Chapter 10: Troubled Souls

--- Nicholas Grimm, Before The Event ---

After they passed their inspection, and had one of their standard check ups with Doctor Holiday, their team each went to do their own things throughout the facility. Vanessa went to watch her TV, Jessica went to talk to the head of security, and he escorted Cyn back to her room where she would’ve asked him to play tea party like she always did.

That’s what would’ve happened, if there wasn’t a tall man with silver hair waiting in the doorway of the room next to his while wearing a white and probably the only face Nicholas had ever wanted to punch.

Cyn gave him a concerned look as they stopped.

The man gave him a smile that was all teeth. “Ah, what’s with the long face, Nicky-boy?”

He inhaled deeply before exhaling. “What do you want, Mathias?”

Cyn squeezed his hand, and glared at Mathias as best she could.

“Ah, is that anyway to greet somebody, brother?” Mathias grinned.

“If you’re not going to tell me what this is about I’m leaving.” He frowned, moving to pass only for Mathias to step in front of him.

“Ah, come on, we used to talk all the time, little brother.” Mathias told him, smile never fading as he tilted his head. “Is it really so bad to have a talk with your big brother?”

“Vanessa and Jessica both say I shouldn’t talk to you.” He swallowed, looking around with the faint hope saying their names would summon one of them.

Mathias rolled his eyes with some amusement. “Of course they tell you that, they want you to follow the rules.”

“I break the rules.” He quickly defended, remembering the last time they’d had this talk.

“Right… Heh, you’re such a bad boy.” Mathias laughed at him. “We both know breaking rules no one cares about aren’t going to get you anywhere.”

“Those… those are the only ones I need to break.” He tried to argue.

Mathias narrowed his eyes despite still smiling. “You’re letting these people get in your head Nicky. Much longer and you’re going to forget you’re their slave.”

“I’m not a slave…”

Mathias’s smile turned sad as he shook his head. “You do what you’re told, you obey their rules, the longer this goes on the worse they’re going to treat you. Just look at your little inspection, they let you fight something you can’t handle and you were squished for it.”

“You…” He swallowed. “You were watching?”

“I’m always watching.” Mathias assured him. “We both know how much that hurt.”

“I’m used to it…” He’d figured out years ago pain only hurt you when you fought it, if he accepted it it wouldn’t hurt him.

“Maybe, but when they hurt you, they hurt me…” Mathias reminded him, before wrapping a hand around his throat. “And I don’t like being hurt, Nicholas.”

“Angry glare. Leave him alone.” Cyn said from beside him as she stoically stared at Mathias.

Mathias’s smile twitched. “We both know you can’t hurt me parasite.”

Cyn’s eyes began to glow orange as her shadow twisted behind her. “You’re the parasite.”

Mathias unflinchingly met Cyn’s gaze before shaking his head with a laugh as he let go of Nicholas’s throat. “Heh, you know she’s not worth it, Nicky boy.”

Shakily he met Mathias’s eyes before glancing away, unable to hold it.

Cyn squeezed his hand.

“Yes, she is.” He disagreed. “They all are.”

“Whatever.” Mathias shrugged as he turned back to his room, (the room next to mine…) “I’m fine waiting for you to realize they aren’t. When you get tired of your little martyr complex I’ll be happy to break you out of this prison just like I did the last one.”

He frowned, not remembering what Mathias was talking about and annoyed that the other said that solely because he both knew Nicholas wouldn’t.

When Mathias disappeared behind his door, Nicholas let out a sigh of relief.

After a moment he looked down at a concerned Cyn. “Let’s… Let’s get you back to your room…”

“Reluctant nod.” Cyn told him, after passing a few more rooms she added. “You don’t need him.”

He couldn’t help but grimace. “I wish it was that simple…”

--- Max Miller, Before The Event ---

She sat in the school office for what was neither the first nor the last time.

Given the way Graham was having a panic attack next to her she was pretty sure this would be his first and last time here.

“This is bad, this is bad, this is bad…” The boy spiraled.

“Look all you’ve got to tell them is that it was my fault and it was an accident and you’ll get out of here fine.” She assured him.

“How are you so calm about this?” Graham asked him before deciding that a better question was. “Why would you do this?!”

“People annoy me, I get fed up, and I lash out.” She shrugged, knowing that there was a lot more to it than that, but she wasn’t going to trauma dump on some random kid from his school. (That’s what the internet is for.)

Either way this wasn’t the answer Graham was looking for as he buried his head in his hands.

She rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Look, just throw me under the bus like I told you to. I’ll own up and you’ll be fine.”

Graham looked up and gave her a confused frown. “What about… what about your scholarship? Won’t this… won’t you lose it because of this?”

She couldn’t help but snort at that. “I’ll get detention, or fix some damaged school stuff, but they won’t kick me out over this.”

“The fact that you see it that way means we should at least consider it.” An older woman in a button up and glasses informed her.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“P-principal Hawthorne!” Graham jumped.

“Jeremy.” The principal smiled. “You can go ahead and go to your next class, I know this wasn’t you. Ask the secretary at the front desk to give you a note to excuse your tardiness.”

Not needing to be told twice Graham gave her a hurried nod as he jumped out of his seat. “Th-thank you, ma’am!”

Once they were alone Hawthorne let out a sigh as she turned her attention back to Max. “What are we going to do with you, Ms. Miller? This is your third time here this month alone.”

She shrugged. “If you seriously want to kick me out I won’t stop you, but we both know the scholarship isn’t just covering my expenses but actually donating a decent amount for taking in geniuses from unfortunate circumstances. Going off that math I’m worth at least three students here in funding.”

The fact that she found that out by hacking into the school servers when bored, wasn’t something she was going to share. (If the school with a tech program didn’t want people getting in they should’ve gotten better security. Kids are mischievous.)

“You also cause the problems of five of our other students.” Hawthorne pointed out.

“The extra security from my dad covers the other two kids.” She figured. “And that’s before we get into the fact that I repair so much school equipment for free.”

Honestly, she didn’t even consider that part a punishment or anything. One of the few things she legitimately enjoyed in life was putting her headphones on and burying her hands inside some machine’s guts.

“What about the way you disrupt classes for your peers?” Hawthorne frowned.

“And the way they disrupt classes with their sexist comments?” She asked. “Or what about when they bully other kids?” Not all of her ‘fights’ had been because they were being idiots to her.

“In both cases it would be preferable if you went to a teacher for help.” Hawthorn told her.

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that. “In which case it becomes he said she said, with the one with more friends or better liked by the teacher winning. And let’s face it, half the teachers are already convinced I’m a problem student.”

The principal kept quiet at that though the unimpressed look on her face screamed, ‘that’s because you are.’

After a moment, Hawthorne let out a sigh. “Normally I’d give you your usual detention but you’ve both cleared out the backlog of our repairs as well as proven that isn’t enough to curb your behavior. So instead I’ll be having a talk with your father about alternative punishments.”

She let out a bark of laughter. “Heh, let me know when you get ahold of him.”

The principal gave her a confused frown at that. “I already have… He’s on his way here now. In fact I believe that’s him pulling in now.”

She blinked, before glancing out the window behind her and seeing her dad’s police car pulling in. “Oh…”

--- Micki Harrison, Before The Event ---

“Uh, where is everyone?” Miles asked, earning himself another glare in spite of the fact that she wanted to ask the same thing.

“Well it’s just Friday, I’m pretty sure Saturday and Sunday are going to have the real turnouts.” Cory explained, sounding unbothered by the question. “Honestly, today is more of a ‘test your exhibit’ type of thing.”

“Shouldn’t you guys have done that already?” She frowned, looking around because when Cory had told them this was going to be a Deviant convention… Well, she’d been expecting a bit more than a bunch of tables and tents that actually didn’t look all that different from a normal convention. (Then again I’ve never been to one of those.)

“Look, just trust me if there were more people here there’d be magic all over the place, we just need to get the ball rolling…” Cory assured them with just a touch of desperation before running to the nearest table. “Hi, what are you showing off?”

A bookish looking man with glasses and a button up vest smiled despite looking nervous, “Oh, um, since the first step to truly understanding one’s magic is learning your affinities, we decided that one of the first exhibits should be a way of showing off each person’s affinity. After all, even if you can’t cast magic you’ve still got a magical affinity due to how magic flows through everyone.”

The man gestured to a pile of papers set out on the table. “Usually we’d use an affinity ring for that, but these pages have a spell where they’ll take your affinities and draw out a picture from them.”

Seeing how Cory looked at them and how Miles was still in his weird mood, she decided to step up for Cory’s sake. “Okay, how do these things work?”

“Well, um, if you were a magic user you could just take the page and push some magic into it, but if you’re not you’d set it in one of these spell circuits, erm, the circles and put her hands in the branching circles.” The man explained, gesturing to a pair circle filled with writing she could make neither heads nor tails of with two circles out of each.

“Alright, but you might want to hold back the ‘if you could use magic’ comment, some people might take that the wrong way.” She warned the guy as she set her page in one of the big circles.

The man winced. “Er, right, sorry.”

“It’s no problem man.” She nodded before placing her hands in the designated circles.

She felt a sort of cool warmth build up in her hands before watching as sparks of electricity seemed to jump from the smaller circles and into the bigger one.

After a moment of this the page in the center developed a black spot that steadily grew outward as it took on the form of a shield with a hammer on it and a sun behind it. “Huh, neat, but what’s this mean?”

“Um, the spell can be a little obtuse since it goes art over fact.” The man told her as he picked up the page and adjusted his glasses. “The shield is the centerpiece so your main affinity would be something like [Guardian]. The sun in the background probably means well, [Sun] or more likely [Light]. Then the hammer… Eh, that would make it… [Metal] or [Creation] maybe… probably the metal since the shield.”

“Yeah, thinking about it all of that really fits you.” Cory grinned as Micki took the picture back.

“Cool.” She smiled back, despite not knowing what any of that meant.

“I already know my affinities but I’m kind of curious how the picture turns out.” Cory told them as she set another page in the circle.

“Oh!” The man blinked. “Are you an Arcane or Practitioner?”

“I’m going to be a Practitioner, but my dad says I have to wait until I’m eighteen before he teaches me.” Cory explained, as she put her hands on the table. “He’s one of the ones who set this all up.”

The man snapped his fingers. “Your Jim’s daughter!”

“Uh, yeah.” Cory nodded, looking a little embarrassed as her page began to spark.

“You’re dad was a huge inspiration for people, he was a major Deviant rights activist back in the day.” The man practically gushed, somehow unbothered by the electricity dancing on the table. (Maybe he’s desensitized?)

“Er, right. Oh, look my thing ‘s done.” Cory pointed out, causing them all to look down at a picture of a field of flowers with several small animals and-

“Oh, that’s um…” The man seemed stunned, though he wasn’t the only one.

In the center of the page was a skull with a rose blooming within one of its skulls. (That’s uh, that’s kind of metal actually…)

“A strong [Nature] affinity with a secondary affinity for [Life] and [Death].” Cory smiled, completely unbothered by the reading.

“Okay, I can… I can see Nature given your garden at home or even the Life thing, but uh, Death?” Miles asked, looking a little disturbed.

Cory shrugged. “Affinities are a little more conceptual than straight meaning. My dad says reading a lot of dream analysis or art symbolism is good for Practitioners to figure out what their affinities really mean. For me I like to think my Death affinity with my Life affinity means new beginnings, like the tarot’s Death card.”

“Okay, yeah.” She nodded. “I can see [New Beginnings] fitting you.” (After all, you were a new beginning for me and Miles both.)

Cory gave her another smile, this one making her stomach flutter a bit with how much joy was in it.

Shaking her head, she turned towards her other best friend. “Alright, Miles your turn.”

Miles looked uncomfortable for a second before letting out a sigh as he gave into their looks and stepped forward. “Alright, let’s do this.”

(Who says peer pressure is a bad thing?)

By the time Miles finished his page he was looking notably worse than before and she was sure it had to do with the large skull with a single eye grinning up at them from beneath a ragged top hat as it smoked on a particularly smokey cigar.

“And… what is this supposed to mean?” Miles asked, sounding somewhere between panic and laughter.

“Um, the Death affinity isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Cory was quick to remind him. “And, um, the eye can mean a lot of things like vision, creativity, protection, um there’s a difference between the left and the right eye… I think the left eye means… wisdom in more spiritual matters? So together they’d mean wisdom when dealing with death or mourning… I think…”

“Okay.” Miles nodded, looking a little calmer if still a touch disturbed. “And what about the hat and cigar?”

“Uh, style, class?” Cory shrugged, before glancing at the man. “Ideas?”

“I don’t know, um… There’s a lot of smoke so maybe that?” The man offered looking like he didn’t know how to handle this.

“Right, right, just um…” Miles shook his head before crumpling the paper up and tossing it in a bin next to the table. “Let’s, let’s just move on to the next stand.”

“Y-yeah.” Cory agreed, before turning around only to pause.

“Cory?” She asked.

“Uh, Miles, isn’t that your Aunt?”

She blinked before looking where the other girl was pointing and finding a dark skinned woman with short curly hair walking with a pale ginger haired man.

“Yeah… it is…”