fh_matrix | Just Outside MCA, The Matrix, Shortly After Zinyak's Broadcast, Thursday

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Just Outside MCA, The Matrix, Shortly After Zinyak's Broadcast, Thursday

Several hours of searching his apartment - when he and Cara had gotten back, and again this morning - and then the greater premises of the MCA building, such as the lobby - and Atton had finally found a weapon.

Which was to say he had a broom.

He put his foot down on the head as he stepped outside and violently yanked the stick part out of it. "So what I'm gathering from this," he said, looking up at... wherever that voice had come from, just to make sure he was listening, "is that there's finally someone we can beat the poodoo out of."

They had taken all of his weapons, they had taken the Force out of his head, and they had taken the Ebon Hawk. Atton might not have been Sith anymore, but damn if he wasn't strongly inclined to make sure someone was going to die. Screaming. For this. "And then to finish up, I think I'm going to kick this Zinyak guy in the nuts."

[[ open, though some sp warning applies! ]]

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"So you're going to, what, stand around shouting at hotdog guys all day?" Atton said. "I mean, in that case, you might as well just go eat pizza for all the good you'll be doing. Are you going to scale a tower? Smash up more windows?"

Sparkle, his head hurt enough already. Trying to figure you out old-school deduction style was not helping.

"At least smashing windows got a reaction out of them," Sparkle muttered. "The first time I've done anything on the island that's gotten a reaction from somebody, and they weren't even real fucking windows."

Which was a completely tangential side-point that meant pretty much nothing.

"I could, I don't know, look for other people who are stuck in this thing. See if they know more than we do. Figure out if there are any places around here where people could hide out and talk about what to do about this shit that won't call too much attention to us. Useful things. I'm capable of being fucking useful."

Could you just let yourself be damseled before the inevitable mind control and/or trauma happened this time, Sparks? Because Atton'd had enough people run out to be 'useful' only to completely fail to come back alive at the end of it.

(And then there'd been the time he'd killed one himself, the only way to be safe-- but he shouldn't be thinking that way when at present he didn't have much of an outlet for the usual.)

"You're also a trouble-magnet," he said. "How long have you been wandering around in here? Where have you been staying, anyway?"

Sparkle, unfortunately, wasn't yet at a place where he'd make sane life choices like 'stay indoors and safe' at somebody else's behest, here.

"... There was this bench in the park. And then last night I literally fell asleep in a rocking chair in front of a tiny fireplace in some giant's living room. It's okay, he was friendly."

Sparkle clenched his jaw just a little.

"And I'm not exactly the only trouble-magnet in here." Deep breath. And exhale. "I've been talking to people, too. Eliot figured it was aliens before Zinyak even said a word. And I've staked out some of the best hiding spots if people wanted to get to the towers without getting shot."

Yeah, but Atton was a trouble-magnet with a really confusing relationship with the notion of staying alive. That was different.

Atton just kind of looked at him for a minute. His yelling reserves had been drained.

"I told you, I can't exactly lock you in the closet for the duration or anything," he said. (Though he had a broom handle. Knocking Sparkle out was maybe a viable option he had entertained.) "I'm just saying it'd be nice if you didn't go out and do something mind-bogglingly stupid."

Leave that to the professionals.

"Like sell my soul to the devil or get possessed by a ghost?"

Yeah, that came out sounding pretty flat, there. Sparkle's own yelling reserves were starting to run low, too, and now that was what was left. Go eat pizza. Watch cartoons. Stay out of the way, kid. The grownups are playing now.

"Or killed by a vampire," Atton supplied.

They could probably keep going on this train for a while.

At that comment, Sparkle just fell quiet, scowling a little as he bunched his shoulders up so that they were in front of his neck. Yeah, that one still had him queasy when he thought about it.

"Or bitten by a vampire," he muttered, under his breath.

"And a couple of others, but they slip my mind right now," Atton said. "Weren't you telling me like two months ago this poodoo was half the reason you wanted to get off the island in the first place?"

"Yeah, of course I was, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with just sitting around being fucking useless while everyone else runs around playing hero," Sparkle mumbled, shoulders still up and showing no signs of coming back down again any time soon. "I fucking hate feeling useless, Atton. Hate hate HATE it when the world is burning around us and all I can do is pretend it isn't while I hang around someplace out of the fucking way."

"You're not 'being useless', you're keeping yourself alive, which is pretty much the only responsibility you have here as far as I can see," Atton said. "But hey, you want to join the heroing side of the fence? Fine. Which one of your buddies do you want to get killed, first? That Raine kid, maybe? Hey, Skywalker lost four limbs being useful, and he was trained for it - maybe we can start by chopping off your hand and see where you wind up?"

... His brain had not been a nice place to hang out in, these past couple of days. That was pretty much his only excuse.

... Which apparently wasn't a good enough excuse for Sparkle, because right around the time Atton suggested he'd get Raine killed, that was juuust about the time he found himself wanting very badly to take a swing at him. Compared to his other options, like storming off or screaming or crying, that one at least seemed to be the most immediately satisfying. And the one most likely to end poorly for him.

He made a fist, and he pulled in a breath. And the swing he took was at the nearest wall, because fuck this shit, even if Atton was being an asshole right now, that was not a fight he wanted today. And if that happened to leave his knuckles bloodied, at least it did wonders for that violent urge he had to take a swing at his best friend's face that wouldn't end up connecting anyway.

"Fuck, sure! Cut off my fucking hand, then! And then let's all wander back to Toronto and I'll hold Raine down for you myself and we can punch Lewis a few times for good measure before just taking a wrecking ball to the house and to Fandom and to fucking everything, fine! I don't care! Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I don't care what happens, I'll go eat your fucking pizza and stay out of the fucking way!"

So Atton wasn't used to Sparkle 1) punching stuff and 2) ... whatever that diatribe about caring had been, that thing, he wasn't used to that. It was starting to dawn on him that maybe they were having, like, two completely different arguments here, existing in the same space and meshing all weird.

He kind of remembered this sensation from that weird weekend a few months back, but not the circumstances. That confusion, and the not-being-used-to parts, that was enough to stop him from at least running his mouth with yet another reactionary - sorry, totally valid - argument regarding Sparkle's general squishiness.

"Not really what I was going for," he said, after a beat, because 'uh' would be stupid.

"I don't care," Sparkle muttered, looking at his hand and frowning. That seemed to be the sticking point one way or the other, didn't it? He cared too much, he didn't care enough, he cared about all the wrong fucking things. "Fuck."

He was bleeding. That was great. But at least he wasn't yelling any more. Now he was mostly just... weird and tired. Way too tired. Way too weird.

He imagined here was where most people felt that visceral, 'I want to go home,' feeling. Mostly he just wanted to go get drunk or throw up or something.

Atton let out a sigh.

"See, and I don't have any medpacks on me," he said. "Space, Sparks. What happened to you?"

Because Atton's damage here was more or less common knowledge, globally speaking.

"Nothing." A beat. "It's stupid." Another beat. "Lewis is getting letters bitching about the home."

A beat, and then Sparkle was wrapping the bottom of his shirt around his oozing knuckles.

"I just didn't want to be there, so I came here, and then all of this started, and I just want to get the fuck out."

You're not going to get the fuck out if you get yourself killed running around like you have something to prove, Atton didn't say. Lighting another fire under this particular double-argument didn't seem like the wisest thing to do. Not that he wasn't tempted.

"Join the club," he said instead. "I'm still not entirely sure how this factors into you not caring about anything, but we've been standing outside this building screaming for like five minutes and I'd rather not tempt the bad guys by spilling anyone's guts out here."

"No gut-spilling, then," Sparkle muttered, peeling the shirt away from his knuckles and inspecting his hand again. He was going to just take a moment to pick at the little bits of skin he'd half torn off, now. "I don't want to talk about it anyway."

Just like any guy who didn't care ought to, right?

"Has anybody ever told you you sound really convincing when you use that tone of voice?" Atton said, with a sigh. "C'mon, we'll both grab some fake pizza."

Great. There went his rage-high. ... Actually, it was probably a good thing he was off his rage-high, like, Jedi-code-wise.

They tended to sort of frown at that kind of thing anyway, yeah.

"Okay, yeah." Sparkle nodded, and started back toward the apartment. Eating fake pizza with Atton's company at least seemed like a step up from eating fake pizza while other people made themselves useful. He could handle this, sure. "Let's do that, then."

And maybe he'd feel a little less like doing something irreparably stupid by the time they were done.

Atton looked up at the building - just to make sure the Hawk hadn't suddenly materialized because of their profound sudden lack of an argument, but no. "All right," he said, to be double-clear, and set his broomstick to the side as soon as they walked into the MCA lobby.

"I can pick that up later."

Sparkle glanced at the broom, and nodded. So long as they were behaving themselves, it was fine. Eating pizza probably didn't require them to be armed and dangerous.

"I won't even bitch about the contents of your fridge this time."

Because presumably, that could be blamed on the aliens and all. Sure.

"It's not like anything we eat here is going to have any kind of vitamin content," Atton agreed, "So you wouldn't have a leg to stand on."

Because that was the important part, clearly.

It was probably better than Sparkle's, 'if our lives are in danger and we might die in here anyway, we might as well enjoy what we eat.'

"So this pizza is essentially going to be pepperoni and ham laid out over cheese on a crust that's really just bacon?"

Which sounded like a horrible life choice, for the record. The Double-Down of pizzas.

"Please," Atton said, "Like I'd let a vegetable like cheese on my pizza."

Banter was, you know, easy. He opened his apartment door with keys that at the very least still functioned.

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