I took a step back in surprise. "Mom?" I whispered.
"Yes. Now I have your attention." Sage looked away for a second, then looked back at me, a deathly serious face on her. "Look, I don't have much time. Metagor is almost here, and I have no idea how much time I've got before the Master starts watching us. All I can say is this: this is the Master's game. We're all just puppets to him. If there is a way, there's only one way to stop him. You have to find his hideout and kill him. That's the only way you can take his power away from him.
"When you find him, there should be a keyboard nearby. When you see it, type 'break away, make way.' That will transfer us back to our dimension."
"How do you know I want to go back to our old dimension?" I questioned her. "And are you a good guy now?" I asked. For some reason, those were the only words that came to mind.
"There is no good or bad. Only your goals and how others view them," she said.
"What about my first question? You never answered it."
But she never got a chance to respond. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She dropped to the floor.
"Sage?" I said frantically. "Sage!" I grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. She didn't wake up.
I heard a giant thud come from outside. Metagor had arrived.
I put down Sage gently and turned around slowly, deliberately. I wanted Metagor to take in my diamond skin now. That meant he couldn't hurt me, no matter how many times he wanted to stomp on my body and throw me around like a rag doll.
I opened the front door. There he was in all of his slimy glory.
He growled at me menacingly. His rough, gurgling voice reminded me of everything I'd lost: my family, my house, my old life.
Suddenly, everything else melted away. All that was left was anger. Every cell in my body was primed and focused on hurting him.
Without me consciously knowing, my refrax left me. I used my speed to hurtle my body into Metagor's chest. He didn't move.
I reactivated my refrax to defend from Metagor's oncoming attack. He brought his fists together and tried to crash them down on me. I saw the move coming, though, and put up my arms so he wouldn't bury me into the ground.
He roared in fury. I picked him up and threw him several feet into the air. I watched him go high into the sky, unable to control himself. When he came down, I punched him before he could reach the ground. He was getting beat- badly.
He landed on his feet, skidding on the road. Crouching down, he looked like a cornered animal.
With a flick of his tail, spikes came hurtling at me. Lucky for me, my refrax protected me from the projectiles. The six serrated edges bounced harmlessly off of me.
I calmly picked up one of the spikes off of the ground. Then I threw it at him faster than he could move. It stuck fast in his cheek, going deep to the inside of his mouth. He screamed in agony.
I walked to stand in front of his nearly unconscious body lying on the ground. After a moment of thought, I picked up his impossibly heavy frame, lifting him by the neck as he had done with me. "It's not as fun being on the other end of the hand, is it?" I said cruelly.
He didn't talk. He tried to claw at my hand, but to no avail. His claws couldn't pierce my diamond skin.
I grabbed him by the spike on his head and slammed his face into the ground. It felt good to hurt somebody else for once. So good that I decided to do it again. And again. And again.
At this point, I was just repeatedly slamming Metagor's face into the ground. I wanted to hurt him so much. I wanted to kill him.
"Jay, stop!" I heard a cry from behind me.
I dropped Metagor's bloody head and immediately turned back to human form. Cassie came running from behind me, looking at Metagor's body.
"What did you do?" she said to me. Metagor's arm was twisted at an odd angle. His face looked like it had been run over by a bus several times. His head lolled to the side, his neck probably broken.
I didn't respond. I was in shock by what I had done. I looked at the blood on my hands.
"Jay, did you kill him?" Cassie asked me.
"I think so," I said.
I knew exactly what I did, and why I had done it. When I used my refrax, my state of mind went to a bad place. I couldn't feel too much emotion, and those that got through were amplified and uncontrollable.
"You should have been far away by now, Cassie. Why did you come back?" I scolded her.
"I wanted to help," she said. "You can't take on Sage and Metagor by yourself."
"Sage!" I said, remembering where I left her. I ran back inside the house, where I thought she'd be lying on the floor, unconscious. Instead, there was nothing there.
I ran upstairs to check the other rooms for her. There was no evidence that she was even here. In fact, the hole in the wall that I had created was gone as well.
"Dammit!" I yelled. I punched a new hole in the wall in front of me.
"Hey, don't tear up the house, please," Cassie said sarcastically. "These things cost money, you know."
"Yeah, I know," I said. "My bad."
"Look, don't worry about it. I'm sure Sage..." I stopped listening to Cassie as the hole I just made magically mended itself back together.
"What the...did you see that?" I said to Cassie, pointing to the now fixed wall.
"See what?" she asked back. "Wasn't there a hole there a second ago?"
"Yes, there was. That's my point." I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to stay sane. "Just like before, with the dummies," I muttered to myself. It seemed like only I could see the things that didn't make sense.
"So how did it fix itself? Coach Malone isn't anywhere near here, and no one else in this area can do anything like time reversal."
"You're right," I told her. Of course, that was excluding the Master. Sage didn't tell me what he could do, and that was assuming I could believe what she did tell me.
"I think that whatever fixed the wall also got rid of Sage. Do you think the Master could have done this?"
"Why are you asking so many questions? I don't have the answers, Cassie. I know just as much as you do." I ran my hand through my hair, trying to figure out why the Master would do this.
Hold on. I never told Cassie about the Master. And I found out about him just a few minutes ago, from Sage. There was a possibility that she was reading my mind, but it wasn't likely. She wouldn't do that without letting me know.
Then, a possibility occurred to me.
Sage could shapeshift.
I turned to Cassie slowly, making sure not to let my realization show.
She wasn't biting her lip or messing with a strand of her hair like she usually did. Her face was completely blank- expressionless, just like Sage's was. The only things missing were the glowing eyes and the eerie voice.
"Well, well," Sage-Cassie said. "Looks like you figured me out. Congratulations. You're too late, though."
And with that, her hand morphed into a sharp sword. She plunged it deep into my chest, right through my heart.
"Night night, brother," she said cheerily. "Sweet dreams."
She took the sword out, and in her telltale blur of white lightning, she was gone.
My lifeless body dropped to the floor. I landed right in front of Cassie's door.
The last thing I saw was the sunlight shining through the afternoon window. And there were the dummies, smiling at me again, each one propped against either side of the frame.
I died screaming.