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The Tipping Point
Originally written on December 7, 2024



The older man chuckled with a mocking tone. "You're right, you're right. I'm fucked. I'm fucked... I'm fucked! HAHAHA! I've done everything, man. I've done it all."
The young girl who was supposed to be the hero defeating the monster stared in horror as the man removed his armor, attached artifacts, weapons, and accessories.
"Here," the man said. "I'm done. I'm fucked. I tried..."
The girl watched in horror as the man stared at the water at the bottom of the cliff on which they stood.
"Wait... What... What's going on?" the young woman said.
The man jumped.
"WAIT!" She hurried to the edge of the cliff, hoping to catch him with her magic.
The man roared in grief, rage, and self-mockery. "I hate you! I hate you all!"
"Wait..." she said, twenty months later. "What was wrong with him?"
A younger man in front of her smiled. "I don't know. I think... He really was evil. I mean... everyone eventually reaches that tipping point..."
"Ha? Tipping point? What the hell are you talking about now Jared?"
"Seriously? I'm just being honest, after all you've been trying to pull with me and my friends all these years."
"Years? I've only known for you for a little over a year. Don't you start lying."
"I just... I just hate the fact that you keep goading me to doing these things and saying these things, when really, you all know... all of you... that he's dead. And whoever was affiliated with him did not know what he was about until he pushed it a step further beyond anything we've ever seen... or known... Like, what was that? What the hell was that! Because I relate to you, I understand you! I get what you're feeling, but here's the thing. I have no fucking clue what he did there. Why did he attack the village and then the city as well. Why he did all that. I don't know. I tried... I looked all around, before you came around, and I was ready, so ready, to tell that, this, that, that, that, that, this, and that. But seriously! What're you expecting? That I'm just going to tell you why he decided to end it like that after all that? I don't know."
"'I don't know.' So you're still... pretending that you did not have any part in it?" She said, slapping the bars of Jared's jail cell with a snide scoff.
"I did... everything that I could. You..." He laughed weakly. "You don't get it... do you?"
"Tch! Don't start backtracking. I told you already. If you did not participate in that, it... he wouldn't have done that. And it was your fault. Own it, admit it! I just need a fucking reason, and you're not giving me any. You're stupid, and disgusting, you know that? After all of that, you cannot even owe it to yourself to tell the truth—"
"The truth... huh?"
"'Huh?' What are you saying now?"
"I'm just... What can I say really? What do you want me to say? I've told you. I don't know. I don't know why Ta did that. He was never... 'weak.' He always owed it to us to never give up."
"'Never give up.' Fucking hilarious, mate."
"Yeah, we genuinely believed in a goal, until of course..."
"'Of course' what? What reason, reasons, are you going to give now?"
"Shut the fuck up! Never-fucking-mind!"
"Ha! You just don't listen, do you? You can't even listen to yourself."
"'Listen'? What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I'm just saying. Let's be honest here. You haven't been honest with us, or him, or anybody, or me, or you. Really!"
"'Really'? Is that how you see it? I told you already, but you just... You're funny. You know what, I like you." Jared genuinely laughed, but with a mix of bitterness, confusion, and resignation.
"Well..." The girl, Yellow, who was now 20 months older, was a woman, and she now had a "Miss" to her name, the kind that allowed her to take this role of trying to inquire into what happened to "Talos," the guy who jumped off the cliff, and to his former followers. She dropped the feud. "Okay... I just want to say that I'm sorry. I don't know what that means, but I hope we can get something, somewhere."
"Bruh, I've been telling you this whole time—"
"Then what! What? What is it! REALLY?"
"I... I don't know—I do not know. Okay? Okay? Okay? You hear me? Or am I..."
"I hear you."
"Or am I talking to my fucking self..."
"I hear you..."
"Okay, so... what... now?"
"I just don't know. I don't know about that. I'll try to tell them about it—the matter—and see what we can do tomorrow."
"'Next time', 'tomorrow'. You know how tiring that sounds? I'm tired... Yellow. I'm tired... I'll be real honest. I am done. I am fucking do-ne. I just... want to get out... It's been four months, and I'm not used to this."
Yellow smirked briefly before stopping herself from making a biting remark out of what she perceived was hypocrisy on his part.
She sighed and waited for herself to calm down. "Okay... so what can we do then? What arrangement is... feels appropriate?"
"I need... I need... a promise... a way to guarantee that this is temporary."
"Okay... But I cannot."
"You have to... because I am not going to help you. I can't, and if you keep me here, I will make sure you get what you deserve."
"'Deserve'... Okay fine. I'll try to promise."
"You can't 'try'. You have to be straight. You have to tell me full-on that this is a real and definitive... lasting eternal thing that will never be unchained from its chains promise. That kind. Yes."
"Okay... How... But can you tell me what you think about how..."
"I think... Ta... might have... been... influenced. But I'm not sure. Don't... Don't take me seriously or take my word for it. Just let it be a null thing. Just let it go. Forget it. And if you still care about it, care about everybody that has been telling you. Well, it's not like they've been telling you, but they're struggling. They're suffering. They're not okay. Okay? They're not fine. They're struggling real hard, and if you cannot address their issues, then... what are you doing here? Just so you can tell me off and make me feel horrible because you have perceived ideas about me. And I'm fine with fucking that. I'm so okay with the idea that you do that all the time, but here's the thing. How about you? How about what you feel? Have you thought about that? Have you thought maybe... there's something different, or off, or strange, or magnanimous, or, or, or, or, or... You get the point, haha. Just... let's be honest. If you're going to do something... if you're gonna... Then, I want you to take it. Take it real. Take it honest-ly. Take it for real. Do not keep using me as a strawman, and making me into your little nothing-burger doll. I'm a human being, and I will not allow you to sit the fuck here just to tell that I did something when, let's be honest, I did not fucking know, okay? And I don't know what you're trying to do, but let's be honest. You're fucking crazy. And I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to be real. You've kept me here unlawfully or 'uncooly' for four months. You know how crazy that sounds—that a person would ever do that. That's funny, really. It's funny. So if you want something, what do you want, tell me, because I can help you. I can help you by doing everything that I can, because I don't want to stay here anymore. So please... help me."
"Okay..."
Later, back at home, Yellow was slamming things around. "Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck! I hate these fucking disgusting little ditchy-datchy fucking nut-boggers. Silly disgusting marsupials who have no fucking place in humanity! I hate it all! I've..."
She remembered the older man's expression. She just saw her own reflection and saw it mirroring his.
She felt a chill run up her back.
"What..." she muttered, her voice faint, her eyes a mix of confusion and increasing terror. "Wait... don't tell me..."
She saw herself in the older man. 
Tears dripped, and she could not stop herself from getting so angry. After all this time, she had to deal with losing so many people, and she could not take it. Even now, she was still hurting. After all this time, it still hurt as if nothing had changed. She wanted to be free and wanted to go home. But it was no longer physical. It was no longer here.
She laughed weakly out of self-mockery, finding it challenging to maintain herself in such a world.
She wanted to make sense of things, and she still did not know why Talos did all that, when he was just another guy. And she herself wished she could explain it, because she felt that it was in her beliefs that everything had to make sense. If things did not make sense, then she did not know what else to do.
She would not be able to make decisions properly, and she would not be able to decide, because she did not have an answer for what Talos did. She had to explain it, and she could not explain simply as him being a monster. She tried, but she couldn't anymore. All she saw was someone that she knew so well, and she did not know why. But the reality was that even when she felt so close to someone for the first time in something so devastatingly serious, she did not know a thing. Or maybe she knew, and she did not want to arrive at that conclusion, because what it would mean and imply would mutilate everything she had ever known.
She did not want to arrive at an answer, but she wanted to.
It was just never that simple, even if she wanted it to be.
She got up and went on her way.
Months later, she saw the face of Jared staring at her. It was a bitter look he had, and she could not face him. He stayed there for three more months since that earlier confrontation, and she knew that she would not be able to end her time with Jared properly anymore, now that she could see the impossibility through his face.
She slowed down her breathing.
A vision from the past, before the older man jumped, came to mind.
In that vision, Talos watched her from the distance with a smile. He said: "I tried to protect you. I hoped that you would be safe from me, from everything that I was, because it was too late for me. I've been corrupted by the world, and I did not even realize it. I just wanted to do the right thing, but I ended up losing myself in the end. How funny! Isn't it? That we hope so much and be kind so much that we end up doing the most irreparable things ever done in this world, as if kindness somehow begets death. Haha! Impossible, impossible! I must have been completely destroyed from the start, but the thing is that I decided to do all of that. But you know, I wanted you to kill me. I wanted you to destroy me. I wanted you to remove me from this world, because I felt internally that I was too corrupted to carry the torch of hope. I have done too much, beyond what I should have, and I know that. But I really did believe. I really did trust and hope. I believed in love, in kindness, in all that. I don't know... why... I stopped... But the thing is that to me, I never stopped believing. But now I realize that yes, I've been... I've lost myself along the way. Just that I did not know... I never knew... It was only when I was at the end of everything that I realized. You have to defeat me. It is people like you who have to defeat me. You are so innocent, pure, and righteous, exactly the person that I was back then, but along the way, we lost sight of what it means to be a good person, because we were so caught up in the affairs of this world. I think growing up and getting so entangled with this world were sins in their own right. I just think that it is no longer possible. It really isn't. To undo things. At one point, I genuinely was..."
But she was not listening that time, throwing her all into fighting him, as he blocked smoothly without effort.
Talos was too powerful for her, and in the end, what defeated him wasn't her. It was him himself.
"What was he?" she said now in the present, not knowing how or what to do or say, but she did know that at the very least, she was here. If there was something that she was, it was here.
"I have to find a way to make sense of this."
It had been 25 months since Talos' death.