SMG4:// Exodus

Part 10: Ex Caelum

Ch 1: Opera Sanguinis

I raise my head out of the basin and feel ice cold water drip slowly out of my hair, taking a small hand towel off of the table and pressing it to my hair. The steel of the ANIMIKII graze my cheeks as I pick strands of wet hair out of my eyes. I open them and stare at my reflection. Under my eye is a small metal implant that sort of crescents around my eyelid. Two bottles of hair dye sit half-used on the corner of the basin near the mirror. My once-all-blue hair is now white with blue colored tips. Although I dye my hair fairly often, this is the first time I've changed the color. Meggy, Melony, and Saiko all have naturally odd-colored hair, so I'm the only one of the four of them that dyes. I probably should have gone completely bald with how often I do it, but it's sort of been a secret hobby of mine. Besides, It's not like I'll be able to dye my hair again once I'm dead. I shake my head rapidly to dry off the rest.

I leave the Castle Bathroom and put on a new hoodie. It's a black and gray nylon hoodie I'd had for a long time but never really liked. Now that my blue hoodie and sandals are all but destroyed, all I have now is this and a pair of white running shoes. The still-unhealed gash in my foot from the broken glass grazes the top of the shoe and I nearly shout in pain trying to put them on. The surge startles me and I reflexively kick the shoe off. I never suspected the ANIMIKII would bite this hard, even as desensitized to pain as I was. I bite down and wrangle the shoe onto my foot. I'd have to bear it.

"G'morning Tari," Luigi mutters behind me. He sits down on the atrium stairs next to me, ponderingly.

"Hey Luigi."

"I like what you did with your hair."

"Thanks."

Luigi nods.

"How's Mario?" I ask.

"Bored to tears. Boopkins, Bob and I have all completely run out of ways to keep him distracted. Only so much you can do in a 5 layer vault."

I smirk, Luigi doesn't match my expression.

"He asks about you a lot." Luigi says solemnly, "I mean, everybody in here wants to go out there and fight alongside you. I know I said it before, but, the last thing I would ever want is for any one of my friends to think that they're facing something alone."

"Tari," Luigi says, defensively, "I bet that even in outer space, SMG4 and Meggy... I bet they're all still cheering you on. Don't ever doubt that."

I don't respond. I don't know how. Maybe I really have gone mad from all that's happened – so drunk from pain that I can't comprehend how it feels without a dull ache permanently attached to me. These past few months have so whittled away at me so much that I had forgotten that people like Luigi, like Lorie and Waluigi care. In a moment, I finally manage to say some message that had been scrambled around in my head for forever.

"Luigi," I manage, "I don't want to die."

Luigi leans on my shoulder sympathetically. I don't cry. I'm not so afraid of it anymore.

"Tari," Luigi asks, "What did you see that night? When... you thought you were, um... dead."

It was a hard question to ask, Luigi cringed at himself asking it. But it was even harder to answer. People tell you all the time that you meet God or see your family or watch you life flash before your eyes. I didn't see any of that.

"I saw me."

Luigi raises his head, "Really, was it, like, an out-of-body experience?"

"No," I continue, "It was just me, just Tari. There was no one else there."

In that void, nobody called out my name. No spirit told me some sort of divine truth about the universe. No friend was there to shed a tear. All I saw was me, surrounded by an endless oblivion so thick it looked to be crushing her. But, she was looking up, as though accepting the void. No. She wasn't accepting it, not submitting to it, not letting it take her away. She was carrying the nothingness, supporting the whole vacuum like a million-ton weight. That version of me in front of me looked so vivid. I looked so strong, like a demigod.