#I'm a committed straight edge but even I too am off celebrating ~something~ on the titular Weed Day 😅

[cypric-rat-hyperfixation]

My baby boy would be 11 years old today.

[forkanna]

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"Whew! Holy cats, I thought I'd never get through that Rubik's Cube…"

My hand came up to push into my face. Not that it really mattered; I could barely feel it. "At least I could kinda help with that one. The other two gates were… yeah, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Kniv-"

"Enough," Knives panted as she wiped the sweat from her brow on her striped scarf. It was pretty weird that she was wearing it in the middle of summer, but I had a feeling it was kind of part of her 'battle outfit' or something. "Didn't I… tell you that I'm… doing this for both of us? Not just you?"

"But watching you stare into the mirror… man, I thought you were gonna turn into that other reflection of you with all the purple buffalo in the background…"

The sweet smile made my pulse race. Somewhere. Not in the body I was in within my body, but the body outside of my… body… this is really annoying to explain, as I have just realised while trying to do so. Point is, seeing her smile makes me smile, too. "Anything for you, Kim Pine. Serious and mysterious."

"Alright, alright. Just try not to get killed or then I'll be really hacked off."

The thing I still couldn't figure out was how I guessed all of this so accurately. Probably something subliminal about it; there's no way it was a coincidence. But everything, the three gates, the rhino and warthog, the high-walled chambers we had to fight our way through, came to pass exactly as I snarked in a would-be joking tone. If I made it a reality by saying it… man did I fuck myself royally.

At this point, Knives and I were at the top of a ledge that ran the entire circumference of a round room, closer to the ceiling. It was over a dozen meters to the ground, and another three or four up to the ceiling from where the walkway was positioned. Once she flipped down into that pit, it would be her against the sixteen-eyed monster that stood between us and the final chamber. Maybe we would luck out and it wouldn't really have a laser cannon in its chest, but after everything I'd seen, that felt like a pretty horrible bet to take.

"We don't even know that getting past this thing will be worth the effort," I whispered. "What are we going to find in the sub-chamber? How is it gonna help me at all?"

"Dunno. Just… okay, should I use the save point? Because the room already locked behind us, and if I need some kind of item that we didn't find on our way here…"

"Right, I know. Like, do we really wanna have to go through the gates all over again if we don't use it?"

"Yeah." Glancing back at the closed-and-shut door, then over at the spinning, glowing book that floated above a magic circle on the floor, she flashed me a huge shrug. "I think I can take him, but like, you're right; do we lock down how far we've come, or give ourselves a way to double back for power-ups?"

Facepalming, which didn't do much since I could see through my hand, I sighed, "Whatever. Just please be careful?"

"Okay. Here goes nothing…"

Knives walked over and touched the save point. Now we were committed. Once the glow faded from her skin, she gave me a thumb's up before leaping down to land in front of the beast.

Watching her at work is like watching Russian ballet, only with green blood spraying everywhere. Darting back and forth, hiding behind pillars to dodge the worst of its needle attacks, and then hopping out to slice it up as much as she could. It smacked her around a few times, but she was doing some pretty decent damage… until it got her with the laser cannon. Then she was fried to ash, and there as nothing I could do…

But wait for her to respawn at the save point. I was a ghost; I didn't affect anything, other than to talk to her and give her ideas.

"Whoa, did… that really happen just now?"

"Man, I'm glad that worked," I told her, feeling like years had been shaved off my afterlife. "I… oh Knives…"

That definitely didn't sound like me, and she noticed, turning back from where she had been approaching the edge of the catwalk. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah. Just… just not ready to see you get hurt. Even if you pop right back in, that was still…"

"But you saw me get beaten up by Gideon before, right? So what's the difference?"

I scoffed. "Didn't have much of a personal investment in you then. And that was scary, too."

"He wasn't a real threat."

"He seemed to beat up Scott pretty thoroughly!"

"Yeah." Her smile was pretty confident, yet somehow still adorable, like she was about to break out into the world's cutest maniacal laughter. "But he's got nothing on me. Be right back."

And she was. I could tell it was almost done for, but then it did a stomp move that knocked her onto her butt. The next stomp squished her flat. But she popped back in thanks to our handy checkpoint and jumped straight back down there again. And again. And again. Eventually, I had to stop watching the moment she bit it or I would have been screaming and sobbing, despite having no physical tears to shed. But each time, she got a little better.

"Dude, give it up. Maybe they can figure out a way to pull you out of here from this save point. Do you have a Wing Bottle, maybe?"

"No… way!" she panted, leaning back against the wall as she caught her breath. Apparently, even though the save point respawned her, it wasn't respawning her stamina entirely. She still needed a break before trying again. "I got this! And… I'm not giving up on you!"

"You should! I'm not worth this! God, I know you want to win, and I think you can, but watching you die over and over is… I hate it!"

Frowning, she pushed off and came over to hug me very briefly. By which I mean she put her arms around my ghostly form and kinda held them there, giving the impression of a hug, which was close enough. "Sorry. I'd hate watching you do that, too… but we gotta win this. And I will; I think I've about got his pattern down. I just have to remember not to tuck-and-roll at that moment when I think I need to again, and I'll be good."

"Did you notice what he does before he fires off the canon? The way his top two eyes blink?"

"What? No, I didn't! Okay, that'll really help, because like, I was just waiting to see the chest open and then it's almost too late to duck…" Nodding a couple off times, she then smiled over at me. "Yeah, I'll watch for it. Thanks!"

"What 'thanks'? I'm basically helping you help me. Go on."

The final attempt was a thing of beauty to watch. Knives had that chump on the ropes the whole time, snapping at his tentacles with her blades and ducking out of their reach, away from the needles that shot out of them, and then dodging the laser cannon because of me pointing out the blinking thing. She had a pretty good dodge ratio even before that, but seeing her get out of the way every time was a lot more satisfying. Then, once he did the duck-down halfway through the fight, getting ready to slam, she sliced his stupid wings off and he got pissed the way he does, firing the laser in an up-down pattern that she had to dodge by ducking and then jumping up to grab the ledge. Didn't take much of that for her to wear him down so she could dart in and poke out the last remaining eyes. Once he was blind, all she had to do was stab the crystal on his back and he was down for good.

"YES!" she cheered, falling to her knees. "I… I did it! I did it!"

We both shouted our celebrations for a few seconds as I drifted down, wishing I could hug her. After a few minutes of that I said, "Oh man… what a jerk! If my fist wasn't invisible I would punch him."

"Now?"

"Yeah, now! He messed with my girl!"

Knives's flush took on a different meaning. "Awww, you called me your girl. I'm gonna give you so many kisses when you have a face again!"

"I… just… o-okay," I managed to stammer, ignoring her giggle as she started walking. "Wait, shouldn't you go back to the save point?"

"Nah, it's too far up to get to it without timing wall jumps for hours. And anyway, now that I have the pattern down, I can blow through that boss pretty easy if I have to again. Muscle memory, right?"

So I followed her forward into the next chamber. The innermost one, where the "real me" was supposed to be, if this was all coming true as we went. Crazy, but it was hard to argue with the proof when it was right in front of us like that.

This chamber really did look like the inside of a heart. The walls were a dark red, slick and nasty, and in the center was a cage made of stone. We took a quick look around, hoping to spot any crazy vampires or fire-breathing lizard-turtles that would want to kill Knives — and by extension, my chances of being able to move ever again — and saw nothing. So instead, we rushed to see what was in the cage.

It was me. Or at least, it was some weird version of me that I could only describe as a princess. Her hair was about half a meter longer and done in some kind of gentle wavy curls that I could never pull off in a million hours of crimping, and she was wearing a white dress that showed off the rack that I don't really have. Her upper arms weren't nearly as jacked as mine are from drumming, but they were still toned. Basically, this was what I would look like if I dieted perfectly, had my own stylist and was also on my way to a debutante ball or whatever.

"Oh!" Princess Pine gasped when she spotted Knives. "You have come for me, Prince Chau!"

"Prince?" Knives muttered with a frown.

"Yes! You are the prince and I am the princess, waiting f-"

"She's not a dude!" I shouted in my best heckling voice. What the hell was this supposed to be? I was instantly offended by her very existence.

"I'll not hear a word from you, pretender!" she said, voice somewhere between angry and frightened. "The NegaKim must be vanquished!"

For a few seconds, we just blinked at her. It was me who asked, "The what?"

"NegaKim! 'Tis you who has been in charge of my body, stealing everything I could have done for night a decade of years! A shame and a disgrace to my face!"

"Wait," Knives put in, holding up a hand. The other one was still holding a dagger; she wanted to be at least semi-prepared for a sudden attack. "What are you talking about, 'NegaKim'?"

"She is NegaKim! I am the real Kim Pine, of course! Forced into this Gorgon Maiden by nefarious means, kept prisoner by the evil twin-spirit who took over my physical form! While my prince wasted her efforts on her, when I would have been much more appreciative!" She was still talking with all that righteous fire, but saying that last part I could see her blush a lot worse than I usually did. And it looked better on her. Goddamn it, I couldn't even be the hottest version of Kim Pine, which really rankled.

Knives had a different observation. "Well, at least she's getting the pronouns right…"

"Listen, you," I growled angrily. "Fuck the hell off. It's my body, I've had it for twenty-five years, and I'm not handing it over to some… frilly, froofy cunt!"

That gave her one of those affronted faces you only see in movies set in the 1800s. After she recovered, she hissed, "You'll regret this! I don't know how, but you will, I'll…" There were tears in her eyes. This was pretty legit for a fake-ass bitch trying to steal my spot in life. Her fists were trying to rattle the bars of her little cage as she shouted, "I'm going to get out of here, I swear it!"

"Okay, okay," Knives hissed, raising her hand again to encourage her to calm down. "What if we get you out, and you can go away somewhere else? Isn't that a good, like… compromise? OH! What if we got a robot-Kim, and you could go live in there?"

"My prince… can't you see that I am your intended?" she pleaded with her, leaning so far against the bars that her face was trying to push between them. "Not her, me! She will hurt you, but I would cradle your heart as if a baby bird! I… all I want is to make you happy!"

Everyone was quiet for a few seconds. I turned back to Knives and shrugged. "Well? She's the girl of your dreams. All the freckles, and none of the acid-tongue. Plus she's way cuter."

"Nah," Knives said without any hesitation. "I know who I love, and it's you. This is some other test and I'm gonna pass this one, too. And the next one, and the next, until I break you out and we can both go get sushi or something."

As I was grinning at her, beyond any level of love for her that I had previously thought possible, I dimly noticed Princess Pine collapsing on the floor in a flurry of sobs. Oh well, too bad. Better luck next time. As we were sharing that moment, someone came along to interrupt it…

"How dare you thwart my plans! I've been waiting for this to come to fruition for seven years!"

If my face could have paled any further than ghostly white, it would have.

"Simon Lee."

To Be Continued…