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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"What, and I haven't?" Sparkle... was not completely certain why he was arguing about this, except that he didn't entirely want to see Atton out there on his own when he was prone to getting tripped up by the whole 'something is in my head and they took the Force' mess. And maybe because... screw that. He'd survived Fandom before. He'd been shot at before. And it wasn't like he was in any hurry to get shot at, but...

This felt a hell of a lot like 'Go watch cartoons,' and it was leaving a bad taste in Sparkle's mouth.

"Fuck that. I can get shot at too."

WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE SAYING?

WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE SAYING?

Atton stared at him like he'd grown a whole extra head. One that had a comb-over and dressed responsibly.

"Do I really need to point out how these things usually go down for you?" he said, finally.

Sparkle, meanwhile, was going to square his shoulders and look Atton dead-on.

"Of course not," he replied, lifting his chin. "But, like, this isn't my first dance with Fandom's bullshit, and contrary to popular belief, I don't get my ass handed to me every time. I can handle it."

... Probably. There were plenty of other people handling it, and he wasn't, like, the most inept person on the island or anything. Right? Fuck, he hoped not.

"I wasn't going to go charging at one of those goons and try to fucking tackle him for his gun or anything. God."

"Then what are you going to do? Stand around near the peanut gallery and throw rocks?"

Atton was this close to facepalming. This close.

"If we can get you a blaster, maybe you'll be able to do some actual damage. But I need to go get one, first."

He didn't even have medpacks on him, let alone the capacity to Force heal. What he did have were some pretty vivid memories of the last three times Sparkle had gotten swept up in an island-wide invasion event.

"So go get one! But I'm not going to just hide away watching cartoons while we're stuck here!"

There was a world of meaning in there, and Sparkle wasn't going to volunteer just why that was.

"Like, they obviously don't want us dead, or they wouldn't have brought us here in the first place. So... I don't piss them off. Don't piss 'em off, and don't get shot. Stuff got weirder since yesterday, right? So maybe I can at least look around and figure out what's changed. But I don't want to hide, okay?"

"Sparkle, it's you. The day you don't piss people off is probably the day we'll be putting you in the ground."

Atton was so tempted to just physically throw his hands up. So tempted.

"But hey, you know what, knock yourself out, it's not like I can lock you in the building or anything. Just don't rely on me coming running when you get your ass kicked."

...because he wouldn't be able to pick up on it.

"It's not like I get my ass kicked thinking, 'Hey, it's okay, Atton is going to come save me,' anyway!"

Sparkle... did throw his arms up. Because Sparkle was just that mature.

"I'm not a complete lost cause!"

"Who said anything about lost causes?" Atton snapped. "What the hell are you trying to prove, here?"

This was the kid who had left Fandom partly because he didn't want to keep running into situations like this. Right? Atton could clearly remember a 'this place is screwed up and I'm not made for it' rant or, oh, fifteen.

Yes, but Sparkle was totally a changed man after a couple of months in Toronto and one spat with Lewis, obviously!

Or, you know, he was trying to prove something.

"Nothing!" He was just doing very badly at it. "We are in shit now and I won't want to spend all of it hiding!"

Yeah, that was not even remotely the half of it.

"Like, look, this place isn't playing by Fandom rules it isn't playing by any rules, they took the Force from you and even after they told us what was going on, it still took me spelling it out for it to click with you, didn't it? They copy-pasted the island, and we're all a little fucked right now and maybe I don't want you getting yourself killed either, okay?"

That was... slightly closer to being the half of it, anyway.

"I'll be fine!"

In the long run, Atton being a little off-kilter was probably a lot more dangerous for anyone trying to kill him than the other way around, really. ... Physically speaking, anyway.

"I mean, thanks," because one day he'd get used to people worrying about him, even if he was pretty sure that couldn't be it for various reasons that weren't entirely the first bit of this sentence, "but me, I'll be fine. Just got to get myself back in the pre-last year mindset and I'm good to go."

You know, he was kind of glad Anakin wasn't on the island right now, because if Atton was thrown by this, then mr. I Live And Breathe The Force would be having a meltdown.

"You, on the other hand, aren't going to spontaneously manifest combat reflexes on the spot here."

"So I find some other way to be useful than going out looking for combat," Sparkle grumbled. "Like I said... they aren't aggressive if you don't give them a reason to be, and even I'm not stupid enough to go picking fights with the ones with guns."

This much, at least, was true.

"The hot dog guys, though? Like, you could yell profanities at them until you turn blue and they'd just smile at you like they're on happy drugs or something. They aren't going to do shit."

"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.

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