God help the outcasts

Mary glared fiercely at her other self. Or, more accurately, the twisted, misshapen, corrupted version of herself.

Echo was everything she wished that she could eliminate. She had the spite and jealousy that Mary tried so hard to bury. She was the unhinged, unrepressed sexuality that Mary’s transformations were slowly unlocking. But where Mary had begun to accept her sexuality as a part of herself, a part of her that made her who she was and that the people in her life treasured her for, Echo…

It wasn’t the same with Echo.

She didn’t care about Nick or the people he cared about. She didn’t care about anything but herself, frankly. At least, as far as Mary could tell.

That made her feel sick to her stomach.

But… what was she supposed to do about that? What could she possibly say to her other self, given the circumstances?

Mary wanted to believe that she could save Echo. As much as she hated what her doppelganger represented, at her core, the other woman was still her. Still Mary.

If Echo could fall so far that she was beyond redemption… then that meant Mary was capable of that darkness, as well.

For a normal person, that went without saying. Most people understood implicitly that they were capable of doing bad things.

But for Mary, who valued being a good person so much, being confronted with the possibility that she could turn into Echo was like an affront to everything she was.

I’m not like her. I enjoy sex with Nick, but not because I’m trying to corrupt him! I want him to be happy! I’m nothing like her, she’s just trying to warp and twist us all for her own sick desires! She’s selfish and cruel, and that’s not me at all!

Mary wanted to believe that with all of her heart. And yet… the woman standing in front of her, stroking Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s cheek, was undeniably her.

And while Mary could tell herself that it was the transformation to blame for turning her other self into a corrupted monster, that was just a cheap excuse.

Because Mary could feel those dark impulses from herself sometimes.

Never to the extent of the woman in front of her, but she couldn’t deny… the possibility did exist. And it frightened her severely.

I don’t want to be like that! Mary thought. Her heart raced with concern. I don’t want to be someone who can hurt people like this!

But it was possible.

She was standing right there, after all.

Only a fool would deny the evidence of their own eyes.

And then, just like that, Mary realized the truth.

Of course I can be a bad person, she acknowledged. That was obviously the case, and she’d just been trying to ignore it up until now. I’m only human. To think that I can’t end up like her… end up like Echo… that’s just my pride. My vanity.

Without even knowing it, Mary had been living her life thinking that she was better than other people. Not in some cruel, pompous, arrogant way, but in her pious life, she had always told herself “I’m a good person. I could never be bad.”

But… that was pride.

Thinking that she was above temptation. Above other people.

As she had proven quite voraciously with her husband, she was not above temptation at all.

Mary had bad thoughts sometimes. Jealousy. Spite. Greed. These things were normal thoughts that made her human.

They didn’t make her a bad person. They just made her who she was.

She took a deep breath, exhaled, and looked at Echo with new eyes.

The woman standing in front of her was wracked with desperation. Mary could see that now, when she had been blind to it before. How had she missed what was so obvious?

Echo was a part of herself. She knew Echo’s face because it was her own. That was how, now that she was looking with clear eyes, she could see her own tells. The expressions that she knew from her own face, the desperation in her gaze, that she knew from her own eyes.

She didn’t know what the source of that desperation was, but given the circumstances, she could guess. And that made her heart ache.

Mary took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Echo.”

“Hmm?” Echo looked at Mary with the same sneer as always, ignorant to the realization that her other self just had.

“You’re right,” Mary admitted. The sudden admission threw Echo for a loop.

“H-huh!?” She backed away for half a second. “What… what are you talking about?” She spat, eyeing Mary suspiciously. “What do you mean I’m right? Huh?!”

Mary focused her gaze on Echo without flinching. “I have my weaknesses and shortcomings as well. And… maybe it was arrogant of me, to think that I could reach Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin and make her feel better, when we barely know the first thing about each other,” she admitted.

Looking at the assassin’s face, Mary saw only someone that she desperately wanted to help. But that didn’t matter if the assassin didn’t want her help, did it?

Still…

“…But I want to help her all the same,” Mary said firmly, looking fiercely at her other self. “Not because I’m arrogant or proud, but because I’m the only one who noticed her loneliness. Which means it’s my responsibility to help her with it, if I can.”

Maybe that was still her being arrogant. Sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong. But Mary cared about others. That was just who she was.

The bigger issue was that she might end up making a scene and ruining Rose’s party. The smart thing to do would be to wait until later, when the party was over. But later might be too late. It wasn’t right to deny Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin a chance to enjoy the party at least a little bit just because Mary didn’t want to make a scene!

“You saw it too, didn’t you?” Mary looked at her other self. “Because you’re like me. You’re sensitive to other people, so you noticed it right away, like I did.”

Echo fumed at her. “What exactly are you trying to say, huh!?” She growled. “You think I’m trying to be altruistic here!?”

She hopped up onto the table, weaving her way around the food, and jumped down to confront Mary directly.

“Stop inserting your misplaced morality into me, you bitch,” she spat. “You keep thinking that I’m like you, and you’re gonna get burned.”

Then the anger fled from her face, and glee appeared in her smile. “No… no, you see, the truth of the matter? It’s very simple.”

She shook her head.

“I want to see what you’ll do when you’re confronted with the outcome! You, you arrogant other version of me. Thinking you’re so high and mighty, thinking that only YOU can help other people, when you can’t even help yourself!” Echo jammed her finger into Mary’s chest. But it pressed into her breast instead. She looked down at Mary’s large boobs, and a look of utter disgust crossed her face.

“…Hideous,” she muttered, leering at her other self disdainfully. “How can you stomach it? Looking like this?”

Mary glanced at Echo. There was a bit of regret in her heart. No matter how beautiful she might be right now, Echo looked more like the her she knew than she did, now. Those were her breasts, small as they may have been. Her choppy hair.

Her body.

Mary did miss those things about herself. She had always been taught to love the body that God gave her, and she did. But now she was in a new body, that had been given to her by someone who was most definitely not God.

In fact, she was sitting a few seats down, with a fork frozen in her mouth.

She turned back to Echo and faced her other self down. “Whether I can help someone or not, I’m still going to try,” she repeated herself. “And if you take pleasure from my failure, well… I think you shouldn’t do that!”

Mary felt very proud of herself for saying that.

Echo just looked dumbfounded. She slowly shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, before her smile returned to her lips. “Well… fine, then, Mary, if that’s the way you want it!”

She took a step back and held up her hands. “In fact- because I’m such a nice person? I’m even going to help you out! Because I want to see you wreck Rose’s party with your own two hands, because of your compulsive, ridiculous urge to do the right thing all the fucking time,” Echo spat at her.

Mary glared coldly back at her.

“Fine then,” she replied. She doubted that anything Echo had to say would actually “help” her at all, but she was willing to hear the other girl out.

Echo just sneered.

“Think carefully about why Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin might be upset with this little party,” she suggested, narrowing her eyes. “Given what you know about her? Because this goes SO much deeper than a few people talking around her, and ignoring her. If you knew the first thing about this girl, you’d know that… but you don’t.”

Mary frowned. The only reason Echo would be taunting her like this was because she expected Mary to be able to figure it out. It didn’t make sense for her to be making a show out of Mary not knowing something so abstract she’d never be able to guess it in a million years.

Which meant something tangible was in front of her. Something real.

Something Mary needed to determine for herself.

“…Alright, then,” Mary said, staring her other self down. What did she know about Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin?

…Not a lot.

Echo wasn’t wrong there.

But as Mary looked at the other woman’s face, frozen in time, and studied the sadness spread across it, she began to empathize with her.

That loneliness and isolation…

“You know what that’s like, don’t you?” Echo whispered into her ear. When Mary hadn’t been looking, her other self had slipped behind her, and now clasped her shoulders as she leaned in close to her, dripping her venomous words directly into Mary’s mind. “To not have anyone. To be all alone, because you’re different…”

Mary did know what that was like. Because that had been her experience when she went to college. As a sheltered, religious girl who didn’t like parties or alcohol or all the other things college students enjoyed, she had very much felt like a fish out of water.

If Nick and Holly hadn’t reached out to her, she might not have ever been able to make friends, and that was a thought that scared her deeply.

Mary bit her lip.

“I… I don’t…”

That loneliness of hers…

“Think about where we are right now,” Echo taunted. “A party to celebrate Rose… where everyone is talking about how great she is, and how much they love her, because she’s such a dear and special friend to them. What do you think that nameless girl is thinking about right now, having to sit through all of that? I wonder…”

Mary felt a chill go through her heart.

“…Of course it would bother her,” she realized as she looked at the sad expression on Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s face.

After all… had anyone ever thrown a party like this for her?

Would anyone even bother?

Rose had a fit that morning, and in response, all the other girls had gone and dropped everything to throw a party for her, to help her feel better.

But no one had ever done anything like that for Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. Mary figured it was a fair bet that she’d never experienced ANYTHING like that, from anyone.

No wonder it stung, to be present when someone else was being celebrated, and to be reminded that no one actually wanted to talk to you. Even if you couldn’t talk back to them, that still had to sting…

Mary felt so sad for the poor girl. She bit her lip.

“Good luck, Mary,” Echo whispered in her ear. “I’m sure you’ll be able to reach her if you just try a little harder!”

She disappeared, leaving only her mocking laughter in her wake.

Mary scowled. She knew what Echo was playing at. She understood why the other woman was being such a bitch. That was just her way of doing things. And frankly? Mary found it to be pretty damn disgusting.

But she HAD helped.

In her own twisted way.

Mary knew what the problem was here. She may not have been able to fix it, but she could still try her hardest.

And apparently, that was exactly what Echo was counting on. Her other self wanted to watch Mary put in her best effort, so she could mock her ruthlessly and gleefully when she failed and made a mess out of Rose’s precious party.

For all Mary knew, her other self had nudged and whispered twisted things in Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s ear to prep this response. At this point, she wouldn’t put it past Echo at all, given her… everything.

It was something that left Mary feeling numb and disgusted.

Disgusted in not just herself, but in her other self, as well.

As deranged of a thought as that might have been.

Mary took a deep breath and exhaled. This whole mess… it was avoidable. She knew it was avoidable. But…

She wasn’t going to stand by.

Rose might get upset, but she’d understand. As self-absorbed as the actress may have been, Mary knew that she had a good heart.

So, she made her decision, and returned to her seat. As soon as she felt her butt make contact with the chair, the whole room came to life again. It was jarring, like being jerked forward when a car suddenly accelerates. Everybody moving all at once left Mary feeling shaken, and it took her a second to regain her bearings.

But once she did, she found herself face to face with Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin once more. The other girl’s piercing blue eyes were staring right back into hers.

Mary swallowed her doubts and fears and pushed forward.

“How are you liking the food?” She asked, putting on her best attempt at a sweet smile.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin blinked, stunned. She stared at Mary in confusion, not even angry- just surprised at this point.

Then she scowled.

“Is the pot roast good?” Mary tried again. “Dani really tried her best, I think.”

No one was paying her any mind at this point. But then, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin hadn’t responded yet.

Dependinig on her reaction to Mary’s question, things could get very difficult and messy.

The dull-eyed girl glanced down at her picked-at pot roast, and pinched her lips together tightly. She was almost being stubborn about it, Mary noticed.

That wouldn’t do at all.

“Would you like some mashed potatoes to go with it?” She suggested. “Carly made those.”

“Damn right I did,” Carly said from a few seats down, catching the sound of her name. She had a look of pride on her face. “You think I’m going to let that messy batch I made back for that challenge be all I’m known for?”

Carly had really bombed the cooking challenge. Today was her chance to make up for it, and she’d done her best.

…In Mary’s opinion, they were still lumpy and uneven. The woman was no master chef. But it was a marked improvement.

And by drawing Carly into the conversation, more attention had been drawn to Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin. She wasn’t being ignored now, at least!

Was she grateful to Mary for that?

…

Obviously not.

Almost as though she were being driven by spite, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin plunged her knife into the side of her slice of pot roast, in a gesture that Mary assumed was more than just incidental. She didn’t like the implication of the other woman’s actions, but… at least she was eating the food!

That… that was worth it, right?

…

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin cut out a piece of her lunch and popped it into her mouth. She chewed with so much force that Mary was afraid she might bite her tongue off!

Then she swallowed, and stuck her tongue out at the other girl.

Mary was relieved… kind of. More than anything she was just happy that the assassin wasn’t pouting anymore. The light had returned to her eyes, and she kept eating her pot roast, while glaring at Mary the whole time.

All in all?

It could have gone a lot worse. While the assassin’s mood may not have necessarily improved, Mary could tell that she wasn’t so filled with anger as to attack her for trying to talk to her, that was a good thing!

Yes, maybe she was still pretty upset. But, again, Mary would take whatever small victory she could get her hands on at this point.

And the emphasis was definitely on this victory being a “small” one.

The important thing was that she hadn’t ruined Rose’s party. The blonde actress was still living it up, not even noticing the tense exchange that had just gone down between two of her guests.

Mary let out a sigh of relief. The last thing she needed right now was a bunch of misery and drama making everything uncomfortable between everybody.

While Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin stared daggers at her from across the table, Mary began eating her lunch in earnest before it got cold. She was happy that the other girl was emoting, at least, even if she’d found a target for her ire.

Now she just had to think of a way to help bring her mood back up. While a party like this one would probably be pushing things too far, it wasn’t like they couldn’t do anything to celebrate the other woman, right?

Mary wanted to help Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin smile and feel like one of the girls. Sure, the other woman had her own problems and conflicts that made it a difficult prospect. But she cared about Nick, and would obviously do anything for him.

She deserves a chance to make friends, too, and be happy, Mary thought. Everyone does.

If only Echo could see that.