They ran, they did nothing but run. And by booking as fast as they did, they threw away their chance of escape by running into the school office again, versus the door.

As they slammed on the floor, scrambling across to go for or figure out a place to hide—they all cursed themselves in their own respective ways.

Tracy clamped down on her lip, already tears streaming down her face, making panicked noises as she hid in a corner behind a chair.

River looked about, crawling backways on her ass going nowhere, her eyes darting around to see everything and everyone. Practically frozen.

Aiko tried to look excited, or at the very least prepared and assured. She just kept hitting herself at her head, trying to maintain this manic energy because she knows it’s all she has.

Maddie pressed her back against the wall near the door, mumbling and fuming under her breath as she continued to look out.

And Jackie was in the middle of all this, grabbed a trashcan amidst the emotional whirlwind. Looking behind her at the window, and then looking at the door in front of her. Planning, trying to figure out what’s the best course of action that will lead to the least amount of injury.

“Who the fuck led us in here--?!” Maddie growled out.

“s-STOP!” Tracy shouted out, her teeth would’ve been red had she bled anymore. “Shutupshutupshutup! She could hear--!”

“It doesn’t fucking matter! She’s fucking right there!” As she reached for the knob, Maddie could be hear saying “I’m going for it—”

“DON’T!” Jackie screamed.

“FUCK YOU!” Maddie replied.

“SHE’S FASTER AND STRONGER!” Jackie looked towards the window a couple of times, signaling to Maddie that it doesn’t have to be this way.

“We’re fucked either way, so fuck it!” Maddie grabbed onto the knob and began to turn.

“Sure. Go. Run.”

The voice came from everywhere, causing the girls to seize up in fear.

“I’m sure that… The monster that I am will enjoy it. Maybe it’s the final lease and I can finally let go of a losing battle… By all means. Be the ones to finally plunge me into the inevitable…”

No one was sure on what to say or to do. Stillness flooded the scene, both in motion and in sound. It was only the mumbling hums of a tune that broke through the silence, with added huffing and shaky vocals, desperately trying to cradle the tune N’atural tried singing. A different tune from before, it sounded calm and melancholy. But it was betrayed with the sharp intake of breathe and shuddering of the voice.

Jackie’s head snapped towards the rattling of the door knob.

Only to see Maddie shaking so much, she was causing it with her grip on it.

“Ha… I wonder why I’m singing that song, of all times…? It’s not like I have anything left to be thankful for…”

Jackie knew this was bad—both parties wanted to prove something, and both parties feel like they have nothing to lose in trying to prove it.

She had to act.

She had to do something.

Jackie made a break for a door behind the desk, black in color. She then, between consciousness and unconsciousness, used her ability to jerk the door open had it been locked—rendering the possibility moot.

To her surprise, she maintained consciousness. But she couldn’t dwell on that.

She ran into the dark room, then ran back out.

“GET IN HERE, GET IN HERE!” she urged to the rest.

Tracy wasted no time, bolting inside first. Aiko then followed, along with River scrambling in while still on the floor.

Jackie dashed towards Maddie, knowing that what she had to do.

She grabbed the girl by her shoulder, gripping the jacket she was wearing, pulling her away with all her might as she ran into the room. Tracy was the one that closed the door, falling into it afterwards as she leaned and slid down it on her side, completely out of it.

Someone turned on the lights somehow, revealing that this was the security room. A huge screen that curved at it’s ends, made up of smaller screens was carved into the wall, with the control desk before it surrounded by various filing cabinets and seats.

Maddie shifted and shook out of Jackie’s hold, and she glared at her.

“I tried messing with your arm to make you let go, but I guess you fucked it up already.”

Jackie squinted in confusion and begun to peer down.

To her shock, her arm was grey-scale, devoid of color and movement.

“Well,” Jackie said in a monotone. “No wonder I couldn’t grab you with both…”

“The fuck do we do now?” River asked.

“There’s nothing we can really do with a security room…” Aiko added. “Do we turn on the intercom and scold her for trespassing?”

Jackie paused.

“So how did you guys get the lights working?” Jackie asked.

Aiko waved her hand, “Tracy screamed at me to turn on the lights, but I pointed out that this place has been closed and out of power for years, then she… garbled or something in despair, so I used by siVis to jump into the switch? It worked somehow! It might be a side effect of the ability…”

Jackie paused again, holding her lifeless arm.

“Aiko,” Jackie began. “Possess the intercom and security system.”

Aiko saluted as Tracy huffed in anxiety.

“WE ARE NOT GOING TO SUMMON HER TO THE PRINCIPAL OFFICE TO GO HOME, JACKIE JACKSON”

“Remember when I said that we have to adapt?” Jackie brought up. “This is it. If this doesn’t work? We still have the backup and I have an extra idea on the brain.”

“Considering how fucked your brain can get, I’m gonna start—y’know, accepting that I’m gonna get skewered since I could’ve ran,” Maddie mocked.

“Honestly, that’s a good idea,” Jackie said bluntly. “I want you all to stay calm and untense. I understand how fucking impossible that is, but at least you guys can have a better chance than me.”

Aiko proceeded to jump in, swirling into the cables that were at the bottom of the screens.

“I could hear that, y’know,” N’atural’s voice referring to the activation call. “Should I be taking that as a threat…?”

Aiko popped out seconds later, and everything flickered alight.

Jackie used her enhanced sight and reflex to search the screens, trying to figure out where N’atural was.

Only to find her in the middle of an in-door garden.

It was on the second floor, it was a mixture of a school lobby and a greenhouse. Benches surrounding the nature, with brick pillars and white small bars forming the cage, with an clear ceiling letting in the moonlight night.

She was there, on the floor covered in dead leaves, in a white dress, her sandals in hand as she rested her arms on her knees, her blonde hair a mess, yet glowing due to the Moon’s light.

Just there. Alone.

Jackie instantly hit the intercom’s button, and spoke into it.

“No, no, no. We’re not a threat. Furthest away from anything like that.”

N’atural didn’t move.

“If you say that you’re some sort of ally or kindred spirit, I swear…” her voice was projected somehow.

This caused Jackie to gulp, to hesitate.

She toggled the intercom again, “Would be a bit presumptuous, wouldn’t it? You’re right in saying we’re complete, mutual strangers here.”

N’atural’s chuckle, so innocent yet broken, illuminated across the building.

“Finally,” she said. “I finally break that stupid chain and it’s from someone that I have no idea about. Funny how these nigglings seem to clear up all of a sudden, right before you make the decision…”

Jackie tried tempering her breathing, and proceeded to toggle the intercom again, “We’re only stragglers, drifters. All we needed was something here, nothing more or less. That’s all. Now that we’ve cleared that up, can… Can you assure that we can leave? All we want is to leave you alone.”

Jackie saw N’atural shrug on camera, her head still buried in arms and hair.

“I guess.”

Jackie looked around to see the mixed expressions on everyone’s faces.

“N’atural,” Jackie begun. “I don’t mean to impose a will or—Look, again, we’re just dumb people that needed something, literal beggars. We know that this school is important to you—”

“Just when I thought you were avoid being presumptuous,” N’atural cut off.

Jackie stiffened in response.

“You people only read the reports, creating lore about me to figure out my patterns…” N’atural swayed left and right softly. “Trying to logic, trying to figure me out… I didn’t even come here regularly due to my commitments. I only come here… For reasons I don’t even know. It’s not nostalgia, it’s not revengance… I just come here. Don’t claim to know me, stranger.”

“Sorry. Sorry… Well, in that case, why not educate us about yourself?” Jackie responded. Everyone in the room looked at her. “I’m sure everyone can relate on not knowing yourself… I feel like only a handful of people know who they are, and they end up being the ones we read about—the ones that make a name for themselves in history. That alone, how that happens and how the rest of us react to that… That shows you that practically no one figured themselves out completely.”

“…Hm,” the girl stopped rocking to contemplate. “I suppose there’s a truth there…”

Jackie knew that she would put herself in danger for what she was about to say next, but she felt this working.

“I definitely treasured that… But who I was… Who I ultimately am, really… It just wasn’t enough for the world. So I just made myself into things I like, versus who I really am. It’s only until now, with this siVis stuff, that I’ve barely changed and I should’ve been more truthful. And yet people thought or think I have it all together. So as someone that ‘knew’ in some sense? It’s not all that’s cracked up to be…”

N’atural’s toes squirmed ontop of each other, which could’ve meant a ton of things.

“… But you sound so confident…” N’atural replied. “Reassured… You would have to be to even try doing what you’re doing now.”

Jackie lowered her head. “All I am is a misguided failure that compounds it by trying to be proactive… It’s how I ended up here to begin with. Trust me, N’atural. I’m not confident. I’m not reassured. And I’m scared. Because I think this might be finally the one failure that gets me killed.”

N’atural started to shake, grab her head of golden hair. She proceeded to lift her head up, this showing her face on camera.

Heart-shaped, normally blue eyes that weren’t bloodshot and welled up with tears, dainty nose that trailed mucus and her full lips for her age.

“At least—” her mouth moved, flashing her sharp teeth, and proving that she is talking out of it. “At least you understand something—have something. I—I don’t know, I never knew, and that’s why this whole thing was potent as it was! Never in my life, I never—I never---just had a moment to think about it, simple questions about me, myself---I, I remember the Cornerstone QA—an—and honestly replying that I don’t have a favorite song---I---I was burnt at the stake for THAT, so I should’ve seen everyone turning on me coming, I was always fucked from the start…”

Her face crumbled up once more, her tears coating her face again as she huffed and shuddered.

“… A-are you still there, sta—stranger…?” the poor girl asked.

“I’m still here,” Jackie responded instantly. “Just… Continue.”

N’atural made something between a laugh and a mournful wail as she did, “I always hated personal questions, and in even in therapy it’s not better—How do I feel, about me, about this, about that; if I knew, I wouldn’t be in this mess, you wouldn’t have to ask! Was all of this a punishment simply because I didn’t know anything? I got this siVis, this enlightenment, purely because I couldn’t—because I realized that a voice came out and I was further behind it? Why!?”

She screamed, and grabbed her own face.

Jackie and company watched in real time of her fingers sprouting plated claws, directly out of her human finger tips.

Jackie grabbed the intercom device, and held onto the button. “N’atural, please, transforming only silences you—don’t give into it. You’ll only regret after you’ve transformed back.”

…N’atural began to laugh. A sorrowful laugh, an empty laugh.

“Ah… All that documentation, and you all couldn’t get that one… Key…. Detail right… It’s not transformation. It never was.”

Jackie felt a pit form in her throat, and felt the others start to panic.

“It’s Metamorphosis,” N’atural bluntly stated.

“O-one way…?” Jackie shakenly asked.

“No way back once it starts…” N’atural answered.

Jackie held the button, despite her hands trembling, and couldn’t say anything.

“Been slowly changing… Little by little… From the inside out…” N’atural said, and then laughed again at such an odd, inhuman pace. “Of course the German girl gets Metamorphosis as her ability… I’ve been in ‘Stage 1’ for 2 years, since the announcement… I look like me… Or whoever I was, but on closer inspection… You saw my skin move. You saw my eyes narrow. Because my body’s been in a state of transforming, readying me for the final plunge… Into my true face.”

Jackie continued to say nothing.

“Because the truth is… The truth is… It wasn’t just my lack of self… I’ve been trying to focus on that, maybe to pitifully steer away from this… But the truth is, this wasn’t an invasion. I didn’t… Somehow gain monstrous thoughts and they told me to do bad things. It was from within. It was my own instinctive thoughts. How I hated the hallowness, every single aspect of my life—when people strive for it like it’s the last boon of gold… And I always batted them away, ‘I shouldn’t think like that’, continue to walk in shoes that aren’t my own, designer, only for performance and appeal… Isn’t that all this is, stranger? siVis pegged me good, did it not?”

Jackie forced herself to form words, sweating like crazy and shaking where she stood. She wanted to say something, needed to. But it was just too much.

N’atural stopped sobbing. Suddenly.

Her face rose from her clawed hands. A neutral expression was etched on it, despite covered in tears and snot.

“I’ve gone and scared you, haven’t I?’ Her sharp teeth more pronounced, forcing her lips to part.

“no…” Jackie could only muster.

“Thisss… This is why I must do what I must do… Give in. Be the monster. So you all can stop living in this fear of charity, forced to deal with me… I can finally be the monster you fear, maybe in some ways I’ll enjoy it like the sick fuck that I am. Then you can put me out of my misery. One less Trend to deal with, and a plethora of movie documentaries you can mourn over.”

“WE’RE FUCKED TOO!” Jackie screamed so hard, everyone else jumped. “WE’RE GONNA BREAK, BECAUSE WE FUCKED UP GETTING SIVIS! WE’RE GONNA BREAK IF WE’RE PUSHED TOO FAR! BUT WE HAVE A CHOICE! A HARD CHOICE, BUT WE SURVIVE OUR FATE! MAYBE YOU CAN AS WELL! YOU JUST HAVE TO TRY!”

N’atural looked up to the ceiling, as if Jackie was there.

“What do you suppose we do…?” N’atural asked. Distant.

“Get help—learn things—stick together!” Jackie desperately pleaded more than answer. “Take one challenge at a time! And remember that we’re just stupid, overemotional teenage girls! Be that! No matter how much we don’t know or how much we suck! We can get through this, N’atural…! Even if you don’t know us or we don’t know you…! Just… Please…”

N’atural said nothing.

“All I’ve seen… All I’ve been doing… Is talking to a girl that got way too much all to soon… Whose just exhausted… Who isn’t a monster, just having some fucked thing in her head that constantly says it…” Jackie tearfully breathed out. “If you keep saying monster in front of the mirror, Des… You’re going to see it.”

N’atural gasped, her eyes wide. She then hunched over again, shaking.

“They don’t know how to fix us, stranger…” N’atural said, solemnly.

“Then we fix ourselves…” Jackie responded almost immediately. “We are… What we choose to be…”

“… It always comes down to that, doesn’t it…?”

N’atural rose up again, this time getting onto her feet. She looked up, her tears now falling back as she sniffles tense her whole body.

Then Jackie realize, it was more than just the sniffling.

“…Then I’ll chose to be the monster,” N’atural responded. “And I’ll help us put each other out of our misery… Including this fucked world…”

Die Verwandlung: Bühne Zwei

N’atural’s form began to pulsate, crack, and become undone.

A tearful Jackie could only wipe away her tears, and steel herself.

She reached over to the black phone on the table, picking it up and started dialing.

Her extra plan is in motion.

“EXTANT!” Jackie shouted into the receiver. “N’ATURAL SAVAGE HAS BEGUN HER TRANSFORMATION, WE’RE AT EVERMORE’S FOUNDATIONS—THIS IS REALLY BAD, SHE INTENDS TO GO OUT AS A MONSTER AND TAKE DAVENPORT WITH HER, BE READY, SEND PEOPLE, WE’RE GONNA TRY TO TRAP HER, IT DOESN’T MA—”

Through the sickening sound of the rumbling of destroyed cement and steeling, N’atural begun digging towards the girls.