towerofanimus | Once bitten twice shy

Entry tags:

Once bitten twice shy

Characters: The Ψiioniic and YOU
Setting: hall on the 2nd floor of the dorms to start with, after that we can move elsewhere
Format: Prose preferred but I'll match you
Summary: Ψ is finally venturing out again
Warnings: Probably not but with the trolls you never know when it'll end in bloodshed and violence

It took a day or so before Ψiioniic was willing to venture out of his respite block again. Not that the room felt all that safe, considering Signless and Suzaku had attacked him in his sleep. Still safer than the rest of the tower, though.

When he did finally poke his head out, he was very wary and nervous, much as he had been when he'd first arrived in the tower. At least his had his powers firmly back under control, which made him feel a whole lot better about his ability to defend himself.

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It took Ψiioniic a moment to identify the small human running towards him; Romeo had been the first of them taken for changing, so he hadn't seen much of the boy in his normal body.

But his voice was still the same, and so were his eyes, so by the time Romeo actually reached him Ψiioniic had spread his arms, welcoming the hug. He had to use his powers to brace himself a little, he was even frailer than usual after everything that had happened, but they worked exactly as they should have.

"Romeo! I'm tho glad to see you're okay. I wath worried about you." He hugged just as tightly in return.

Romeo smiled and hugged even tighter before letting go. "I was worried about you too Psiioniic!" He grabbed onto the trolls sleeve. It was strange to him, usually adults were people to hide from, at best to listen to and do as they said, at worst to avoid before they could hurt them. But Psiioniic felt more like a friend than an adult and a month without being able to touch or hold anything made him want to reach out, just to remind himself what things felt like.

It was equally strange to Ψiioniic to have a child as a friend - though he'd lived on Alternia before the Condesce had ordered all adults off the planet, there still wasn't much mixing between the age groups. Kids kept to themselves with their lusi, and adults had more important things to do than deal with them.

It was even stranger to him that he didn't mind at all having Romeo clinging to him. Trolls were aggressive by nature, and didn't generally let other people close to them, let alone allow them to hamper their movements. Not unless they were in a red quadrant, anyway.

Well, maybe that was why it didn't feel wrong. Ψiioniic certainly felt a great deal of pity for the human, even though the human was far too young for him to be considering a quadrant. It didn't even feel like pale cheating on his moirail. How odd.

Not that he was complaining, not in the least. He happily slung his arm around Romeo's shoulder and let the boy hang on to him. The contact was pleasant, reassuring. "Ith everybody back to normal, then? What happened to you after we got separated? I'm so thorry, I don't know what happened. I think I got lotht in the future visions."

Romeo was happy enough for Psiioniic to put his arm around him and nodded, "I saw miss Milagro but I haven't seen anyone else yet. I hope they are all better!"

His smiled faded when he was asked what happened. Tears pricked at his eyes and he used a free hand to wipe them away, glad that he could do that now.

"Molly got me," he said quietly, he hadn't seen his best friend since and he knew he had to go and find her, make sure the bad people hadn't done anything worse to her, even if she tried to kill him again he would never give up on her because they had sworn eternal friendship.

"I think... I think the bad people made her do it... she wouldn't ever kill me because she wanted to... we swore eternal friendship..." He was shaking now and he clung a bit harder to Psiioniic, "What happened to you? Did you stay safe?"

"You're right, the bad people made her do it," Ψiioniic assured him, giving him another squeeze. "Her, and my moirail, and all our friendth. None of them would ever have attacked us, but I think the tower messed with their mindth the same way it messed with our bodies." He shuddered. At least he and Romeo had KNOWN that they were experimented on, and exactly what had been done to them.

How much worse that they now all had to doubt their every thought, wondering whether it was truly their own or if it had been planted there somehow.

"I got tricked into going to hide with my Descendant, but he wath being affected too and... well, his powerth were working just fine," he finished, trying to sound wry instead of afraid. "But now we're back to normal, so I think for onthe I'm glad I got killed."

Romeo looked up at him and nodded, the bad people had hurt everybody not just to ones they had operated on. They would have to be doubly careful now that they knew the bad people could change what you felt, and make you turn against your friends.

It made Romeo sad, because he didn't want to fight his friends and he didn't like the fact the bad people could make him.

He didn't know what a decendant was, but he guessed it was someone Psiioniic trusted and they had killed him. He nodded sadly, "It was scary though, and I don't understand why the bad people did it. Did they want us to not like our friends any more?"

"I'm not sure what their objective ith," Ψiioniic admitted with a sigh. "I wish I knew, because then maybe we could predict it better. I think maybe they're jutht poking at us to see what will happen."

He thought he'd gotten used to casual cruelty, working for the Condesce. She raised it to the level of an artform, and it made him hate her all the more passionately for it.

But these people seemed to indulge in random cruelty, and that was something else altogether. It was horrifying, because there was no reasoning behind it at all.

Romeo nodded, he didn't understand it at all. No stranger to cruelty but usually cruelty came with terms, you only got hurt if you broke the rules. There were reasons even if it was just your boss was in a bad mood because not many chimneys were blocked.

This didn't seam to have any reasons, no one had told them what they had done wrong and they had thanked them in a letter and said it was an experiment.

"We have to stop them before they hurt anybody else." He said; his eyes shining with determination.

"Signless ith starting a rebellion," Ψiioniic told him, a touch wryly. "It just cometh naturally to him, I guess. We were rebelth back home, too." He wouldn't mention that it had gotten Signless killed horribly, and was the reason he'd been re-enslaved by the Condesce. There was no reason to get depressing about it, Romeo didn't need to hear his usual Mage of Doom predictions of disaster and despair.

Besides, who knew? They might actually win this time.

"You should always stand up to bullies," he said with a nod, "The Black Brothers sometimes had to be rebels to." Bad people could never be allowed to get away with things, sometimes they were impossible to fight especially when they were adults and you were just children. But there were lots of adults here as well, so they would have a better chance.

"We have to keep our spirits up and make sure everyone is safe." He punched the air with the hand that was holding Psiioniic's showing him how to keep your spirits up.

Despite himself Ψiioniic laughed at being forced to participate in the enthusiastic gesture. "That'th the spirit," he agreed, lifting his other hand to ruffle Romeo's hair the way humans seemed to like. At least now there weren't horns for him to hit by accident - and thanks to said horns, unless the tower people had done something odd, he could be pretty sure Romeo was male. It was hard to tell with humans.

Not that it really mattered, but he didn't like thinking of all his human friends as 'it' and he didn't want to be wrong when talking to them, and potentially offend them.

Romeo smiled and let Psiioniic ruffle his hair. He was silent a little while and then sighed "I should go and see if Molly is all right, she must be really upset..." Because he couldn't even imagine what it would have felt like if the bad people made him hurt one of his friends. It was a really scary thing to think about.

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Once bitten twice shy

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