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“Man, I sure am glad that totally crazy and narratively solid fight that just happened is over,” Callias exclaims, lounging over one of the logs positioned around the fire.
“I must concur, and what a great development for a core cast of characters,” Kro hums, nodding in accordance.
Todd blinks, a shiver going down his spine as if he’s being watched, the sheer absurdity of the situation setting in.
Holy shit, can he see you guys?
“Why are you guys talking like that-” he begins, before Jeb cuts him off.
“Trust me bro, you do not wanna go down that road.” Alex enunciates.
Ivohn sighs in reluctant agreement.
“It’s just a bunch of nonsense with lamps and shades,” he says, waving with a soda bottle to prove his point. “Just ignore it.”
“Oh-kay…” Todd says, still a little confused.
He doesn’t have to wait long before Kro and Callias’ bickering draws their attention.
“How does it feel to be wrong? I’ve never known, so I’d like to see how the other side lives.”
Callias’ smirk is shark-like, calm even while Kro is glaring down at him like a hawk. There’s not a thread of anxiety in him despite how they look or act. Subconsciously, he can tell it’s camaraderie. Ivohn is stroking his chin, deep in thought.
A bit irked but mostly entertained, Kro turns towards them.
“Settle a disagreement for us, would you?”
Before he can explain what the disagreement is, Ivohn finally puts together whatever’s been making the gears in his head turn.
“I got it. You don’t get along because of how similar you are. You’re both fiercely loyal and stubborn to the point of inanity, so your integrity to your beliefs, and you hate when anyone questions your own moral compass, but due to your internal loyalty, you’re confrontational about others’ standards of ethics. This sets off a negative feedback loop, where you pick up on the qualities you hate about yourselves, by matter of extrapolation upon your core similarities, and when you fight, it gets ugly. Additionally, you don’t care about risks to yourselves, but about risks to other people, even if you don’t like them, because you guys are goody-two shoes. So you mother-hen each other. That’s why you take care of us insufferable morons. When there’s overlap, you can meld the traits you have in common together and use the traits that differ to kick ass.” He pauses to gesture to each of them as he talks.
“Traditional-prude-stick-up-ass-teacher’s-pet,” He says, gesturing to Kro, who looks pensive.
“Rebellious-outcast-shorter-than-how-short-he-is-fuse.” He says, pointing to Callias, who just looks disgruntled.
He hasn’t really gotten to know Ivohn, but he’s usually pretty quiet, only chiming in sometimes.
He really wished he hadn’t chimed in this time.
“Why did you say that?” He asks, genuinely curious and morbidly fascinated and terrified someone’s going to get struck by lightning.
“Where did the music go?” Jeb asks, thinking out loud.
“I miss it,” Alex mutters, staring into the fire.
“I did not want that crappy psychoanalysis, if it counts for anything,” Kro states, as if attempting to clear his name.
“I think you’re underselling yourself dude. You’re not all insufferable morons. Just Jeb, really.”
Jeb makes a quiet noise of protest, quiet so as to not rock the boat, but protest because he was just called a moron.
Kro leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees, starting to look a little more dangerous.
“All you need is a crystal ball and some cultural appropriation and you could be a great con man.”
“Maybe you’re not all morons, but calling two bozos who not only ‘hate the features of ourselves in other people,’ as you put it, but also share remarkably poor impulse-control, mother hens, isn’t something a genius would do.”
“It’s not,” Kro says, shaking his head.
Okay. Now he’s starting to see how efficient they can be when working together.
“Obviously, I’m not the guy you go to for relationship advice, but if you guys are having some lover’s spat, personally, I think you should get a room, make out, get over it.”
If silences could be alive, this one would be dead.
Out of all of the things that could have broken the silence, he was not expecting ‘Kiss Me’ to be one of them.
The song loops over and over like a ring-tone, and that’s the tipping point. Kro’s bright red, and Callias isn’t much better.
“Witchcraft,” Kro accuses from where he’s buried his face in his hands.
“No offense,” Callias says to Alex.
“Guess love really is blind,” Says Jeb.
“The neighbours aren’t blind,” Ivohn retorts.
“I’m only half-blind,” Callias huffs.
“I’ve only lost half my hearing,” Kro one-ups him.
“Ms.CheMadeMeHateFractions,” Alex says in one breath.
“Gesundheit.” Todd tells her.
The silence that follows is more amicable.
“So everything’s really all good?” He asks, maybe unwisely. “You guys are a century old but aren’t going to release any evil curses into the immediate area?”
Maybe it’s pushing his luck, but he can’t help the hope that seeps into his voice.
“Nope.” Callias says, crushing his hope.
“Ivohn’s not getting off that easy.” Kro adds.
Callias whistles, or at least it looks like he does, and a wolf comes bounding out of the woods. The harpy cocks his head, and it disappears into the grass, eyes trained on Ivohn. Kro exhales in a similar fashion, and a bear lopes out of the shrubbery.
Ivohn, in perhaps the ballsiest move of the night, just shrugs in the face of danger.
“I speak the truth. You two need to get over your sexual feelings for each other.”
He’s barely finished his sentence before both animals start chasing him with a vengeance. Jeb lets out a loud laugh at something Alex said, and Callias pulls out a deck of cards and starts up a game with Kro. As for him? He sets out some speakers and looks up at the stars.
Maybe the world is bigger than he thought, with all sorts of beasties and unexplained creatures and evils, but he’ll adapt.
It is what people do, after all.