Breakdown: chapter 21.5

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I did writing it! Since this chapter was all emotional pay-off and the rule of cool it was a joy to put to paper!

Darkness.

Violent and silent darkness.

(A lot of this chapter was pay-off and throw-backs to previous moments in the series, here the start of every mind melding/joining starts with darkness, but instead of the calm collected moments between just him and Jasmine its eerie and hostile. Everything in italics takes place in this dreamscape.)

Xant is the connection between two powerful pressences, he does his best to bring them into one mind.

(Most joinings need to be a consensual affair, common goals and emotions, joint memories are needed for the individuals to ‘link’ together. Since this was a hostile takeover, Xant was forced to use angry emotions to join them together which made for an unstable connection. He is probably the first to do this solo, such activities are usually reserved for Zenthi ‘one’ priests, which is a hive mind of Zenthi siblings who never pulled apart to make their own personalities…)

He consentraits and when the darkness lifts, he is back at the black ocean beach.

Jasmine, with her long hair and power armour is lying beside her on the powdery sand.

(the world is a mash-up of all three of their sub-conciousness, Jasmine/Lady have been/seen to earth and Xant/Jasmine have been to the dark ocean of Jasmines subconscious. Since the world is a mash up, the characters avatars are a mashup of their own sub-conciousness too. Jasmine has her long hair from her internal self and the armour of her exterior, the lady sees her puppet self as more human and the brain part as more monstrous and huge, Xant has his normal body but more human hands, his own sub-conciousness acting on the ‘awakening’ Jasmine accidentally preformed on him )

The Lady stands on the distant shore, the horrific collection of nerves and organs that make up her ‘real self’ and her ‘beautiful puppet’ self dangling like an angler fishes light in front. The Lady crazy rambles about the nature of reality and lunges after both Jasmine and Xant.

(this was to go deeper into the crazy, messed up logic of the lady. The Rajavans were not equipped to handle the, lets be honest here, nonsensical quirks of the human mind. Going from pure logic and newly returned empathy they were thrown into the deep end with dreams and imagination and failed to recognise it for what it was. Xant could have easily suffered the same fate had he not had Jasmine guide him through Nightmares/Dreams and the other voice in his head.)

the Lady summons imaginary minions to attack the pair and dream logic means, they die in the dream they die in real life.

(this is wehere i got to go ham on the action sequence, dream logic means anything you think of can happen. I wanted to go into lucid dreaming a bit more, and thats how Jasmine could easily control what was happening in the dream, but the explanation of being ‘conscious’ of the dream worked well enough without bogging down the explanation. I nearly went full anime and give Jasmine a transformation sequence, but I settled for the dragon ball Z flying and the semi-accurate sailor moon quote instead.)

Xant tells Jasmine to split up and run, Jasmine refuses but xant insists that she trust him, Jasmine reluctantly listens. Xant disconnects Jasmine from the joint dream and stands to defend against the Lady.

(Xant here shows some character growth, throughout the entire series he has done everything he can to be by Jasmine’s side, everything he can to help her he does and now, without prompting, is prepared to give up everything to help her. He has learned the ultimate act of empathy, sacrifice. )

(in the second draft I decided to add a short, real-world break, where the reader and Jasmine only figure out Xant’s plan when the font changes. As currently writing, I’m toying with making this scene longer or making a bonus scene where we see just how Jasmine was plugged back into the joint dreamspace.  )

Xant lures the Lady far out into the ocean, and when she is nearly on top of him, he manages to ‘break’ the water below them. They both fall rapidly into the ocean below, continuously falling into the darkness of the bottomless pit. The Lady is heavier, screaming in fear as she is pulled into the depths. Xant accepts his fate, closing his eyes and letting his body drift into nothingness.

(This is another callback to a chapter dreaming when Xant woke up Jasmine from her coma, he is replaying the memory but since it was his dream, he doesn’t really know how to ‘wake up from it, planning on letting his body suffer the drowning and expire. The Lady as well, is stuck to his dream logic, it was Jasmine who made the water solid, not him, so he could only maintain that instance for so long. His plan to trap both of them in darkness while the body still functioned, essentially ‘stiffing’ the pair of them. Even if he could reverse it he doesnt have the experience to ‘alter’ the dream, the Lady cant either as she doesnt understand the difference between dream and reality.)

But something grabs him.

Jasmine, holding his wrist, swimming to the surface. Xant is confused but allows it to happen.

(Jasmine comes to rescue her friend! And a call back to her being able to swim! )

When he awakes it's a messy sight.

Jasmine's face is covered in blood, the metal connection on the side of her face torn off and his fingers cut open to allow a direct connection. She is holding his hand up to her face and crying while he wakes.

(Now, here in the notes I had Xant’s hand attached to her head, directly connected to the translate module. I was toying with being a terrible person and making Jasmine cut off her ear to reconnect, but that’s needless gore and trauma the poor girl doesn’t need. Plus, the opening would be too small to make a connection anyway, so I change it to be in her back. The short scene, of which I haven’t written yet at the time of this breakdown, would have jasmine disconnect her suit instead and have another human, Dr Emma, manually connect the nerves with Itsuki’s oversight, since he watched Xant operate on Beau’s translator. Jasmine’s line of ‘I didn’t like that plan’ is also my favourite, spur of the moment dialogue in the chapter.)

Notes draft

of Jasmines subconscious, but there are differences, the stars are constellations he recognises,the ocean is blue instead of black and the sand has fields of red grass.

Jasmine lays beside him asleep, she is wearing the power armour but her hair is long, he goes to wake her up but is interrupted by a voice.

The Lady stands on the shore, looking more human then her avatar previously depicted.

“Let her sleep, let us stay here a little longer…”

“Its beautiful, isnt it? Infinite realities conjured with such little material…”

The Lady waxes philosophical about humans and their dreams, how messy and illogical their bodies are but somehow are able to escape their pain and guilt through these spaces and just how *unfair* that is.

Once she says unfair the human persona begins to shift and the human part stars to decay and the tendrils from her body lead to the massive brain of her actual self, floating above the shoreline.

Xant instantly turns to wake Jasmine up, shaking her and the pair get up and start running from the Lady.

The Lady summons shadow servants, Jasmine asks what the hell is going on, and Xant replies with some of the Lady's ramblings about dreams.

Jasmine has an ‘ah ha’ moment and is able to use dream logic to shift the world around her, she transforms into something imposing and graceful before she starts to summon projectiles that easily destroy the servants, but that only causes the Lady to get more irate and she starts to send her own projectiles back towards them.

Jasmine gets hit and realises that the pain is very real.

They will die here if the Lady has her way.

They need to neutralise her before they're killed.

Jasmine tries to stop the Lady, putting her to sleep to paralyse her, trap her somehow, but every failed attempt causes more pain and exhaustion.

Xant gets Jasmine to run with him towards the ocean, she follows him and asks his plan.

Xant takes her hand.

“Forgive me,” (or another call back)

Jasmine wakes up in the bridge, Xant is still asleep, his hand falls away from her face. She screams at him and tries to reconnect but it’s no use. The battle rages on, aralukia and the others are still fighting around her. Jasmine screams for help.

Xant stands on top of the dark waters facing off against the Lady. She insults him, calls him a poor imitation of a species long forgotten and a desperate attempt to become what he cannot. She points out in this dream he has human hands.

He looks down at his five fingered hands and back up at the Lady.

"Fuck you."

The water beneath them breaks and they fall unto its depths. The Lady panics, struggles to swim but her size and weight drag her down. Xant falls too, watching the surface fade. He will stay here, keep the Lady in the dream if he has too.

Accepts his fate.

Then a hand reaches out.

Jasmine scoops him up and swims towards the surface, the light.

When he wakes Jasmine is crying tears of relief, blood, Red and blue, pouring down the side of her face. His hands have been cut and his nerves forcibly attached. But the battle is over. The Lady has been subdued.

Well! Thats everything for this chapter, heres hoping the next one happens soon! Im on a roll these days! Thank you guys for everything! ~Squiggles