Jesse was falling.
That was all she was truly aware of, at that moment. Dimly, she noticed her long black hair whipping her face as she fell in the wind, and the fact that everything was going dark, even though the moon was still at it's peak, high up in the sky.
It wasn't as though she wanted to fall. Nor did she want this numb feeling overtaking her body, except for a core of pain in her side that if she focused on it- ouch. That hurt.
How had she gotten here again?
Oh yeah, she'd been fighting off some monsters with Lukas and Petra.
"Guys!" Jesse shouted, lashing out with her sword and slicing the head off of one zombie that got a bit too close for comfort, "are you okay?!"
The familiar ring of metal on metal hit Jesse's ears, about twelve feet behind her. "Yeah, we're-" Petra grunted in satisfaction as the sword went plunging through a skeleton's chest with a hollow crunching sound. "-fine!"
"Speak for yourself!" Lukas called back, the blonde dodging one arrow that came spitting in his direction before lunging to his feet and sending a hail of them back, a good three of them missing but two of them impaling a zombie that turned to face him, groaning aimlessly as it lurched towards him. He took care of that by shooting another arrow at the zombie, taking it through the chest.
The black-haired girl was so distracted by the hordes of zombies and skeletons and spiders that she didn't notice the wolf that was racing up to the skeleton she was currently fighting off.
The sword lashed out and struck a glancing blow on the wolf's side.
Immediately, the wolve's curious eyes turned blazing red, it's lips peeling back to reveal it's incredibly sharp teeth, a low growl rumbling through its throat.
Jesse's green eyes widened as she stumbled back a step. Then another.
And then she turned and ran.
Jesse was running.
The five-year-old girl had a old, tattered bag that she'd found in the garbage slung over her back as she ran away, bare feet stinging with each step she took, hands clinging onto the strap of her bag desperately as she fled.
The bag had nothing important, just scraps of food that she'd squirrelled away as she ran, away from the parent who didn't care about her, away from the parent who thought she was a demon because of her luminous red eyes, away from the bullies who threw things at her and jeered whenever she came near them.
Away from the town that thought she was a monster, too.
Her foot caught on a root that she had been too deep in thought to spot, and the five-year-old tipped forward with a gasp of fright as she tumbled into the small ravine, throwing up her arms to protect her head.
A rock jabbed into her side there, before another one gashed at her cheek and left a dash of red blood on her cheek. Another one thudded roughly against her knee as she tumbled, head-over-heels, losing track of what was sky and what was ground and what was a rock and what was a fist, beating her and beating her as her grip on reality slipped.
A blinding pain as one rock caught her on the forehead, sending a waterfall of blood into her red eye as she tumbled, another fist hitting her on the back, a broken beer bottle as it gashed into her back, a kick from a stray foot as it slammed into her side, all that she could see tinted red, a brilliant red, like her own red eyes and the eyes of the wolf.
Jesse gasped as something leaped on her side and bowled her over, jolting her back to reality, a pair of claws ripping and scraping at her armor but not penetrating. Not yet.
All it would take was one well-aimed hit for the spot under the top part of her chest plate, from any direction, and she'd go down.
But the claws of the feral ocelot ripping and clawing and trying to keep her down weren't penetrating her armor, and right now she wasn't dead.
Yet.
"Awww, look! If it isn't Team Trash Bag!"
The twelve-year-old froze in place from where she'd walked out of the store with her little pink pig at her side. Reuben snorted angrily at the sound of the familiar voices, but Jesse didn't turn around.
"Hi, Aiden," she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. Of course, the one day both Olivia and Axel were sick and couldn't accompany her to the store, she had to get confronted by the Ocelots.
She knew what she was going to see before she turned around, but she turned around anyway, just to confirm it.
Aiden was standing there with a broad sneer on his face, celery-green eyes that she so despised filled with a light of almost sadistic glee and mud-brown hair tousled up in that ridiculous hairstyle he was trying out. Tall Gill standing about a foot behind him, already having a shadow of a beard on his face, even though he was only 13. Petite Maya with her golden-brown hair and blue eyes that gleamed with an icy light, grinning at the much-shorter Jesse cruelly.
And blonde Lukas standing only a little ways behind the whole group, biting his lower lip in agony as he tried to stay out of the way, shooting the downright tiny girl that was being confronted by his friends an apologetic look.
"Is there something you need? I really have to get home," Jesse said, debating whether or not she could get past the Ocelots. She didn't look it, but she was very fast. And Jesse did have a tendency of stomping on an assailant's foot hard enough to distract them before tearing off.
She decided against it. Reuben wasn't nearly as fast as the black-haired girl, and besides, there were three of them against her. Even if she did manage to stomp on Aiden's foot, Gill could grab her and keep her in place. And Maya was stronger than she looked.
"Oh, yeah. See, we were wondering why that storekeeper let a loser like you pay so little for your groceries," Aiden sneered at Jesse.
'So little', Jesse's butt. She'd paid over fifty dollars for the bag of groceries that she was holding, and Aiden full well knew it. And Jesse knew that he knew it. But she struggled to remain calm.
She failed dismally.
"Maybe because I actually paid. You should try it sometime," Jesse said, letting her mouth run twelve miles ahead of her brain, as usual.
Aiden's face turned bright red, but before he could jump on her, she took the opportunity and scooped Reuben into her arms, the little pig snuffling as she did so, before darting past the group of bullies and running homewards. On the way past, she shoved Lukas to one side by accident, but didn't try to stop and apologize.
Jesse froze, eyes wide, one hand still flung out to the side from where she'd literally shoved Lukas out of the way. The blonde was too shocked to get mad at her about it.
In-between the chink between the top part of the chestplate, and the more flexible bottom part that still hadn't been connected (honestly, they should've worked on that before coming on this mission, now that Jesse thought about it), was a single, long arrow with a gray shaft.
This arrow was embedded right in Jesse's side.
Jesse slowly looked down, feeling every heartbeat pound in her ears like someone was beating on a bass drum. Only moments before, she'd just thought that everything was so loud and fast, a flash of light still moving out of the corner of her eye as she bolted at Lukas, the blonde shooting a hailstorm of arrows on the hordes of enemies surrounding them.
But now it was just so quiet. And so slow. It was as though she'd somehow fallen into a pool of water. Everything was muffled and gradual and moving at a glacial, near-silent pace. Honestly, it was almost a little boring.
Her teal armor was starting to turn green in front of her very eyes. Maybe it was the lighting.
Jesse stared at the store window display.
Colored contacts.
The store sold colored contacts.
Jesse wasn't interested in the contacts because her eyes were bad or anything like that. Actually, her eyesight was fine.
No, she was mostly just interested in them so she could go out in public without having to wear sunglasses everywhere.
She stared through the window for several, long moments, debating whether or not she still had enough money from the odd jobs she'd been doing in the back rooms of stores, restaurants, clinics, to get even just one pair of these contacts. She'd spent some of her money on some food to feed a little baby pig that had been about to get killed by some wolves (Reuben wiggled in her backpack, as if trying to remind her that he was still there), but she did still have some money saved up.
Her mind was made up the moment her eyes locked on a pair of plain, green contacts that seemed to glow a bit in the sunlight, and appeared like she wouldn't have to pay through her nose to get it.
She'd always liked the color green.
She walked into the store.
Jesse liked mining. It was definitely a distraction from having someone trying to kill you every other day of your life.
Well, I mean, if you ignored the monsters that spawned in caves.
Especially the ones that had eight legs and a hairy body and glowing red eyes.
It should probably be mentioned that Jesse was arachnophobic.
"Ew ew ew ew it's a cave spider-!" Jesse recoiled and brought her sword down sharply on a cave spider as it got a bit too close to her.
Petra spotted the girl doing so and turned around to shout at her a moment too late, pickaxe in hand. "Wait, Jesse, don't-!"
Too late. The moment the iron sword Jesse was wielding pushed down hard enough, the slightly-smaller-than-a-normal-spider cave spider literally exploded in a burst of green blood, sending the sludgy, rather puke-like green substance splattering everywhere.
Jesse's eyes were closed from trying to kill it without looking at it too long, so she just got some on her face and her shirt. Petra was unfortunate enough to be standing close enough that she was also in the splash zone.
Equally unfortunately, she'd just opened her mouth to shout at Jesse, so she got a rather large mouthful of the green blood, which she immediately spat out, spewing and spitting to get the green blood off of her tongue and out of her mouth.
Jesse's green eyes eked open sheepishly as she gave the now-glaring Petra a sheepish grin. "Uh… hehe… whoops."
Petra muttered several choice selections of places Jesse could stick her sword- which the black-haired girl ignored, knowing that Petra was just annoyed about getting cave spider blood in her mouth.
Jesse was back with the ocelot, its heavy, crushing blows that it laid upon her with its claws nearly smashing through her armor. She gritted her teeth and drew her arm back with the limited amount of space she had, elbow grazing the ground.
Then she struck, driving the sword straight up into the throat of the feral, wild cat, sending a spray of something hot and sticky onto her face and into her mouth.
The ocelot's bloodshot, glowing red eyes were still fixated on her, teeth still bared as its snarl was cut off, a strange gurgle replacing it.
Then Jesse flicked it out, the sword ripping out of its place and letting the wildcat thud onto her, warm body and fur oozing something hot and red and sticky all over her, into her mouth, over her armor..
Shoving the ocelot off of her, Jesse spit desperately, trying to get the taste of blood out of her mouth as she pawed at the massive claw marks the cat had managed to get into her armor. It was a good thing that this was stronger than-
She heard the hiss before she saw the spider, and her head snapped up as she staggered to her feet, lunging out with the sword before she could think.
The sword impaled the spider with a satisfying thunk!
There was a long, frozen moment that seemed to last an hour but probably was only about half a second as Jesse surveyed the way the glowing red eyes slowly dulled, before she jerked the sword out and turned away from the scene, lightly balancing on the balls of her feet, ready for the next monster that tried to attack her.
The seven-year-old watched herself in the mirror.
Watched the way her red eyes blinked the mirror when she blinked. Her black hair hid most of her face, and if she combed it a certain way, she could get a wave of hair to fall right in front of her eyes, disguising the odd pigment of her irises.
Oh, not that it wasn't irritating. She had to basically peer through a curtain of her hair to see anything, not to mention that it kept prickling her eyes.
But it was better than being thought a monster for simply being different.
Another fist battered Jesse's side, before it was a rock- no, or was that a foot…? No…
A few long minutes passed before the dazed Jesse realized she was no longer being beaten- or hit- or kicked, and she opened her eyes again.
There was no one there. No one except a tiny, battered little girl who'd lost all sense of reality in those few moments of falling.
There was a flash of light somewhere in there too. Jesse couldn't remember what it was for a moment- was it the sun? Had the sun started rising?
No, the flash of light had been cold and steely, and extremely quick. Besides, the moon was still up right now, and the flash of light had happened only a few seconds or so ago.
Was it the Command Block-?
- no, it couldn't be, because Jesse had smashed that to pieces months ago, and it was only a whitish-blue flash of light, not green and red and purple and a few flickers of gold.
It took a few, muddled seconds for Jesse to realize the truth of the matter.
The flash of light had, in fact, come from a sword- Jesse's sword- spinning hilt over blade at a monster that was lurching towards Petra.
Now what idiot would throw their sword away in the middle of a heated battle?
Oh. That's right.
Jesse would. It was her sword, after all.
And she remembered why she threw it now, too. It was a bit of a vague memory- but she remembered it.
Too much of her life was starting to become indistinct, blurry blobs in her head. Green contacts and green blood and golden hairpins and golden sunlight and red t-shirts and red eyes and red blood all blurred together to make a very bleary work of art. Perhaps a traffic light painted by Picasso.
Jesse had never really liked Picasso.
"Jesse!"
The black-haired girl whirled around on the spot to see Petra's sword snap in half, sending metal clattering to the floor as the redhead staggered away from a zombie that was insistently pawing at her, desperate for her brains.
"Jesse!"
She spun around again to see Lukas's bow snap in his hands as an arrow pierced the wood. After hitting the wood, it lost much of its speed and velocity, and so bounced harmlessly off of his armor.
But then, there was the problem of being totally unarmed in a crowd of monsters that rather wished to kill them all.
Oh, and then there was the problem of Jesse having to make a choice.
She remembered other choices she had to make before, although they were quickly becoming part of the picture by Picasso in her head.
A man and Petra- or was it Petra? It certainly looked like her, with the red hair and the blue bandana- were rising into the air, suspended by a beam of indigo light that poured through a break in the obsidian ceiling.
A boy in green- no, that was Axel, wasn't it? He was her friend- and Lukas, illuminated by firelight in a dirt hut, shouting at each other with words that Jesse found too difficult to remember and too annoying to try to drag back up again.
A woman who looked rather like Jesse, but in a gold robe and black dress dangled from an edge, fingers tight on the stone edge, while Lukas was shoving and fighting someone with dark brown hair and celery-green eyes- no, that was Aiden. She remembered Aiden. But why were they fighting? Weren't Lukas and Aiden friends?- Aiden while Jesse looked between the two. The sky was a darkening blue color, the underside of it lit with a strange, rosy glow.
A man with black hair and deep blue eyes leaping out of the way of arrows, slipping and sliding in the snow as he frantically avoided the arrows, and Petra trapped on a small ledge of snow and being approached on all sides by people wearing brightly colored outfits. Red, green, yellow- no, that was someone's hair…
Lukas and Petra, stalking towards her through pouring waterfalls over a body of stained glass, eyes glowing red as they stepped deliberately towards her. Mechanically. Faces completely blank of any emotion.
And Jesse knew that she couldn't choose.
Not this time.
A flash of light from Jesse's sword as she flicked it at Petra's monster. She didn't even wait to see if it impaled the zombie before tearing recklessly towards Lukas, tripping on a section of dirt as she did but coming right back up as a skeleton raised its bow- it fired at the blonde-
Jesse shoved the blonde out of the way of the arrow, knocking him onto his back recklessly. Before she could duck out of the way herself, a blinding core of pain erupted in her side.
She looked down to see the arrow stuck in her side.
The first thing she really felt was annoyance. Seriously? She'd just gotten a battering from a giant ocelot (well, giant compared to most ocelots), and a single arrow was what got past this armor?
Then she was distracted as the dormant core of pain flared to life, spreading a wave of pain through her body as Jesse staggered, incredibly off-balance from the hit.
The White Pumpkin had finally gotten her, with one of their poison-tipped arrows. No, wait, she'd trapped the murderer in their own traps ages back, and the arrow that had sunk in her side hadn't looked green at all. She was pretty sure she was just getting muddled up again.
Lukas was gaping at Jesse soundlessly, blue eyes wide. They reflected the stars nicely. How had Jesse not noticed that before?
One heel staggered into thin air.
A split second later, Petra spotted the dilemma. The redhead froze, eyes widening, stunned into silence even as her sword tore straight through a creeper, cutting off the flashing white signal as it was sent flying backwards.
How many mobs would they have to fight off until they could get safely over the bridge to Endercon? Or, no… Endercon was years ago… no, months… no…
Someone was running over to the edge where Jesse was still teetering, time momentarily frozen. It was Aiden, leering at her with celery-green eyes and his arm held out from where he'd just shoved her. No, wait- it had just changed to Lukas, his hand extended to grab ahold of Jesse's hand.
His hand just missed hers.
And so that's how Jesse found herself falling endlessly towards the earth, the cliff edge rapidly shrinking from sight.
"JESSE!"
She just watched the darkening sky, that core of pain still flaring- ouch. It just sent out another wave of pain. That hurt.
"You didn't… take it… right?"
Petra was staring at Jesse with hard gold eyes, her desperate expression almost screaming at Jesse to tell the redhead that she hadn't agreed to the deal, hadn't just basically made a deal to become a slave for the rest of her life, hadn't been so stupid to take such an obviously one-sided offer.
Instead, the black-haired girl reached up and rubbed the back of her head, dropping her gaze to the snow-covered ground, trying to avoid looking up to see the utterly horrified looks she knew were on her friends' faces.
"No!" Petra's voice sounded in the eerily quiet, before the redhead stomped towards her, and Jesse found herself being confronted with a now-nearly-hysterical redhead. "Why would you do that?!" she demanded.
The memory was blurry and out-of-focus now, almost like a vintage movie, but that segment of Jesse's fading life kept pushing on, as if it was determined to go on until the very end.
"Oh my… oh my, oh my," another woman murmured, looking almost horrified (or was it horror that Jesse was seeing? It was fading out of sight too much for her to really tell).
"If I was there, none of this would've happened!" Petra fumed, pacing the area around Jesse so insistently that her feet seemed to be wearing holes in the brick pathway.
"Petra, c'mon," Lukas said, frowning at the redhead, "I'm sure Jesse feels bad as it is."
Well, he wasn't wrong…
The redhead threw her hands into the air, looking incensed and helpless all at the same time, "But why would you-"
"I did it to save all of you!" Jesse abruptly nearly exploded. Her friends all jerked back a bit at the sudden shout, and several of the other people in the vicinity (were they in teams? Some of them were wearing the same colors as the others) had looked around at the group in alarm.
I did it to save all of you.
Jesse felt a weak smile curl her lips up at the end, the sky above her darkening more and more as those words resonated through her ears, through her chest, through her entire being. She could almost imagine that one sentence causing a reaction in every atom of her body, except for the fact that her brain was far too muddled to do anything more than glacially process each thought that her brain pulled to the surface.
This would probably be the last time she'd ever smile. The last time she'd do anything anymore.
But her friends were safe.
And that was all that mattered to her anymore.
One last bubble of air left her mouth in an inaudible sigh and floated far away, disappearing into the endless night sky that was ever-darkening above her.
And then nothing.
A/N: Guess who wrote a fanfiction oneshot for their English project?
We had to write a non-linear narrative (if you don't know what that is, check out Slaughterhouse-5 or Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and you'll see what I mean by 'non-linear'), and I was like, 'hey, if I'm going to write a creative story, why not use characters I really like?'
So yeah. You guys end up with this non-linear oneshot. xD Hope you like.
x.X. A.L. X.x