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1. Kindness

By all rights he should have returned them by now, and not least because keeping another man's shirts for reasons of sentimentality smacked uncomfortably of faggotry. But he hadn't. He didn't wear them any more, because they'd always made him feel like a poser, always made him nervous he'd have to field some obscure trivia question he had no answer to, but he kept them, because they'd been a thoughtless act of charity. No, not even charity: of kindness.

The first of many after a long, long time: the dog, kicked so often, cowering in bewilderment before an outstretched scrap. A t-shirt with a Batman logo on it, and later, more: hoarded up candy in a time of scarcity, shared unhesitatingly; a sweater meticulously knit if ludicrously oversized. A bottle of cheap vodka bought too dearly, when everyone needed a drink. A hand clasped around his arm, politely disguised as an accident, when he was too terrified to tangle his fingers with hers.

He'd long ago forgotten how to shape gratitude into words and actions, and so instead he reacted with a skin of callous indifference or with embarrassing emotion, or sometimes, painfully, both. But he felt the burden of kindness, wonderful, terrible. He would make amends.

He sat in the floor with the wind knocked out of him and his knuckles barked and aching and Leslie cowered (a kicked dog) and Taym offered him a cigarette.

((rolling the other two razz ))

Empty

Sap existed, but Sap was lonely. Sap was one tree in a forest and now.. just one tree. She needed a forest. Metaphorically. She wanted to be with other people... she just needed to figure out how to get them to be with her. Maybe, if she was cheerful enough, they would want her, too. That was easy enough to do. She smiled at the next group of halloweeners and decided to be cheerful and happy forevermore.

Actually. Now that she thought about it. She felt nothing. Empty, like an empty water glass. She seemingly blinked, looking around wildly— and realized she was back underwater. No wait— she looked down. She wasn't underwater. This was a memory. Her heart sunk slightly as she remembered this day. OCTO curled her fingers over her shell crown, looking around. She had followed a couple of underwater demons that seemed to have been bullying another kid. OCTO only went because she was curious.

In the end, the kid died.

OCTO felt nothing, however, and turned around, obviously not entertained enough by the show.

Another change, her eyes swirled, and this time, she was outside.

Literally.

OCTOPU55Y was out of the dreary life she held before. Her hips were swaying side to side like she was used to, a fairly noticeable scar on her knee— from before. She pushed a finger onto her leg, touching it tenderly, kneading it, to see if it felt like her tentacle... It didn't. She felt so foreign there, they felt so foreign there! why was she doing this? She loved her neon blue tentacles. But no, she was going to go up for the hope of being able to see new things. To have fun... Something she never had the chance of doing when she lived underwater. It was always the same thing, over and over, and that was stressing her out. She couldn't take it anymore...

When she woke up, she was on the floor near the pond. Her hand was out of the water. The voices weren't sounding anymore.

All was quiet.

When she looked down, she saw a card stuck to the back of her shoe. "That was... something..."

He'd had a mother growing up. She was gentle when he was sick and stern when he'd been bad. But she'd never felt much like a mother in the way a certain curly haired ginger woman had.

Molly had a bouncing personality, and an innate kindness that his adoptive mother never had. His own mother didn't have that maternal aura Molly possessed. He felt safer and at ease in her arms. She made him feel he could break apart and she'd never judge. She cared so much for others she wasn't able to feel comfortable if given the chance to be shown the same.

Molly had helped him become kinder if only a little, simply because she had shown him the same.

5. Beginnings

B0ss was sifting through some papers in his father's desk, looking to see if his father had happened to hide his birthday present in there. His father seemed to always have a ton of papers on his desk, so B0ss figured it would be rather easy to look and see if his father was hiding it when his father wasn't around. However, he was finding something much darker.

B0ss, for the most part, was rather sheltered his entire life, completely unaware of his family's secret dealings; however, as he sifted through the papers, he began reading some. At first he didn't understand, but he was slowly beginning to see the bigger picture.

After a few long minutes of reading, and beginning to realize that his family was the mafia- which made total sense once he thought about it- he felt a firm, but friendly hand on his shoulder. "Son, I think it's time you and I had a little talk."

It would be the beginning of a dream and a new life for B0ss.