“Take a breath.”

Jackie had her eyes closed. She did what the voice said, and felt her entire body move to do that one action. The muscles tense, and shape themselves following the motions. Exhaling from her nose, the air escaping, and her body shrinking right down to bone.

“Take in the world that we live in. It’s the very thing you’re having trouble with, in believing in again, I understand that… But that is the risk, is it not? It’s that risk… That makes this messy, messy world something worth our attention, our wonder. Love. Something that overcomes the pain it gives us every day.”

Jackie felt that pain starting to course throughout her ruined body. Such a pain that digs itself further and further within, that stays within its cavity and yet, spreads out the longer it’s there. It connected all of the aliments she still struggled with. Her injuries, her anger. Her weakness. It all began to ache under skin, muscle, and bone.

As if she had any of those things anymore, more like.

Opening her left, ring-coated eye, she extended her right arm. And watched, as it fell out of her flesh.

“Easier said than done, Ghost Taber…” the girl tried to quip, to disguise her disgust. Horror.

It was hard to look at, let alone explain.

In all sense, the “normal” structure of her arm continued to be raised, outstretched as she reaches out. But her new siVis structure, the literal pieces of herself now—that took the place of her muscle, bone, and blood, hung under her outstretched arm. The two aspects of herself, still way too… Incompatible in her mind.

“It may look bad now, but bad can be reinvented, rebuilt. Aim to make it look how you want it to be. How wonderful and amazing your vision is.”

And yet, this was the reason why she was here, why she became this, and why she’s so hurt. Why she’s standing here in a void within her mind, why she’s being lectured on and on by a digital Hall of Presidents exhibit giving stock life advice, with her arm out of her arm. All because she fucked up something meant to make her failing life easier.

She foolishly wanted power in this messy world, and she only has the costs.

Blocking out the unhelpful self-help sentences they programmed into this thing, Jackie looked at the visage of Dr. Gia Taber. The Modern All-Mother.

She was a tan woman, jet black hair styled propped up, allowing the single bang to trail down her face down to the nose. Her eyes were closed as her glasses hung from the bridge of her nose, in a forced expression of support. Hands in her roughed-up lab coat.

“…Always remember: you can be the best that you can be. It’s all in your hands. Always in your hands.”

A sigh escaped her throat. The pain only continued to build up within her. Her head drooped down, feeling the weight of the world.

She was never meant to get this angry. It staying so long after. At one time, it was all so new to her, exploding with rage and letting that linger. That felt like lifetimes ago, and yet it was just two years ago.

Or would have been. Whatever. She needed to get this thing over it, she knew she wouldn’t remotely pass.

She used her other arm and struggled to help the siVis pieces back into the main arm. As they were slotted back in, the now-usual happened: pieces that Jackie focused on—forearm, wrist, fingers, they formed into and then highlighted those certain parts of the body, before letting go.

Feeling up the arm, flexing it, letting the pieces illustrate the inner workings of the arm, no matter how much that lagged or was unresponsive. Trying in vain to remind herself, that this is hers.

She’s still human, somehow.

“—During this lull of the Trend Watch, multiple leaders in psychiatric fields assembled to participate in a public forum: can these ‘altered’ teenagers be victims anymore? Is a siVis-unlocked human still a human--?”

Jackie quickly grabbed her ears, the gray area of her enlightened mind, the conscious and unconscious, agreeing to do this action, and do it fast.

She knew this sound. It was the news.

“Extant is still in the process of stripping down ‘pre-Transitionary Point’ buildings, ready for the Shiftication transformation—while offering newfound protection but leaves buildings under their control from now on—”

“The toll from what people are calling ‘The N’atural-Mayhem Incident’, the first superpower-based conflict in human history, is still being esti—”

“—Eyewitnesses claim to have seen one of the new siVisTrends along with Nathan Fuuki, one of the originals—”

“—Desperate attempts to fund makeshift clinics to who are affected and are suffering from N’atural Savage’s transformative gashes and Mayhem’s fear-inducing abilities—”

“With reconstruction efforts dwindling by the day, after seeing the tremendous work required, many citizens of the world are wondering the same question: ‘why’?”

There was no escape from it, from the A.I. voice droning on about the things she was always afraid of happening, one after the other.

“…Everything will be fine again.”

But it was Taber’s words that caused her eyes to shoot open with a mix of stress and resentment.

Her pieces throughout her body began to twitch, flex, shift on their own. Her mind was buzzing too loudly for her to notice, let alone control.

Periodically, withing a stutter, her flesh gave way to becoming revving pieces, hair merge into finer interlocking links that moved like writhing energy, and clattering what sounded like bones popping was more her pieces shuddering and clapping each other.

Skin giving way to a moving, featureless surface. Definitions of her crestfallen and overwhelmed face faded in and out of detail. At this rate, she was going to “breakdown” both figuratively and metaphorically.

This happened before, when she and the others fucked up so badly, that she was on the verge of bashing against her "walls" of fortitude. Walls that were made from years of her parent's nurturing, her discipline, her beliefs. And not only this alien power, not only this cosmic fantasy farce her life turned into... It was the fact that she was irreversibly changing, was what nearly toppled those walls--her boundaries.

And the sickest part of herself, the one most affected by all this trauma Wanted to see what was beyond that. Especially right now.

She only realized that her shoulders were being grabbed, not simply tightening on their own. Her near-vacant eyes, one of them being nearly blank with white, also realized that she was looking at her nurse.

She was in a hospital. So in her head that she forgot she was being treated. Been getting treatment.

“Jackie. Stay with me—us.”

Her eyes honed onto Leslie’s grim face. His fixed gaze, his messy, dirty blond hair. Face so sullen, it was hard to picture him smiling just because.

She had to come back down to reality… But how, when reality itself was the reason she’s losing? Losing everything?

But there was something in Jackie that never burnt out, despite everything being lost.

She always wanted to please people. Help herself by helping them. And she knew Leslie was as emotionally vacant as she was, if not more so.

So she focused, using her control of her siVis structure to cease shifting. Leslie was the one that showed them how this network was clustered, ethereal nexuses spread across her body, nerves weaving their connection points with each part.

It was like she was shuffling herself, like a deck of cards. All of her pieces flexed and formed a wave traveling from her head to toe, before tightening into her again. Everything being back to normal.

She had to grit her teeth at that notion. Cope that this is just normal now.

Leslie rubbed his chin, nodding to himself, before turning away—and the mental room faded back into the shared siVictim patient room. Which for all intentions and purposes, was stainless white steel, armored version of a padded looney bin.

“Oh thank fuck—” a rough yet cute voice rang out from Jackie’s side. “Thought Nurse Simpson’s face was gonna get caved in and we’d have to do something—”

Jackie eyed to her right, only to hear the shit-eating laughter from Maddie Solomon, her black, chin-length curly hair jiggling like she was. A girl that was heads shorter than her, but always hit her sore spots easily and accurately.

“Geez, people of oh-little-faith, I told you she’d pull through! …But an actual one-on-one siVis fight would’ve been raaaaad--” another voice, loud and energetic. It belonged to Aiko, who leaned forward with her side-ponytail hanging from her head, who was further away from Maddie.

A long-withheld sigh stopped Aiko’s speeding train of thought, which caused Jackie to look at Tracy, who was the one emitting it.

The redheaded, nervous girl didn’t even get through wiping her forehead, feeling Jackie’s stare, and immediately getting into panic.

“I-I didn’t have a lack of faith n-necessarily…!” her thin and arguably youthful voice crackling out of a fairly mature-looking lady. “I was just prepared! I’m always prepared! C-can be unprepared, ri-right…? Hahaha…!”

She immediately pulled in her two lisps, sucking on them as a neurotic tick.

“… I didn’t think you would freak out—”

Jackie looked past Tracy and found a River looking away from her and the others. Only seeing the back of her neck-short and apparently dyed brown hair. And yet from there, can see her block, tapped together glasses’ rims.

“Thanks, River,” Jackie tried to be measured. “I know hoping’s kinda hard for you—”

“I know,” the girl didn’t meet Jackie’s gaze at all, having such a dry monotone. “Maybe I can become the Final Hope and use Axecalibur as Missing Piece plays—”

“NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND YOU, BROOKE—” Maddie yelled across the room.

Jackie gave herself a loud facepalm. Resting, stewing in it for a bit before she looked forward, seeing Leslie leaning against the wall as he slowly shook his head.

“Of all of the kids to try to get superpowers together… Not only had it be you, unstable people, together, but somehow ended up breaking them as well,” he remarked.