Chapter Text
[The screen focused on a frowning Vil, dressed in a plain grey shirt and pants along with a collar around his neck. He complained to Idia about the automatic washing and how bad it was for his skin.]
‘What, they couldn’t have let us wash ourselves? And what am I wearing, a prison uniform?’ Vil said indignantly.
‘You know what Vil, when I take over, I’ll let you redesign those. How about that?’ Idia offered, only semi-sarcastically.
He really would like to see what Vil would come up with.
‘I might just take you up on that!’ Vil huffed.
‘Automatic washing?’ Azul repeated to himself, confused.
‘They didn’t even let us wash ourselves?’ Riddle said.
[Next came Jamil, Riddle, Leona and Azul, all dressed the same as Vil and each one equally displeased and annoyed. Jamil sighed and commented that he now understood what a car in a carwash felt like. Riddle followed along, saying he now got what it was like to be a bedsheet in a dryer. Leona complained that after his ears had been scrubbed like that, his fur was still standing on end. Finally, Azul noted that, while he was all for efficiency, he would never repeat this experience. Ortho was surprised by their reaction, saying the STYX staff liked the automatic wash.]
‘Okay yeah, why couldn’t they have just let us do that by hand? There’s no reason for the automatic thing, we’re not babies.’ Jamil said.
Idia shrugged.
‘I don’t know, I’m not old enough to supervise this kind of thing yet.’
‘The collar’s really pissing me off.’ Leona growled, ears flat on his head.
‘Calling us cattle is pretty accurate.’ Riddle said, crossing his arms and glaring. ‘What gave them the right to do that? They’re the lawbreakers here, not us.’
‘I’m starting to think I’ll need to host a mandatory seminar on why treating fully rational, sane, miraculously blot-free people like objects is a bad idea.’ Idia said sarcastically.
He really envied normal kids, who could invite their friends over the regular way instead of having their parents order them to be kidnapped as experiments. Why did he have to born a Shroud? What had Idia done in a past life to deserve this? Why was he the one stuck with the punishment his stupid, idiotic, terrible ancestor had earned a trillion years ago?
Idia was never going to have kids or get married. Ever, ever, ever. He wasn’t going to deliberately decide to put someone else through all this. Keeping the Shroud line going could be Ortho’s responsibility.
[Leona, irritated, said that the collar was the worst part and Riddle noted it had the same effect as his unique magic – he’d tried using magic a few times with it on and failed.]
‘Oh, so they wanted to make sure no one could fight back against them. Good thing none of Kalim’s kidnappers ever had anything like that, or we would both be very dead by now.’ Jamil remarked, thoughtful. ‘I’ll have train my body a lot harder now so I don’t get caught out by anti-magic stuff in the future.’
There was a sudden intensely awkward silence. None of them ever really knew what to do or say whenever Jamil or Riddle dropped these kinds of extremely concerning comments about their lives. They weren’t even doing it on purpose to freak everyone out, which somehow made it worse. Neither of the best-friend duo really understood the sheer extent of how messed up what they spoke about so casually was. It was kind of overwhelming.
‘Yikes Jamil, I keep forgetting how much your life sucks.’ Idia said, wincing.
Malleus frowned.
‘Jamil, are you sure I’m not allowed to curse everyone who ever wronged you?’ he asked.
‘I mean, it’s a very long list, so good luck tracking them all down.’ Jamil shrugged.
He didn’t seem to take Malleus’s words too seriously, but Idia could tell from the look in his eyes that the fae prince was very much not kidding around and fully willing to take advantage of the implicit permission Jamil gave him with his dismissive words. Judging by the grin Leona wore, he could tell the same thing. Idia would say he felt sorry for whoever would eventually be on the receiving end of Malleus’s wrath, but that would a bold-faced lie. He’d cheer his friend on if he could. Idia was all for a good, well-earned revenge arc.
[Ortho apologised, saying they needed complete data and Idia noted that Riddle needed watching. Then Idia said it was time to show them the informational video about the organisation.]
‘You mean tell me this terrible, supposedly secret, organisation of yours has made an ad?’ Vil said the minute the video had played.
‘Yeah?’ Idia said.
‘That makes no sense.’ Azul said. ‘Why would you even need something like that, if all you deal with are blot phantoms and stuff?’
‘How considerate, filming an informational ad for your captives that you’re about to experiment on.’ Leona drawled.
[After the video, Idia said they’d been researching blot since ancient times, when everyone else was still using clay tablets. Ortho said for further information they could consult the hours-long documentary film STYX had made, which Jamil immediately said was unnecessary.]
‘That is definitely too much. What, is STYX planning to make a resort?’ Vil said.
[Jamil and Leona immediately understood what their purpose as survivors of overblot was here and Leona asked what experiments they were planning to put them through.]
Everyone in the room immediately tensed – Jamil most of all.
Idia silently prayed that what they saw in the viewing wouldn’t make the others hate him.
Sure, so far they’d overall been pretty good about not transferring their dislike of the future selves shown onscreen to anyone in the room. Even Jamil, who had the most reason to hate Idia’s future self and the entire Shroud family so far. But there had to be a line too far and at this point Idia had no clue what to expect from his future self, other than it would be awful. It was already pretty bad, though his future self hadn’t even done much yet. He had no desire to be shunned by the first people he could ever call his friends.