This was bullshit.

Melmarc stood with a whisper of a frown on his lips. He stood right next to a cab door as he closed it.

"Are you sure you won't be needing me to take you back?" the cab driver asked.

Leaning down at the passenger window, he gave the man a kind smile. The man was on the older side. He wore a front facing cap, the type old people liked to wear for some reason. He had freckles all over his face and Melmarc knew that he wasn't Gifted.

The mana particles in the air didn't react to the man in the same way they reacted to the Gifted.

"I'll be fine, sir," Melmarc told him. "I'll be here long so I can't ask you to wait."

The man paused, giving the situation some thought. After a while, he turned his head, looked around. He was taking in the environment.

Melmarc had gotten a cab and had the man drop him off at the home Naymond had offered him as a place to stay during his mentorship period. Personally, Melmarc hadn't wanted to come here, he'd wanted to go with his mother and Naymond and Alfa and the detective Dantani.

But his mother had insisted otherwise. He was to come here, get his things, then return to the house Fendor had initially teleported them to.

Thinking about it, Melmarc didn't like the possible reasons that he came up with for why his mother didn't want him with them. Mainly, he could think up two reasons. Either she didn't want him to be privy to the things that they would have to do to find David Swanda or there was a possibility that he was going to slow them down.

Regardless of which one it was, Melmarc understood it. But you could very easily understand something and still not like it.

"How about we do this?" The old man was done looking around and was now looking at Melmarc again. "How about I wait here for fifteen minutes."

Melmarc opened his mouth to assure the man that he could go but was cut off by the man's raised hand.

"I know, strapping young man like yourself, all big and athletic, you don't need to be looked after." He gave Melmarc a smile. "But let me do this. I'm old and my conscience just won't let me sleep well tonight if I don't make sure that you are at least somehow safe."

Melmarc cocked a brow at that before he could stop himself and the old man chuckled.

"I've got a kid about your age back home. Grandkid, to be precise," the man explained. "Let's just say you remind me of him."

Melmarc opened his mouth to ask if the kid was just as tall as he was but stopped himself. Whether the kid was or not was not important.

"Alright," he conceded in the end, nodding. "I'll try and be out in fifteen minutes."

With that, he turned and headed for the house.

He would spend all the time that he needed to spend in the house and come out whenever he did. For all the man's kindness, there was always a possibility that he was also doing this just so that he could secure business that took him back to a safe place.

There had been nothing dissonant in his words, but it didn't mean that there existed no ulterior motives.

Melmarc stopped halfway to the door and sighed. Pessimism is the thinking of Ark and Delano.

Shaking his head, he continued to the door. And you still haven't called Delano.

He meant to, he really did. But for some reason he was always procrastinating. It was similar to how he had gone a long time without calling his sister when he had been supposed to. Everytime he thought about Delano, he was always in a situation where he just felt that he wasn't free enough to make the call. So, he would postpone it to whenever he would be free.

Then, when he was free, he would not remember. It was always like that.

Shaking off the guilt to deal with the matter at hand, Melmarc knocked on the door in front of him. He knocked hard and loud, choosing not to ring the doorbell.

He paused. Why?

The doorbell was right there. In fact, he had looked at it while he'd banged on the door. If he was to give an explanation on why he'd done it, he would've had nothing else to say but that he'd done it because he could.

Letting out a sigh, he rang the doorbell.

There was a part of him that was beginning to understand his father. He'd never understood his father's random behaviors, but he'd been happy accepting it. After all, there had been nothing wrong with it growing up. Now, however, he was understanding it.

It took almost a minute before he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It took around half a minute before he heard the sound of locks being opened. Through it all, Melmarc stood patiently.

When the door opened, it was to the sight of a familiar face.

Anji was something of the designated caretaker of the home, designated by Naymond. From the little Melmarc knew about the boy, if you lived in the house, you listened to whatever Anji said. He was the law, ordained by Naymond. As for Anji, he never said anything. He never had any law to give.

If there was any law at all, it was that he very much liked to not be disturbed.

Anji looked up at him, then sized him up. It was not in the way a person did so when they wanted to get in a fight but in the way a curious person sized another person up. Anji was taking him all in.

"You look familiar." It was all the boy said.

Melmarc nodded. "I stayed here for a few days."

"A few days," Anji repeated, skeptical.

"Not up to a week," Melmarc cleared up. "At least I don't think it was."

Anji snapped his finger in realization. "Oh, I remember. You're the tallest young kid to stay here. Can't believe I forgot."

Dissonant.

Melmarc wasn't sure why the boy felt the need to lie about anything. But, considering it was nothing important, it didn't matter to him.

"I spoke with Nay—Mr. Hitchcock," Melmarc said, still standing outside. "He said my things are still around and I can come pick them up."

Anji was already nodding, stepping to the side. "You can come in," he said. "I take it you're not coming to stay."

"Nope." Melmarc shook his head as he walked in. "Just getting my things."

Melmarc walked into the living room. The place looked different. He would've said that it looked different from what he could remember but there wasn't much that he could remember about the place.

The sound of locks clicking into place erupted from behind him. Turning, he pointed in the direction of the stairs.

"So, do I just take it from the room?"

Anji nodded. "Uh… yeah. Since Nay didn't say anything, we just left your room the way it was."

Melmarc nodded. He turned and was heading up the stairs when Anji spoke again.

"Did you get taller?"

The question brought Ark to mind and the fact that Ark had for some reason also grown taller.

"Not tall enough," Melmarc muttered.

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"You grew your hair out, too," Anji pointed out.

That made Melmarc pause and look at him. The Anji he remembered wasn't a fan of conversation.

"What?" Anji shrugged. "Just making conversations."

Dissonant.

Melmarc's gaze narrowed on the boy. Something was wrong. The question was what exactly was wrong?

"You good?" he asked.

Anji gave a half shrug. It seemed noncommittal. "Everyone keeps telling me that I should learn to be nicer and talk to people. A tree cannot make a forest. A man cannot be an island." He gestured vaguely with his hand. "All that whatever. So, I guess I'm trying something new."

Dissonant.

Melmarc remained where he was, watching the boy. He said nothing, did nothing. He simply looked and waited.

After a moment of fidgety silence from Anji, the boy let out a sigh. It was frustrated and exasperated at the same time, as if he was angry with himself.

In the end, he looked down and away, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

"I heard you got trapped in a portal," he muttered, as if afraid of saying the words. "I know you probably don't want to talk about it, but…"

Melmarc definitely didn't want to talk about it, but not because it was a touchy or uncomfortable subject. He had no problem talking about it. It was because the last time he talked about it, he'd lost control and Uncle Dorthna had been forced to throw him through a wall.

There was a high chance that if such a thing happened again, Anji would be the one going through a wall.

"I just…" Anji hesitated, frowned. "I had a girlfriend once." He bit down on his bottom lip a little hard. "She was adventurous, something of a daredevil. Older than me, too. Very much so. Due to one or two things, she got trapped in a portal, too."

Melmarc's alertness eased out of him, he felt a touch of pity. The thought of the girlfriend that Anji once had was bringing the boy pain. Melmarc could feel the loss, it weighed on him, but not heavily.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"She made it out, eventually," Anji answered, voice weak. "But she wasn't the same. She had too much trauma. PTSD. She had to see a therapist about it, and not those ones that just sit there and ask you questions and talk about your feelings. The shrink kind—for mad people. By the time they were done with her, she wasn't the same person anymore."

"But she was fine."

"As fine as any normal person can be." Anji sighed, shaking his head. "She didn't have that sense of adventure and wonder that made her her. She lost it and never got it back."

Melmarc could understand that, to lose someone even though they were right there. The pain of losing someone without losing someone, to stand before the shadow of who they were and know that the version of them that you fell in love with would never come back.

A frown so deep marred his face so suddenly that it was almost an entire scowl.

I don't know what it feels like.

Melmarc had never lost anyone before, not in the normal sense or in the metaphorical sense. He had never been with someone that was just a shadow of themselves.

"Are you okay?" Anji asked with a worried look on his face.

Melmarc nodded, comporting himself and schooling his expression. "It's nothing, just something I thought about."

Anji nodded, looking doubtful.

Was this how it was going to be now? Melmarc wondered. Was he going to be walking around feeling the pain of anybody that spent two seconds giving him bad news? As easily as it could feel like something that would only deepen his empathy, he was beginning to doubt it.

He'd felt Anji's emotion only to feel annoyance at it when he realized what was happening. This pain sensation he was experiencing felt more like something that would end up making him more apathetic than empathetic, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

"I'll just go get my stuff," he said in the end, suddenly uncomfortable.

Anji opened his mouth to say something but ended up closing it without a word. There was something akin to defeat in his eyes, or maybe it was failure. Melmarc wasn't very sure.

He walked up the stairs in silence and took a turn at the top. Without wasting any more time, he headed for his room.

"You're back."

Melmarc stopped and looked back. He saw a familiar face, an older woman watching him with a smile that reached her eyes. Her smile, however, was anything but kind. She reminded him of bullies, and not the strong ones.

He remembered her.

The lady looked somewhere in her twenties. She was pale, as if she lacked time under the sun, pale enough that her brown eyes seemed bright even under the white lights of the hallway. She wore simple clothes, loose fitting pants and a baggy shirt.

It took Melmarc a moment, but her name came to him.

Ariadne.

The last time he'd seen her, she had been rude enough to use a skill on him unprovoked. She was also the only one he had met with the same skill as him. It was funny to think that someone had used [Knowledge is Power] on him.

"You look like you've grown," she said, leaning against the wall beside her. She had a twinkle in her eyes. "You've gotten taller, and the long hair gives you a sort of wild look. It's definitely an interesting thing. You just might be a catch."

Melmarc sighed. "You do know that I'm a minor, right?"

"That's why I'm not making a move. However…" she let her words trail of suggestively. "Just how strong have you gotten?"

If Melmarc hadn't already experienced her rudeness once before, he would've thought she was simply soliloquizing or asking him an honest question. But she was not.

The twinkle in her eyes made sense now.

"Don't—"

His words were cut off as he felt something shatter against him. It was odd since he could not see anything. Even if he…

His brows furrowed as he watched things that looked like shards of yellow mana fill the air around him. They looked like shattered glass, but he also knew that they were not glass.

Ariadne frowned a little.

"What the—"

Melmarc crossed the distance between him and her in the blink of an eye. Something in his mind just snapped. He didn't lose himself to rage or anger, but for a moment, he lost himself to something. The world blurred around him. His attention shifted, zeroing in on Ariadne.

Only the sound of something thumping and a pained groan brought him back to the present. He found himself holding Ariadne off the floor by her neck, his hand wrapped around it comfortably as her legs dangled in the air.

"You're… choking… me," she croaked out.

Melmarc knew. He was very much aware of it. He had tried to warn her. 'Don't use your skill on me or we'll get in a fight.' Those were the words he had wanted to utter before the activation of her skill had interrupted him.

She hadn't gotten the chance to hear the warning but for a moment, Melmarc's brain had interpreted the warning as something he had already given. Ignoring the warning had deemed her liable for punishment.

And then he had just acted without even thinking.

What the hell is happening to me?

He stared at her, looked into brown eyes without even really looking at her. He was half-lost in his own mind. He had been fast, too fast. She hadn't even had the time to react.

Before he could bring his attention back, Ariadne moved. She lifted both of her legs and wrapped them around the arm that held her up. Both her ankles locked behind Melmarc's neck and she squeezed.

"You'll want to let me g—"

Melmarc moved her from the wall he had pinned her to but didn't release his grip. She was light, almost weighed nothing.

Casually, he slammed her into the wall with a swing of his arm. He felt the air get knocked out of her lungs as her legs grew lax and fell back down.

"Are you always this rude?" he found himself asking her, genuinely curious. "Can't you just have a normal conversation without trying to lord over another person or use your skills?"

Ariadne's eyes were beginning to turn red.

Melmarc's grip on her waned. "I'm really curious. Is it so hard?"

"You think you're a big shot now, huh?" she laughed, the sound came out choked.

Hidden within the laugh was something else, a touch of pain. Melmarc focused on it, curious. He had learnt that pain was just discomfort interpreted to the brain.

Shame, he noted in a fraction of a second.

She was ashamed.

"Drop her."

Melmarc didn't bother looking to the side. He knew Anji's voice.

"Does it matter if I say that she started it?" he asked, not really caring.

"I know she's an ass," Anji said not approaching them. "But there's no fighting in the house."

Melmarc finally looked at him. "I'm no longer a resident, though."

"Now you're a visitor, so the rule applies doubly to you."

Can he take me? Melmarc wondered. After going through what he had gone through in the portal and training with Uncle Dorthna and Ark and learning about Oaths, everybody else just seemed inconsequential.

He was supposed to stand above the Oaths. He had killed a demi-god. It was easy to look down on everyone around him even though he wasn't. In truth, the average Gifted just didn't feel like a threat to him anymore. He thought of running into another Gifted and didn't feel fear.

Once upon a time he would've felt caution at least. Now, nothing. In fact, it was as if they were the ones who were supposed to be cautious and worried around him.

Hubris.

The word came to him easily. His experience had made him arrogant.

"You shoot lasers from your eyes," Melmarc said, not releasing Ariadne. When he'd first met Anji, Naymond had said something about the boy melting his head with heat vision.

Anji frowned. "Naymond should stop making people think I can do that."

"So you can't?" Melmarc asked.

"I can't."

Melmarc sensed no dissonance.

"Can you let her go now?" Anji asked.

Melmarc's grip loosened some more, but he did not release her. "The first time I came here, she used her skill on me unprovoked."

"It's a harmless skill you—"

Ariadne choked on her words as Melmarc's grip tightened around her neck. He wasn't talking to her so he wasn't going to hear her speak.

To Anji, he continued. "I tried to help her understand that it was wrong then, but she didn't care. Now, she has done it again. I will let her go if you agree that if she does it again, I get to punch her."

Anji looked at him and Melmarc watched the boy take in all of him, from the hand holding Ariadne up to the hand wrapped around her neck, his sheer size and the size of his hand.

"She might not survive a punch to the face from you, though," he said, barely suppressing a smile. "Are you sure about that?"

Melmarc said nothing.

"Do I have to try and stop you?" Anji asked, suddenly seemingly tired. "Did your time in the portal change you so much?"

Melmarc gave it a very brief thought. Since returning from the portal the only people he had really associated with were his family and Uncle Dorthna. Then before going on a rampage all he'd been doing was training.

His life has been filled with combat and association with people that were actually strong.

Is this what I am around normal people? He wondered.

He had been similar with Thalisa from the precinct. Then he'd met Dantani and wondered if he could beat him. Now, here he was, wondering if the two people here would be able to take him or if he would win.

Maybe this was the reason the stronger Gifted tended to look down on those weaker than them. Maybe this was the reason for their infamous arrogance.

A hand on his wrist brought his attention to Ariadne. Curious, he loosened his grip on her neck.

"Careful," she warned. He could still hear a touch of arrogance in her voice. "What do you think will happen if you face the both of us, [Faker]? You'll lose."

No, Melmarc thought, turning his attention back to Anji and making his decision. I'd win.

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