Earworm

[Sorry for the delay; I'd say real life stuff, but I won't lie, it's actually just that I'm mostly mentally finished with this year. Not too much longer to go.]

At the end of Ike's concert, he still had time to talk to his fans, though he was in a disturbed mood as of late. He had felt guilt for his Revenant's unintentional murder of the girl and his intentional murder of her mother, yet worse was the reaction these students had to the lyrics of his music; he had felt he had crafted something meaningful yet had been mocked for it. Although he could sublimate such frustration through humor, they seemed still to bubble from necessity at the surface of his being; so it was required for him to retreat further into his own sort of constructed irreality that his fans had cleaved for himself.

He began with them: "Without all of you, I would be a homeless man looking out over a sewer grate."

"Let's talk about those fans, Ike." Iris came out from the curtain with Eva amplifying her voice; thirty feet separated them from Ike. "You've been sleeping around with a few of them, haven't you? I slept with the mother of one just a few days ago."

He nervously laughed. "It l-looks like it's open-mic night."

"When I awoke the morning after, an interesting scene was afore my eyes; the bedroom door was opened, and I followed a tiny slice of light that traveled through the living room and ended at her corpse at the front door. I searched around and her phone was destroyed."

"Is this- is this some kind of joke? S-Some kind of, uh, avant garde standup?"

"I peered back through time and I saw she had a daughter that she never told me about; a daughter that she offered up like a toy to you for the proximity of fame that you cynically returned. See, I could go on about how I know all of this, but the truth of the matter is that you abused your fame how many men in your position have; even at your sickest and most depraved you could not be original. You repeatedly raped a fourteen year-old girl and several others, and just when she was about to grow wise to you, she came to visit you for a night she hadn't realized would be her last. After you raped her again, you murdered her, and you knew that her mother would expect her home eventually; so you visited her, and without realizing I was still laying asleep in her bed, you murdered her and left before I realized what had occurred.

I can't praise you for your intelligence or foresight, Ike; any moron with a Revenant could've done what you did, and indeed, that is just what occurred. Now, I wonder what use a man with a Revenant had for security, and I realized; it wasn't to protect yourself but your image. You knew that if a gust of acid hit you and you didn't scream, then that fame would shrivel and you would wither out the rest of your years in a small cell with iron bars. Deception no different than how you've already lived out much of your life; you have ulterior motives in all that you do, and your timidity is an image you project outward over that hidden arrogance; every single thing you do on stage is therapeutic, and the only trait you've ever been blessed with is being born in a country ignorant enough to celebrate your vapidity instead of damning it."

"This i-is not a very funny joke, not at-"

"KAIROS!"

Iris swept her hand out and Ike flinched at an unnatural rate, but her hand moved over the crowd and a bubble of clouds formed over them, a gentle wind carrying each away to give them the opportunity to leave with Olivia & Violet. Still some would stay to watch: she couldn't help those who wouldn't help themselves.

"You t-think you're the only one who can monologue?" said Ike, backing away. "Because I- because I've got a few accusations to make of you, too! You wanna talk a-about justice and a-all these deep i-ideals, b-but you know, you'd rather have people praising y-you over doing anything worth praising! That's why y-you've got all this stuff cooked up about-"

- a superheated wind shot at him and an unseen force pulled him away from range; the stage split open and furthered the distance between them, Kairos' strand threading through it in preparation to mend it again.

"S-So that's how you wanna do it? You don't even want to-" He sneezed, then sneezed. "Okay, well, now, I-I'm not a fighter, but if you think t-that-" He sneezed again, then again. "…a-anyone got a tissue?"

"Why aren't we just attacking him again?" whispered Eva.

"Humor, mostly." whispered Iris back. "Time for the main event."

She recalled the initial attack Eva and her had planned with Maestro.

[MAESTRO: An enormous double-necked guitar with the ability to 'amplify'/'de-amplify'; to remove a property of an object (de-strum) and place it into another (strum).]

The stage lights were above and Kairos shifted them in Ike's direction; Eva destrummed the light from it and filtered it through Maestro as she strummed it back into a hyper-blinding light -

- but the light was snuffed before it reached Ike; she destrummed and strummed again, yet an unseen force had stolen the light away; Iris felt a host aura extended into the stageihhts as another unseen force pulled Ike away and off the stage, rushing away with the long stairs to the eastern exit ahead of him. Iris & Eva rushed in pursuit, yet the stage collapsed like a sheet of glass; Iris's typical nimbus kept them afloat, and in the next instant -

- an enormous worm with a gaping maw shot up from below and wrapped tightly around their legs, halting their advance as its body tightened; Iris tried to slam her fists down but an unseen force slammed her hard into Eva, more worms erupting from below, their mutual grips tightening as their maws gaped up at the two -

" - Maestro!" shouted Eva; Iris noticed the host aura had left the lights above and angled them to their orientation as Eva destrummed & strummed -

- and the superheated ray of light sliced them free as Iris launched herself & Eva ahead, midair and nearly off the stage when another unseen force attempted to pull them back into its orbit; a cushion of pressure halted their backward movement, yet the gravity of this orbit had halted their forward, another worm with maw open awaiting on the stage.

Iris heard several screams and felt bad for laughing when she turned to see what civilians had stayed caught in this orbit, a mass of circling & writhing limbs slamming into skulls & stomachs. She surmised that the orbit was not directed solely again, yet as she tried to launch themselves forward once more, could not; Ike was climbing up the stairs to the east exit ahead.

"Here, c-copy this." said Iris; she cooled a canister of lava into a canister of obsidian, hollowing it out and hyper-pressurizing the atoms within; Eva nodded as she destrummed & strummed it into the first step below & ahead -

- and the combined pull of Iris's wind & Maestro's filtrated pressure broke them out of orbit, landing at the bottom with Ike 30 steps above. He had just reached the eastern wall as another push of wind launched Iris & Eva up to his level, and he turned in fear as he placed his hand against the wall; another worm burst out from it and he passed through the wall like there was nothing there.

Catching up quick, Iris hit the wall with a jet of lava as the worm retreated, yet still the wall stood; Eva destrummed a window in the roof and strummed it into the walls, then realized a moment later: "- oh shit I forgot-"

- the entire wall of the stadium collapsed and left all 3 combatants falling 50ft into the parking lot outside, Eva & Iris hitting the ground first as Ike slammed into it 50ft ahead, a single car launching towards them that Eva strummed the air's weight into and floated away.

"A single car?" muttered Eva. "What, does he think we're weak?"

"No, but I just realized something." grunted Iris, reverting the microphone into her hand as they rushed after Ike 50ft away. "Hey, since we're actually trying to murder you, you mind paying us the same respect, you dumb lily-livered shit-"

- a swarm of worms burst up around them and answered with bites at their hands & fingers, and a swarm of orbital force followed, a swarm of cars whirlpooling around them as Iris felt many rapid attempts to intrude into her host aura, Eva laughing beside: "-y-you got an answer-"

- and Iris replied with a shout of Kairos that reverted the asphalt below into tar, ladles of wind feeding the globs into the hungry worms around and clogging their maws; Eva told Iris to launch the swarming vehicles back at Ike, and a fist of wind did so as Eva destrummed & strummed, then destrummed & strummed oncs more as Ike turned -

- and a mountain of fire enveloped him with such swiftness that Iris was forced to pull herself & Eva away, two sadistic butches laughing as they heard his screams of agony within, a frantically stuttered: "EARWORM! EARWORM! EARWORM!"

"Strummed the gasoline's flammability onto the entire car." laughed Eva. "No fun without a little tension-"

- a worm burst out of the ground behind and shot for Iris, yet she dodged & slammed her grip around its no-neck, pummelling away at it with the other; yet her physical strength rapidly fluctuated, a repeated intrusion scraping at her host aura; at her side, Eva was relaying that Ike had doused himself with water from a storm drain but was heavily burnt; Iris's barrage of the worm was that of a woman in a nightmare, and she was forced to dispatch it with a bolt of green lightning as an enormous sound tamped her senses, a disorienting muse that slowed her & Eva's reactions.

A swarm of worms came upon them with their maws agape, attempting to rip and tear; Iris coated herself & Eva in green lightning that retreated them temporarily, but their backup brothers were erupting and an orbital pull began strengthening. Cooling another hyper-pressurized canister of obsidian, Iris tried to show it to Eva; yet Eva's fingers were stuck together and she was forced to desummon Maestro before it slammed herself in the face, her body slamming against Iris's a moment later as the worms seemed drawn into Iris's gravity.

She realized now that her momentary disorientation had allowed a breach into her host aura and that she was the center of this, but the next scene was instant.

"Kairos: Blizzard!"

She crouched down and a whirlpool of hail & slicing ice concentrated around herself, expanding & slicing outwards as it shredded through every worm in gory rank, their own blood freezing and forming the next swirl of hail that sliced apart their brothers, until amidst that field of death was Ike revealed 30ft away; Iris got to her feet again as she shouted for Kairos again and a green bolt of electricity shot out towards him, yet water from a storm drain behind him peeled and formed a line between them & he; she was about to revert her own bolt when -

- Eva de-strummed something that Iris realized a moment later was a piece of shattered car metal, then strummed & destrummed rapidly; her fingers twiddled at unnatural pace on Maestro's strings as she riffed a horrendously dissonant solo, the green lightning chasing around Ike like a laser pointer to a cat, constant magnetism as he struggled to keep his tidal defense properly aligned; it curled underneath his legs and shot for a vulnerable spot -

- but a far larger worm took the blow, and a hyper-blinding light burst from its dying maw; Iris's sight was instantly snuffed and the next she heard was Eva shouting to pull back; she launched herself & Eva back 50ft, a rapid destrum & strum countering what next attack had come as she let Eva pull her away, soon feeling the texture of the venue's steps below their rushing feet.

"Blinded." groaned Iris. "Always me."

"-I'm not- sorry could only protect myself and does your spider have- fuck it- Maestro!" shouted Eva as she de-strummed and Iris felt an intrusion she allowed; in the next strum, a million images and not-images appeared in Iris's sight: she realized what Eva had done, yet the surfeit of perspective distanced her from rational orientation for a moment as she heard another solo from Eva.

Iris heard Eva's shout: "Did that work?!"

There was no filtration to every slip of reality Iris now saw, impermanence adrift, prior states that sought refinement into the real, the lips of past moment that offered to be remade. She could choose the manifestation of each atom through the imposition of her observation: to partition it from the rest of its selves with no ability to rutsch against her objective grip. Within that cleave of oblivion was there the possibility for her to reach and rescue these ever-shifting states, to revivify then and make them things that could move again. The perceptions of infinite dimensions unfurled to her and made possible the ability for her to draw out of its maturities the origins of its forebears.

At the twiddle of her million-eyed sight the midnight wheel of an epoch moved, until the texture of her sight settled and she reached out for the invisible outline beside her. She touched Eva's neck, then carefully moved to lock her right arm with Eva's. "Eva, it worked, but I can't see humans or anything I can't normally manipulate."

"Fuck. Okay, just-"

Iris saw behind herself an invisible flicker of the world directed at Eva's eyes, which did not work, then once more; she was repeatedly strumming her own sight back into herself. No longer did Iris need to turn to glance; the glare of the world was contained in her gaze. Every thawed manifestation of each object was in her perception, including the light that was now gone. By observation alone had she changed the state of the air, yet as she peered at how they had recently become what they were, did she notice a significant change in one particularly property: "Resonance -- the worms, it's resonance-"

"-fuck-"

"-they're singing at particular resonances, but - hard for me to get a specific -"

- a swarm of invisible outlines erupted ahead of them, but Iris felt Eva's ear receive their song and her mouth returned it at the same frequency, countering each other out; what invisible outlines did not wither Iris grabbed and verified by rough of touch it was not human before twisting them out in bloodied husks from the ground, then felt Eva pull her up to continue their run-

"-stop?" said Iris as she stood, and Eva nodded as she turned herself, then muttered that Ike was about 70ft ahead.

"They're p-pretty fucking quiet." said Eva in a low voice, Maestro constantly fluctuating her frequency. "Can you make everything silent except the worms?"

Iris's observation leveled all sound from the area; no new noise would be born but by human or Revenant. She reverted the microphone from her prior host aura into her hand and threw it to Eva, who sang silently into it; she launched herself tentatively at Ike, then once more as Eva's song dispelled their resonance; he tried to pull himself away yet his song was nullified once more, and as Iris launched herself she overshot and took him by his neck along with her, slamming him into the ground and stomping at him until his pieces separated in her barrage and she saw his host aura removed from her million-eyed sight.

"You got him!" she saw Eva shout, then saw her host aura make invisible the air moving towards her. She tapped Iris, then wrapped her arm sensually enough around her that Iris sensed she was making a joke of it: whether Eva truly wanted her carnally was naturally something she never clarified. "They could project a theater on that big back of your's. Want me to keep you like that so you can date ugly women?"

Iris mentally shat and returned Kairos' sight to the spider, her own still blinded. "I'm good."

Eva smirked and read this out for Iris as she scanned:

[EARWORM: Enormous underground worms that control resonance.]

===

It seemed a fortunate fact for Violet that not only was Ike dead and his crimes known, but that his relative obscurity ensured that none would associate him with Violet but for her protege having helped kill him. Facts and events felt outside of Violet; the ever-working fingers of time seemed more to her the interstices of others' perception, and through these she had always slid herself and rearranged as needed.

She was occasionally dissociated from her thoughts, as if she needed to track where they were relative to her physical existence. She had reasoned out that her legacy and self was what existed in the perception of others: she was the sum of others' believed her to be, so she should be careful of her believed self.

She recalled a pair of young twin brothers she had once known, who were two of five children of a family that neighbored her own. She was often asked to babysit them, at least until she could claim that her Revenant predisposed her to such violence that she needed to be kept away from children. A typical repartee with them was such:

Violet: So what are you watching?

Twin #1: SpongeBob.

Twin #2: No, that's over. This is Adventure Time.

Violet: Oh, I love that show. Which character is your favorite? I just love Marci and Princess Bubblegum together.

Twin #1: The Ice King.

Violet: Why?

Twin #1: 'Cause he's fat.

Violet: That's all?

Twin #1: Mmhm.

Violet: No other reason?

Twin #1: Nope.

Twin #2: I like when he goes 'ho ho ho'.

Violet: When does he do that?

Twin #2: The Christmas episode.

Twin #1: He doesn't do that. You made that up.

Twin #2: Nuh-uh.

Twin #1: Yeah.

Twin #2: Ok.

There was something enervating to hanging around these twins, and so she did not do it often. There was nothing interesting to them yet that they had been varnished through Violet. They seemed to her extensions of their mindless mother, who similarly had no ambition but to sit on their ratty couch, watching television with gazes of ennui, and the monosyllabic replies if one were to ask them any questions.

It disturbed Violet, yet she had not understood them until she came across the term philosophical zombie years later. It was a philosophical theory that one's own mind could be the only certain thing to contain sentience, for all other people could merely be philosophical zombies possessed of no inner consciousness, only external reaction. Poke one of these zombies, and it would show pain. Tickle and it would laugh. But it lacked any inner mechanism; it reacted in a programmed and predictable sense.

As she walked into the convenience store, she was displeased that the clerk noticed her even as he was speaking to another customer. Though she was not much for superstition, she believed there was a scientific explanation for why she could feel his eyes crawl upon her badge and place her as a student. She grabbed bags of chips and soda, then went to the counter to pay.

She heard a car outside suddenly brake, then a woman's yell, scolding her child, and his shrieks as he was repeatedly struck by her closed hand. She looked to the clerk. He had not noticed, so neither would she.

[END OF ARC: ZERO STAR REVIEW]