[ti]private[/ti]Final Girls

"Right. I've got that covered," Sarah said, and she patted Ron, her Charizard, for support. Like Tuesday, she'd brought a big gun to the fight, but while Tuesday had gone all defense, Sarah as usual was geared to pure offense. All fire. All claws. After all, everything burned.

She ignored the mention of the Briar Beast. That boss was the exception that proved the indelible rule. Even water type Pokemon weren't immune to fire attacks!

The duo hiked through a mountainous landscape that crawled with inky clouds. The darkness was a constant hazard in The Corruption Zone. A pitch-black enemy that seeped into the valleys, pooled miraculously on the hillsides, and flickered and swirled in the non-existent winds.

And they moved too. Like legless zombies in a horror movie, the banks of black, formless fear pressed in slowly. They followed the pair, drawn to some unknown quantity that they posses. Their life force? Their souls? Maybe they were just programmed to follow players nearby, but whenever Sarah had to walk near one of the clumped masses she found herself breathing harder, her palms sweating and skin crawling from some deep-seeded terror. Something scratched at the back of her brain. Not words, but the dark afterimage of them. The fading echo of bitter words from the mouth of a loved on.

"Some say that Darkness is the oldest fear in the world," Sarah said by way of conversation. They reached a rocky valley, and forged forward, the rocky walls pressing closer and closer until Sarah had to return Ron so that they could progress. She turned sideways, slipping lithely between the walls as they pushed deeper into the unknow. "It makes sense. Fear of not just the unknown, but that there is something we can't see. It could be as close as these walls.."

YOU SHOULD BE INSIDE

The weak sunlight overhead cut out as a dark cloud spilled over the top of the valley, and Sarah shut up, scooting faster through the claustrophobic walls as liquid death poured down on them.

"Go go go!" Sarah shouted. Her words filling the thin gap, ringing in her own ears. She grabbed handfuls of claw-like stone, pulling herself deeper into the tunnel and closer to the inevitable exit.

Charizard HP: 300/350

Sarah clawed and heaved her way towards the exit, pulling closer and closer to the glint of light, or hope.

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE

But it was not to be. The light at the end of the chasm was merely an illusion, and Sarah found herself in a claustrophobic cave, staring at a the jagged shine of a lighting-shaped piece of silver. It was like a vein of mercury within the confines of the cave, and it shone with interior light.

Outside, the cloud of corruption fell slowly over the entrance of the cave like a waterfall of creeping death, trapping them inside.

"Well, at least we have light," Sarah said, eyes fixed on the silver. Somehow the thought didn't make her feel any better, and she send Ron back out. His warmth filled the cave, but there was no relief. Whether it was the chill from Ancile or the constant stream of darkness at her back, there was no escaping the reality of the situation.

They were trapped.

YOU CAN'T HIDE

They were trapped in here with whatever this silver seam was. "Is it a Pokemon?" she asked Tuesday. The question burned her mouth, as if the air were poisoned. "Is it some piece of corrupted metal? What do we do?"

All harsh questions with no easy answer.

"I can melt it," Ron offered, but Sarah shook her head. Not yet. There was something about the metal that intrigued her. Was it...whispering to her?

CHARIZARD HP: 250/350

The fissure was hungry,

It yawned wide and infinite, and the closer Sarah looked the more it felt like she was about to topple headfirst into a shimmering silver void.

She leaned over the gap, trying to catch a glimpse of what lay deep within the metal. Was there an end to the pit? Was there a creature inside? Some twisted reflection of themselves? Was that what this was? That part in the game where you fought your own reflection?

It didn't feel like that part.

It felt like the part where the cracks widened and you found slick hands grasping for your soft skin.

It felt like the part right before the game over screen.

ARE YOU AFRAID?

"I'm not afraid of you," Sarah said. Her voice was a whisper but it filled their flickering cave. The syllables bounced off the tight walls and shifting metal.

"afraid-afraid-afraid-afraid-afraid-afraid-afraid"

YOU SHOULD BE

"What are you?" she asked, leaning over the void. "Are you the corruption that tried to take Moltres? We've beat you before you know."

There was no answer. Only a smug, oppressive silence.

Sarah leaned further over mercury fissure. As close as she dared, and then a little closer. Until her skin was almost pressed against the slick chill. Until she noticed it never fogged under her breath. Until it looked less like silver and more like the sheen of a giant eye.

Her skin touched the surface, and like a bug landing on the surface of a great slick of molten oil the surface tension pulled her under.

She disappeared beneath the surface without a ripple.

Charizard HP: 200/350

TW: Unreality, body horror

What is a mirror?

Is it a sheet of metal? Just silver that reflects back like with perfect clarity?

No. It shows a reflection. Not something correct but something flipped. Where left is right and right is left. Something distorted in an almost unnoticeable way, for how many times do we see ourselves un-reflected? What would the point be?

It is said that one of the least-comfortable human experiences is self-perception. Why? Is it because we hate what we see? Maybe for some.

Is it because we are coming face to face with who we are, unclouded by the fog of our perpetual rose-tinted glasses? Perhaps.

Is it because we spend 99% of our life inside our own body, so stepping outside to look at ourselves as others do is some, great perversion of normality? That would explain why so many people hate the sound of their own voice. It is unreality at its most personal. A piece of ourselves so integral to out being that is actually different to how we experience it every day.

Our own voice isn't how we hear it. Our reflection may be how we look but it isn't how we are. Is it?

As the mercury flowed into Sarah's eyeballs and down her optic nerves, she saw her insides. She saw meaty fibers and slivers of darkness and, most shockingly, she saw herself looking downwards into the fissure of mercury.

It was like looking at a broken TV showing a video feed of your life.

She saw slices of herself running from the fog, crashed together with cracks of Tuesday. She saw the cave, in first and third person. The open, blackened plains of Mistra filled with the chasing clouds.

They say that in the moments before death your life flashes before your eyes. But Sarah hadn't expected it to be so chaotic and fractal, let alone in reverse order.

Charizard HP: 150/350

Sarah doesn't see this shit.

She's busy studying the inside of her own head.

As the mercury coats her insides and makes her mind a hall of mirrors, she falls into the rabbit hole of her own thoughts. A million memories of pain and failure smother her like a tide of heavy metal, pulling her under. Cuts, bruises, surgery, gunshots, and wounds to the heart and mind. Breakups, breakdowns, and even break ins.

The metal in her mind shatters, digging in as she relives the trauma.

An apartment, door busted open and the place ransacked. Clothes strewn on the floor and all valuables done. The voice of his then girlfriend. "They took everything."

An ex-friend, doing a poor job of consoling him after his heart was broken. A dingy bar filled with judging eyes and sharp words. "Stop crying! Be a man!"

A phone call from his aunt on the other side of the country, her voice full of sorrow and choked with grief. "He's gone, Barry."

The losses pour over Sarah like ice water, rushing through digital veins to tug at old wounds and draw out strings of his past. They drip into her heart, and her chest cringes from the cold and the pain. Sarah's eyes are wide open, and her vision is filled with these horrible moments. All the bits and pieces that she'd forgotten, or buried underneath brighter moments.

CHARIZARD HP: 100/350

Give up

The voice spoke from inside her brain, a resonant river of metal like a second conscience.

"Never! I'm more than just my pain!"

She pushed back against it, but the metal hardened, cutting into the spaces between her thoughts and shaving the idea of rebellion into futile slivers. It spread apart the thought until it was hardly there at all. Until the feel of refusal was so dilute that it might as well have been acceptance.

"I ' m m STAY DOWN o r e t h GIVE UP a n j u DON'T FIGHT s t m y p IT'S OVER a i n ! "

The voice was so much stronger than hers. It punched through her faded thoughts like bricks through a stained glass window. Sarah heaved at the presence, but it was like fighting a waterfall. Every movement against the oppressive force was futile. How do you fight something that is everywhere? How do you fight a hatred and self-doubt so insidious? How do you fight a disease living in your mind?

The same way you fight any sickness. You burn it out.

Sarah's blood boiled in anger and resistance. "NO!" she shouted. Her skin steamed, and the metal in her mind quivered.

The voice wrapped around her brain, searching for purchase. For entry. For a gap it could settle in permanently.

You can't win. But I can stop the pain.

The voice was smooth and silvery. It stroked her brain and promised a better tomorrow while flashing her with the worst parts of her past.

Only I can make things better.

"NO!" Sarah screamed, and in her metal void the walls began to run. Mercury boiled to gas, and the fumes pushing against the inside of her skull. It flowed out her eyes and nose in clouds of noxious vapor, and she coughed and clawed and shouted through the liquid and pain.

You can't fight me.

"YES I CAN!"

The metal frothed around Sarah, and her mind sizzled as the shards of her thoughts tumbled free. Her words came together, the fractured pieces fitting into fighting words. Into rebuttal against the pain being sold by this void of hopelessness.

"I'm more than my worst moments," she sputtered, as the metal burned her lips. "And those moments don't hurt me anymore."

The metal wrapped around her like a giant fist, its surface boiling on contact. "You promise to stop the pain...but I don't need you. I still have so much joy left inside." In her mind she held up the shards that the metal had used against her. Each of them was a weapon, but they weren't made of pure pain.

She turned over the memory of the break in, and instead it showed the cherished memories of the apartment. Moving in and making it a home. The parties. The nights with friends and loved ones. The bittersweet moment he finally left and moved into a house.

That devastating phone call was a sad end to the cherished relationship he'd had with his uncle, but it didn't undo the decades of love and support that the two had shared, nor did it make him forget the man's infinite kindness. He'd never forget that.

The breakdown at the bar. That man consoling him didn't know what to say, but the woman near him did. She'd come over after his friend had left and introduced himself to him on that dark day. He remembered her face clearly so many years later. Hell, he'd even married her.

And as the metal around Sarah boiled, she held tight to the brightness hidden in those moments of pain. The other side of the shards. The parts she would remember, and the kindness that did form the person she was today. She clutched those memories and let the pain around them burn away. She glowed white hot. She burned like a star being quenched in iron.

And the mercury screamed.

Liquid silver erupted from the floor of the cave.

It erupted in a spray like slow fireworks, a chrome volcano that left nothing save the exhausted body of Sarah, curled in the middle of the sizzling ruin.

She was free. Free from the liquid that had invaded her mind and tried to break her with her own past.

But where was she now?

She looked around. She was back in the save dim cave. Tuesday was gone. Was she stuck in her own showdown with the mirror creature? "Tuesday!" Sarah called. "Smash that bastard to pieces for me!"

There was no reply, but even if the other woman couldn't hear her it didn't matter. Sarah was sure that Tuesday could hold her own against whatever Mistra was throwing at her.

But holding your own is not the same as winning, and as the mercury soaked back into the cave walls and soil, Sarah was left alone with her Charizard. Ron had remained in the cave, trapped in the black fog and hypnotic metal he was covered in creeping black splotches.

"Ron! Are you okay?" she asked, passing her hands over the decaying skin. The corruption here was eating away at his body, and his mind seemed far away. He turned towards her and nodded, his eyes not quite able to focus on her face. "We'll get you out of here," she said, and she tried to return him. Her Pokeball blinked unhappily. No dice.

"It's okay. We'll be out of here soon. I beat the corruption and we can leave soon! I promise."

And as the blackness spread to smother Charizard's ruddy orange skin, and his breath slowed to a still, Sarah was again reminded of the universal truth: You don't leave Mistra until it's done with you.