Envy Adams stood before Scott Pilgrim, a beseeching look in her eyes. What did this mean? How did she get here?
"Scott," she intoned. "I never meant to hurt you. Let me make it up to you." And then her lips were on his, and, while Scott didn't think this could make up for a thousand gradual wrongs that ultimately ruined his life for a while, he was willing to give it a shot. Her hands slid underneath his belt, and Scott's body stiffened momentarily.
"What's the matter? You don't want me to stop, do you?" Envy said, teasing.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw a flash of movement. He closed his eyes again in response to Envy's actions, and before he knew it-
He heard a scream, and felt a wave of dust splash against his body. Envy was gone. Scott opened his eyes, and in Envy's place stood Kim Pine. She was wearing her outfit from Julie's Halloween themed party. On her arm was mounted an exaggeratedly large mechanical gauntlet, with whirring gears and steam valves.
Scott fell backwards onto the ground, more out of shock than anything. "Wha... what the hell? Kim? What? Why? What?" he stammered.
Kim bent down and pinched Scott's cheeks. "Scott. Focus. Focus just for a minute. This will all start making... sense. Or something like sense. Whatever kind of sense you have in this place."
Kim sat down on the grass across from Scott. "Listen. You are still in your mind. Envy is out there in the real world somewhere. You just imagined her."
"Why would I do that, brain Kim?" said Scott. "I never do that. It sucks to do that."
"Because, Scott, you tried to face your problems. And you failed. Surprising no one. So you escaped. You used your imagination to engage in some nice escapism. Apparently for you that consists of hooking up with your evil ex-girlfriend. Which probably signals deeper problems," said Kim, twisting a blade of grass around her finger.
"I... what?" Scott said, incomprehension plain on his face. "How do you know any of that? Why are you here?"
Kim glared at Scott. "I'm your reason. Or something. Your reasoning abilities. The part of your brain that's actually good for something. It's amazing that I exist at all. And, in my opinion, it's totally badass that your subconscious pictures me as Kim Pine. I mean... I am Kim Pine. And I'm... badass?" She trailed off, looking off into the sky.
"But anyway! Look! You have control over the inside of your mind! You need to -"
Scott cut her off. "So what you're saying is... I don't reaaaaaallly have to deal with any of this right now, if I just -" He clapped his hands. The world around them shifted. Now - Scott was in a basement, that evidently had been transformed into someone's sweet rec room. He sat on a squishy leather couch. Opposite him, an enormous flat-screen TV. In his hands, a wireless controller of the next-generation video console - the one we don't have in our real world yet. To his left, on an end table: a plate of warm snickerdoodle cookies.
"Yeaaaah. Escapism. Why didn't I think of this before?" Scott said to himself, as he pressed the "on" button on the controller. Before he could begin playing, down the stairs into the basement walked a statuesque raven-haired beauty, completely naked. "You were the hottest girl in my English Lit class freshman year. I have no idea what your name is, and that just means that you can't tell me what to do." The girl smirked at this, and joined Scott on the couch. She draped herself around his shoulders, but made no movement to interrupt his video gaming. "You don't care if I want to play video games. You just want me to be happy." She nodded, and didn't speak.
"I wonder how long I can stretch this out. A million? A billion years?"
Out of the television stepped Kim Pine.
"SCOTT! God damn it! What is this? What are you doing? You are missing the point so hard!" she yelled.
"Screw you and your point!" Scott shot back, rising from the couch. "This is not making my life better! I don't wanna go back to the mud place!"
"That's not the issue!" Kim began, but before she could continue, Scott had disappeared through a hole in the floor. Kim followed, and when they emerged, it was in a giant arena, full to bursting with punkily-dressed young people. On the stage in the middle of it all stood Scott, in black face paint, wielding a double guitar, melting the faces of all he surveyed with a wailing solo. Kim couldn't yell to reach him; when she tried to climb up to the stage, she was held back by a wall of brawny security guards, all with the exact same body and face.
With a reality-defying leap, Kim Pine arced over this obstacle, and dropped one heel squarely on the crown of Scott's head. He flashed red a few times, and the arena disappeared, as did his costume.
They were now in an empty warehouse, the walls and ceiling hazy, the floor a uniform grey.
"Scott!" Kim yelled at the prone figure now stretched on the concrete. "If you won't face your problems, I'm going to give you worse ones. She flexed the fingers of her mechanical gauntlet."
"But... but it's haaaard," he replied, woozily. He waved his hand over himself, and a comforter appeared, and the floor softened into linen.
Kim screamed in frustration, and kicked Scott, hard, in the abdomen. "Get up!" But, following the example of abdomen-kicked people everywhere, he instead rolled around, groaning, in pain. Then he sank into the floor and disappeared.
Thistime, he materialized on a lawnchair, next to a impressively landscaped pool behind someone's mansion. Perhaps his own. All around were well-endowed women of all kinds, nebulous until he looked directly at them. He sipped from a glass of lemonade, and hoped that maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he could finally relax for a little while.
And, while his concentration failed to work, as it usually did, he could, indeed, remain here, unhindered, free to be touched by the sun and to hear the laughs of unfamiliar, unreal wenches. But, when he did try to concentrate, on relaxing, it was then that his relaxation was broken. He sat up, and there was Kim Pine again. He laughed as he noticed that, if nothing else, he'd made her appear in a bright red, very immodest string bikini.
But she still had her metal gauntlet, and she leaped onto Scott. The lawnchair broke beneath him. With the gauntlet, she held him down, and with her normal hand, she made a very convincing closed fist, and punched him in every sensitive part of the face.
Punctuated by blows, she shouted, "Scott - you have to face - your weaknesses - this is why - you're here - isn't it - but you're just - embracing them - and that's why - Ramona left you - and that's why you - are wasting your life - and that's why I - laugh at you behind your back!" She paused for a moment. "The real Kim! She doesn't secretly lust for you, you moron! She thinks you're pathetic!"
This last gave Scott an actual shock, and, as hard as he'd tried to avoid it, actual self-reflection occurred now - in a dark form. He'd always felt just a little superior to Kim, loner Kim, Kim who had belonged to him, who he turned away and could have back if he wanted to. And now he realized the very real probability that, when Kim had made fun of him all these months and years - it had been genuine. He really was nothing to her. When they all laughed about "Scott being Scott" - maybe it was because when he wasn't around, they allreallylaughed about Scott being Scott.
His eyes flew alive with rage. "Oh yeah? Well,fuck you!" And Scott, from below, let fly with a right hook, faster than Kim or anyone else could react. It caught her in the bottom lip with an audible thudding sound, and was followed up with a straight left to the same spot that, metal gauntlet or no, knocked Kim back onto the stones, where she crumpled into a heap.
No one, not even Gideon, could see such a sight, and fail to realize how essentially sad it was. Kim Pine, usually all deadpan sarcasm or blustery anger, now bleeding from the mouth, one hand to her face, the other steadying her, weeping softly.
Scott immediately wished he could take it back. Wherever the real Kim Pine was, this was still Kim to him. It was no less vivid. It never would be. "Kim... Kim..." He crawled toward her, but she backed away.
"At least you get it now," she said, bitterly and wetly, slurring through blood and tears. "Do you see? You have problems. That's the only thing that would get you in a mess like this."
A tear fell from Scott's eyes, too, and was soon followed by more. "I... I didn't think... it was a fight..."
"Exactly. You have to think, Scott. You have to use reason. And you have to think about other people."
He looked down at the ground, at his hands. He couldn't bear to see Kim's face like this. In fact -
He lifted his hand toward her. A blue glow surrounded it, and there was a shimmer in the air. And Kim's face was healed, completely and totally.
"I can at least do that. It's still my mind."
Kim smiled at Scott, ever so slightly.
"You're starting to get it. Finally. I didn't know what it would take. Are you ready, then?" she asked, her eyes locked with his.
"For what?" he said, softly.
"To... you know." Her eyes gleamed. "Overcome your demons."
