This Is Your Captain Crashing

It Hurts

Izzy gasped as she pulled her face out of the snow, taking heavy breaths as she took in what just happened. Her mind was a mess, shattered as she thought over everything. And as it slowly formed piece by piece in her head, she crashed. She crashed so hard as it all finally hit her.

"MERIDA!!!" Izzy wailed. She shot to her feet and looked around the snowy landscape, before looking up at the sky. High above, she could make out the distant form of the plane. "MERIDA!!!" She ran after the plane, fruitlessly chasing it.

She was stopped when her foot snagged on a rock, and she tripped and landed face first in the snow. She lifted herself up, letting out weak sobs as she looked up and reached her hand up towards the plane.

"Please Merida... I can't do this alone... I need you..."

The Psycho Hose Beast's head fell and she remained there, quiet sobs racking her whole body with pain. Tears streamed down her face, the freezing air of the frozen Swedish north making it hurt her face. She felt so lost, so broken, so alone. This wasn't how things were supposed to go.

"Why..." She said to herself. "WHY DO YOU KEEP SAYING THIS SHIT?! WHY TARGET ME?! WHAT DID I FUCKING DO?!"

"You existed..." An echoey voice responded before things fell silent. Only the noises of the water dreading and splashing against the bank were there to fill the void.

Izzy was silent, that last proclamation bringing her to a standstill. It didn't affect her like the ones before, no, but it made something in her snap. It had finally got to her, and she felt, without a doubt... Hollow. Just hollow. Her spark had finally been snuffed out.

And it felt like she died at that moment.

With no feeling across her body, the Psycho Hose Beast stood up and smiled. The same twisted smile her reflection would give her. It was an uncanny smile that didn't seem sincere at all, but did show some sort of mental instability. How bad and of what kind, it was impossible to tell. The lack of life in her eyes made her completely unreadable.

She stood in the middle of the frozen fjords, completely motionless as the freezing winds blew over her body. There was no sound until a few moments later when the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.

"Izzy?" A man's voice said. "I'm from the Aftermath studio. There's a plane waiting nearby to take us to the resort everyone is staying at." He cocked his eyebrow at the lack of a response. "Izzy? Are you okay?"

Almost robotically, Izzy turned around suddenly and faced the intern. The man looked fearful at her uncanny smile, but then calmed down and gave her a stoic look.

"Good, follow me." The man started walking away, and Izzy followed behind. Her stare was vacant, her heart was beating in her ears, and her breathing was much too shallow. The man thought she was in the process of freezing to death.

"You know... I was really rooting for you", the intern said sheepishly. "Everything you did... It was impressive. I was really hoping you'd beat Alejandro, because boy that kid sucks." The intern looked at Izzy with a smile, but frowned when she didn't respond. "Yeah, you've got stuff going on... I'll leave you be."

The two fell into an eerie silence as they walked towards a small passenger plane. Izzy, normally, would question how a small plane like that made it this far. But now she didn't care. Nothing mattered. It was all par for the course. It was just clockwork.