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 Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2025 7:42 am
takes place immediately after inflicting fun on everyoneIt didn’t take long to catch up to Cadmium, limping and not yet at a safe place to power down. Even if he didn’t notice the creeping dark mirror following, the tapping of heels behind him would give warning that he was being followed. “Hey evil-doer!” Nectaris’s voice rang out, “In the name of the moon, love, and justice, stop right there!” The voice had even more righteous energy than it had before. In fact, she sounded slightly more pissed off, even though she was smiling very brightly at the captain. There was a lot of teeth in that smile.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 3:45 pm
The boy that limped too slowly to remain uncaught had senses only for hurt, heat, and burgeoning resentment. His steps grew slower as he gained time on the altercation so indelicately left behind, as if he'd used up all his energy for the night. Which wasn't true, he told himself, except for the fact that it was.
His resentment peaked when he heard that voice calling from behind him. Eles halted. He doubled over, the interrupted bend of his ribs screaming at him over it, so much that he had to brace a hand against the grimy brick wall lest he pass out. He had stilled for only a moment. Then, Eles straightened again, and as he turned to face the girl that wanted to finish her handiwork, he threw a rock at her.
Maybe she'd realize her mistake. Maybe she saw him shed the guise of Cadmium, though Eles felt so certain that no one watched him drop the act. Whatever the case, he set aside the ramifications for now and forced his tired legs to carry him to another blind spot — another corner, another alley, another alcove in which he could lick his wounds.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:36 pm
The rock was followed by a yelp, and an even pissier, “You threw a rock! At me?!” The ire was clearly more out of offended feelings than actual harm done. She stormed after his pathetic figure, now powered down and looking all the more pathetic for it. No military uniform or knife readied for his fingertips now.
“What a jerk!” Taking off one of her shoes, she threw it at the blonde’s head. Though what landed wasn’t a pretty pink heel, but a black boot. A familiar, laceless black boot with a violet sole.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:39 pm
The truth had begun to dawn on him before the boot to the head did — the girl that followed him did so with no limp, and certainly no blood trailing down her leg — but the heel that clocked him served as confirmation. Eles grunted for it, stumbled over the force of it, and the grimace in his ribs was more a demand than an afterthought. Then he gave up altogether on making distance and slumped against a wall stained by pollution and idleness. Eles caught his breath in shallow, fluttering gasps.
"Go ******** yourself," he murmured, hardly above a whisper. Flame eyes shining with unmitigated pain. "You ********… ditched me with her."
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:39 pm
“What?!” There was even more dramatic stomping about, though the lack of a shoe made it a lot more awkward and childish looking. Also the vaguely concerned scowls that her face fell into several times as Malory began to lose the self righteous glory of pretending to be a fairy girl warrior. Oh. Oh…so that’s why he’d left then? Well, then it was actually very reasonable, but Malory decided he was still mad. Was mad because he had been even the slightest bit upset in the first place, which was the boy’s entire fault.
Moving closer, she slammed a palm against the wall, inches away from the boy’s head. The other hand passed in front of the fairy girl’s face, and it was replaced by the goth girl’s once more. “No. I ******** did not.”
Leaning close, she hissed, “You ditched me with her.” And then he let go of both magic and chaos, and it was Malory standing. “I’m not as worthless as you think.”
Even though he spent quite a bit of time and a devoted lack of effort toward making everyone, Eles included, think exactly that.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:40 pm
Sometimes, in twilit hours spent awake in bed, Eles liked to wonder about what normal people did when faced with magical people. He figured they defaulted to something cowardly, like running away, or something stupid, like asking for or expecting help from them. And if that magical person just happened to be an aggressor? They were likely making quite a lot of noise or calling 911. But Eles did not figure himself for a normal person.
When that palm slapped near his face, even knowing which starseed dwelt beyond her offensively pink getup, Eles met those eyes with a baleful resentment. A rage that wanted very much to hate, and the face he saw in kind only invited hate that much more.
"You —" he began, and his hands buried themselves in that fairy no that goth girl's clothes as he brought her up close to him, face to not that goth girl's face but Malory's face, teeth grit into a pained and rancorous grimace, "Could have ******** warned me.
"I looked for you. I saw her, Nose Job, and the ******** girl. You were gone. You were gone," he reiterated as he reluctantly released Malory's shirt.
Then pushed him. Because he deserved it.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:40 pm
Malory stumbled back and fell, more out of habit than actual force. Looking up at Eles with a wounded expression that was also a matter of habit, he complained, “If you’d looked around thinking I was still around, you would have noticed.”
He started to flop dramatically down onto his back, but fortunately stopped himself before laying down in grime and ah, yes, broken glass.
“Well, I distracted her for you. So I suppose I’m just really too good at what I do.” Though what he did was a matter for extensive doubt and debate. It certainly wasn’t fighting, at least.
Belatedly, he asked, “Do you need a ride to urgent care?” As if Eles would be going by himself.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:41 pm
Eles rolled his eyes at Malory's needless dramatics, and with a hand braced against the wall, he leaned over at an awkward enough angle to offer his hand without overbearing pain. Already he was reminding himself how he would regret this in a moment.
"Yeah. You're so good. At being a coward. That I bought it. Hook, line and — ow." Eles winced for the dull, formless, insistent pain that spread its claim over his ribs. "********. This is your fault.
"I stabbed her. So we could leave. She couldn't — ow, ******** — follow us. If her leg's bleeding. If I cut a tendon. But I missed." And that, he supposed, galled him much more than Malory's claims of being surprisingly good at, well, anything genuinely useful. He didn't want to kill her, not for something so simple as stumbling onto their good time, but it was as though his muscle didn't have memory for nonlethal, debilitating strikes. Only the lethal ones really came to mind.
So Eles resumed his lopsided walk in the faintly remembered direction of their house, knowing that Malory would sooner ditch him than expend more calories than necessary by walking. Too plebeian for such a splendorous boy.
"Not going. To urgent care," Eles grunted out on his resumed journey.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:41 pm
The admission that Malory was so good and convincing at being a coward was mollifying. Yes, it was good to be able to trick his boy. Even if that meant there was no confidence in him? Well, that was confusing enough to be brushed off and possibly dumped into the garbage. That was fine and wouldn’t at all create future problems that were hinted at this evening. Eles knew better now, and would look for tricks next time. He wasn’t stupid. Neither of them were stupid.
“And she hit you back. She hurt you worse for it.” But the words were lost on that struggling, determined back. Where was he…
Most of the time. They weren’t stupid most of the time.
By the time Eles was about a block away, Malory sighed and palmed his pen once more. Eyes rolling with irritation, more for himself than anyone else now, he changed back into Hybris. This time there was no warning aura or clacking heels to warn Eles before he found himself abruptly lifted by hands that weren’t particularly careful of his ribs.
“This isn’t happening,” he assured the other boy. “I’m not actually doing this. You passed out.”
There was a mirror about half a block east from them.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2025 4:42 pm
Eles didn't care to think about the very predictable results of his actions. He didn't want to acknowledge the surgically accurate statement thrown at his back, the insult of it, the audacity of a boy who made a career out of seeming delicate and decorative. Instead, he told himself it was good to have some alone time. He even started to believe it.
And Eles thought he could walk home, too, at least until the adrenaline left his veins and he got tired of it. Then he'd take a nap or figure some other way to get back. Maybe lay around for half a stubborn day until the two got tired of being mad at each other and Malory came looking for him, or Eles recouped enough of his strength to drag himself the rest of the way home. Then they could fight about it all over again, hopefully a little more sexily.
It seemed like a fine idea. Right up until a merciless knife of pain burrowed through his side and Eles choked on an agonized gasp. Vision stained white, he felt himself dropping out of his body, if only for a second.
A flash, then he was back in it, suffering a torture for daring to stay awake. That battered body squirmed in his boy's grasp while Hybris absconded with him, and among those hyperventilated breaths, Eles eked out a watery statement: "I might, actually."
And then he did, actually.
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