heavily with the cement floor, finally, crushing the air out of her lungs, and all force from her control.
Then, Sabotage’s fingers were there, sliding around her neck like a bracing clamp, and screwing themselves down until Sabrina could feel the blood that filled her vision push against the back of her eyes.
“You haven’t seen her yet, have you?” Sabotage hissed gleefully in her face. “Look, look! She’s just right there!” Leaving off one hand, which she hardly needed, the former facet pointed across between them.
Sabotage kicked a piece of burning rafter aside, as she tangled herself around Sabrina, so that her victim could get a clear look at her dead wife. “Doesn’t she look pathetic? See how she died? With nobody around to help her, nobody to save her from the harmless little facet!” Sabotage barked with laughter again. “It’s almost like nobody told her I was a murderer!”
Sabrina looked at Roxie, not because she wanted to--there was nothing in the world she wanted to see less than this!--but because she was compelled to. Sabotage slammed her skull against the floor, and pried her eye open with one sharp thumb. She saw, because she had to see, how sickening and wrong a thing had been done, and she knew, because she had learned so long ago that Sabotage’s game, its one true desire, was to make her wish for the pain she inflicted, that Sabotage wanted to make her feel responsible. To make her feel guilty for what had transpired. To make her believe it was what she truly deserved.
And she did. Everything Sabotage had said was true. She was, in no small way, the reason for this. Without her, there was no Sabotage. Without her, everything that had transpired, would not have been. Sabotage didn’t bluff to win the game she played. She didn’t have to. What was the point in telling lies, when you could tell the truth? The truth hurt more.
But that wasn’t going to change it. Her guilt wasn’t going to make this easier. Her responsibility for what had happened wasn’t going to protect the family she had left. Her sorrow wasn’t going to put Sabotage in the ground.
It couldn’t. She couldn’t ignore it, but saying who was responsible didn’t change the here and now. Roxie was dead. And Sabotage, in exchange, had to die too. That was all that was left. Either she would make that happen, or she too would die, in the attempt.
With finality, Sabrina’s hands flew, not to her own throat, but to Sabotage’s face. She gouged deep into that visage that was so like her own, not caring if it meant living or dying, so long as it did what it was supposed to. Her fingers hissed with energy, burning through skin and boiling blood as they went. Sabotage reared, and cackled madly, but she hooked her legs around the facet’s back and held on as the devious facet ripped from the ground and tried to heave Sabrina into the air, to throw her off.
She burrowed her nails into her eyes, shredded her cheeks to the bone, and worried every bit of skin she could touch with all the hate and anger and psychic heat she could muster.
And Sabotage roared, oh how she roared, thrashing and whipping Sabrina about like a rag-doll, pounding her through broken sections of roofing and wall, crushing her against the floor with great, savage bodyslams that would have shattered skulls and spines of any normal human with ease.
And Lexie, who hadn’t had the nerve to leave her mom’s side, could only watch all this happen, with a fear such as she’d never believed she could know. How could such strength exist? She’d heard the stories, and perhaps, once or twice seen suggestions of it being true, but, it just wasn’t possible. None of this was! She tried, desperately, and foolishly, to crush her eyes shut, to hope against all possible hope that this was all just a nightmare, and that she would wake up in bed, and it would still be morning, and she would sit and breathe and cry a few awful, cold, but ultimately pointless tears, just like she had after her terrible nightmare a few days hence, before getting out of bed to another exasperatingly normal day.
But even as she held them shut, she could still feel the heat of fire all around her. She could still feel the weight of her mom’s lifeless body in her arms. She could still hear the sounds of her mother being beaten to death by the monster they’d let live in their home, and wear her hand-me-down clothes.
And the nightmare did not end, when she opened them. In fact, it became worse. Sabrina’s head clipped a steel joist with a loud, reverberating clang, and she fell completely limp. It was a small matter for the bloodied Sabotage to cast her off, then, which she did, propelling the unconscious psychic into the far wall, which now gave completely.
The whole upper story pitched sideways, and spilled through the smoldering ceiling of the living room. Beds, dressers, belongings. All the menial content of their personal, daily lives scattered like garbage. This was what Sabotage had done to them. This was what Sabotage had wanted.
She expected the facet to turn on them in a wounded, animal rage, but she didn’t. Sabotage only turned and smiled with great bemusement at it all, from a mouth that was missing a portion of it’s lower lip. Her teeth gleamed in the firelight, bloody and dagger-like. “Lexiiiie,” she said, sweetly, as if singing the word. “Don’t fret. With your mother finished, it will be your turn to play, won’t it?”
Lexie couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t think, as Sabotage took one step toward her. She had never really come to fear the facet, before, at least not in the way her mother had. The wariness had come naturally, but this fear, it gripped her tightly and left her helpless and vapid. She threaded fingers into her mom’s hair, and knew--didn’t think--knew she was about to die.
But then as it turned out, it wasn’t her turn. Not yet. Sabrina dragged herself upright again, like a zombie, clawing mindlessly, for what, not even her body knew, until she had it in her grip. She caught her own knees and pulled them. No use. They were both pinned by the joist. Wasted, she tried to lift with her mind what her hands could not.
Sabotage beat her to the punch, though, again, slamming the joist back down over both shins to the tune of a howl of pain, and more falling wreckage and detritus from above, as Sabotage, lurched out over her, pressing her wreck of a face against Sabrina’s “You never get tired of the abuse, do you Sabrina? That's what I like about you.” She placed her elbows on Sabrina’s chest, and her wrecked face to her cheek to whisper in her ear. “Is it that you want to see what I’ll do to your daughter that badly, before you die?”
Sabrina's eyes flared, but Sabotage, wiser this time, held her in place with a thought. It didn’t take much. Sabrina was nearly spent anyhow.
She giggled, as she left a trail of bloody kisses on her creators neck, and stood, leaving her pinned there. She watched the Psychic struggle for a long time, as the garage filled with smoke, and Tammy screamed for her girlfriend to come out, but nobody moved. Then, she broke into laughter again. A high, thin sound, at first, then a great gulping, bellowing of unbelievable hilarity and elation. “No Sabrina. For you, the greater pain is not knowing.”
She pointed, downward, and her finger flared with a sinister light. “Now, before you go, tell your daughter how much you love her, Sabrina. You’re beaten. This is the only thing you’ve left to do.” She hissed.
“Lexie,” Sabrina began, her voice ragged with pain and effort, and wracked with tears. “Lexie, I lo--”
The words died in her throat as the light leapt from Sabotage’s finger in a ray through Sabrina’s left lung. Lexie did scream, then, even though she was covering her mouth with one trembling hand.
Sabotage’s laughter echoed even louder, a guffaw at an unbelievably funny joke, only she understood. “Oops!” she chirped.
Sabrina gagged, trying in vain to finish what she’d started. “Lex...L-Lex...” but she couldn’t muscle it out. Her fingers scraped at the floor, until her nails were shattered, and longer, drawing wild lines of blood in desparate pattern. She looked at Sabotage with Giratina’s own eyes, but then, slowly, they began to roll back, until they vanished into fields of milky white. The Psychic staggered, collapsed, and didn’t move.
Lexie tore her eyes away, and her vision swam. This couldn’t happen. It couldn’t! She’d already lost her mom, and now... and now...
She wouldn’t believe it. It wasn’t true! And if it was, if it really was, she would...
She would...
“Lexie.” Sabotage said, trying to catch her attention. Sabotage liked a captive audience, after all. But she didn’t look. Something else had already caught her attention.
Something had tumbled from the scattered remains of the upstairs, and layed neglected on the floor. A thing that had meant so much, and now, meant so much more. Something given, and likewise received, that had been the start of something truly beautiful in her life. A gateway into everything that she’d had until just a few moments ago, believed was impregnable. It had been the real and manifest link between her and her mom, and in no small way given rise to the relationship she had with Tammy
Her violin had tumbled from it’s case, and bounced into the entryway. She could see it through the gap between Sabotage’s approaching legs. It’s bow laid snapped beside it, uselessly, which was all the same, really.
Before, it had been the center of her world, but now? Now, what was it? Would she ever play again? Would she ever smile again, as she held the rest under her chin, and felt the strings reverberate through her whole body? Would she ever know a happiness like that again after what Sabotage had done? Could she?
In this moment, did it even matter?
She was probably going to die anyways. How could she stand against Sabotage where both of her mothers had failed?
She looked back to Sabotage as she drew closer, amid the flames, grinning her split grin. “Are you ready to die, Lexie?”
Lexie’s mind was totally and utterly blank in that moment, washed clean by resignation and defeat. Which was probably why it was so easy to remember something her mom had said to her, years ago, in just that briefest span of time:
“We both want you to have every’fing your heart desires, and if we aren't bloody well convinced that you’re getting it, you’ve got to know that we’ll turn Mount Silver itself upside down to see that you do...but dahling, you could move that mountain wiv’ or wiv’out us.”
So she answered, calmly, and concisely. “No. I’m not.”
Sabotage looked confused, then. Honestly, she didn’t look like she knew what to say. But it wasn’t because of the straightforward answer she was given....
It was more because of the finely-crafted violin head protruding from her chest.
Lexie lowered her hand, slowly from where it had been extended, ripping the instrument through the air toward herself like a javelin, and then cried, as she caved in on herself. “I’m not ready to die,” sobbed miserably, feeling almost guilty for that, even as half her family lay dead around her. “I’m just not.”
Sabotage wailed then, as the reality of the blow struck home with her. She tried to gouge out the wooden stake the fretboard had become, but it was too late. Not that even this would have been a mortal blow, to the likes of her.
But now, Sabotage had a much bigger problem.
The Toxic-Winters were not done in as easily as it had earlier seemed, either. Sabrina stood like she was powered by steam locomotion: hissing to a start, and then never stopping, as she shoved everything that had fallen on her away, and came for her Facet like a thing possessed.
Sabotage tried to scramble backwards, even choking on her own lifeblood as she was, to get away, but it was no use. Sabrina was on her, clamping hands to the thing which protruded from her chest, and baring her to the floor with it, as though she would soon use it to drill her into the ground, She spoke only once, and none of those words were wasted for the soon to be departed:
“Lexie? No matter what you hear. No matter what happens, do not come back inside.”
Lexie recognized the command for what it was, and she knew before it even happened that she was about to be teleported out of the garage.
Then, Sabrina turned her head downward. Her eyes were no longer red. Her eyes were pure fire. In her, all the molten heat of the earth’s core seemed a cool, miniscule thing. From her, there came only pain. Pain, such as Sabotage could not understand, nor withstand.
From her, came the end. The end of flesh, the end of thought. The end of being. All the framework of the apocalypse condensed down into a single point of crushing, deliberate force. The kind that crushed whole worlds to dust in the cosmic end-times. The kind that had no place on such a macrocosmic scale. It wasn’t that Sabotage met her match, it was that Sabotage suddenly found herself on a level that was beyond her, and always would be.
Sabotage was a trickster, and the most vicious, terrible deceiver of her kind. In her element she was second to none, and nothing.
But that playing field had been swept clean, and the score set back to zero. That game had been won, already, just as she’d said. But now, the match was set anew, in a totally different contest. Here, there was only pain, only hate, only death. Here, Sabotage was but a bit player, but Sabrina?
Here, Sabrina was Goddess.
Knowing she was looking at the end, but defiant to the last, Sabotage spat. “You’ll see me again, soon.”
It was the last jab of doubt, from an evil facet soon to expire. “No.” Sabrina promised, her voice alarming, like failing breaks. “I won’t.”
Tammy and Lexie didn’t know that the sound they heard piercing their ears from the driveway, was the sound a body made when it was burned hollow and reduced to no more than bone by all the anger an unbridled psychic widow could muster. All they knew was that the garage went from a burning wreckage, to a towering inferno. The heat was unbearable, as flames seemed to burst outward in every direction but theirs, and still, Lexie felt blisters beginning to raise on the arm she was forced to shield her face with.
Tammy helped her with the miserable, awful task of moving her mother, but by the time they got to the end of the drive, there was no more reason to run.
The fire devoured everything, hungrily, like it were some otherworldly creature being fed a long overdue meal. It swallowed the house, and everything in it, buckling in the roof and sweeping all their lives into it’s great roaring mouth until all that was left was black smoke and cinders. All the released energy of a dying facet compressed itself at Sabrina’s insistence until it smashed back into the skeletal, blackened remains of the miserable twisted remains of she’d left of Sabotage. Then she smashed those too, crushing them, imploding them down to a more compact state.
When she was finished, and the garage door had fallen away with nothing left to anchor it, Tammy and Lexie could see it was only her mother there, her own clothes still on fire in places, even as monstrous, ragged hole in her back healed rapidly shut. Before her, between savagely clutched hands, poured a tiny heap of black ash that piled between her bent knees.
It was over. It was done. And as she caught sight of her child, holding her dead wife in her arms along with Tammy, both looking to her for answers she couldn’t give, she knew that it would never be enough. She could take revenge on Sabotage a thousand times over, and it would never make up for what she, what they had lost.
...Or the guilt she felt for having allowed Sabotage to take it from them the first place.