Luca DR
patreon
23 – The Punishment of Tantalus (1/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-16 14:51:55 +0000 UTCAlbert was pondering about the secrets of space and time when the doorbell rang. His mother was out, he was home alone.
Marc’s face greeted him when he opened the door.
“Yo, what are you doing here?” Albert asked.
Marc was not pleased. “What, forgot about today’s session? I didn’t see you at campus, figured I might come here personally.”
He produced something from a pocket. An USB stick. Right, now Albert remembered what kind of session Marc was going on about. Movie night, starting in the afternoon and going all the way to late night. It had become somewhat of a regular thing to do this season since Albert’s mother was rarely home for dinner, a way to fill the empty house. Two whole floors and a garden, empty room and darkness, small creaks and the encroaching solitude of an empty living room. Yeah, he needed the company. It was just that he had completely forgotten about it with all that happened today, with almost dying and with the whole spacetime thing.
Perhaps it was a good thing. He needed some time to decompress from all the magical aspects of his new life, now that there was no more time-sensitive world-threatening event. Now that things were normal, for however long normal would remain. Not long, he feared. Not with the system constantly urging him on. But today could be a day of pause and rest, as even the system seemed to agree by not giving him a daily mission to complete.
Albert pulled the door close with a groan. The bruises were still bothering him, especially since he forgot to heal himself with how distracted he was with the shiny new things to try. Namely trying to figure out teleportation. Made sense, really, and now it was too late to act upon it because:
“Oh, shit. What happened to you?”
Because nosy Marc. “It’s okay. Nothing much.”
Marc wasn’t having it. “Is this why you didn’t come to school today? Shit, man.”
Right. He had been to college this morning, but then he rewound time and by all mean his brief interaction with Marc only happened in his own timeline and not in Marc’s one. Which meant that Marc never saw him today.
“I actually fell down the two miser concrete steps out the front door while I was coming to school. Slipped, hit my head and marinated out cold in the cold for about two hours. My grandpa had to come and pick me up because I wasn’t answering texts.”
Marc recoiled in empathetically shared pain. “Ouch.”
“Ouch indeed.” The pain of PsyOps’ mental attacks was probably worse than the pain of the fake reported injury. Especially since it was much colder at the fence pylon than it was here. Plus some nice flesh cooking and charring via fireball. It was not visible under his clothes, fortunately.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t rest today? I can come back tomorrow!”
“Nah,” Albert waved him off. It was a long walk back to college. And he had stuff to do tomorrow. “You’re here now. And it wasn’t like I was going to rest even if I was alone here. I’d just have bored myself to death.” A lie, but a necessary one. In fact, the last time Albert saw his friends outside of the brief interactions at college had been Saturday. Or was it yesterday when they went to the café? Did they go to the café at all? It was hard to tell with all the time shenanigans.
“Hello? You there?”
Albert shook himself loose of the mental threads that were wrapping around his brain. “Yeah, sorry. Come in.”
There was the warning from his grandpa, Albert thought as he set up the TV and the sofa for the first movie. Marc was making popcorn at the microwave in the kitchen, but had not switched on the lights and only a neon glow on his face was visible, lit by the digital display. Outside the thick curtain of clouds that had enveloped the city had stopped spewing out ungodly amounts of rain, but still hung like a black coat that let no light through. The house was darker than usual. There was wind howling outside, and the yell made its way in through the windows in the second floor. Where Albert’s room was. Ominous.
Lloyd had warned against sharing information about his power with his friends. Even with those he trusted the most. Even with Marc. Hell, knowing him perhaps it was indeed Marc he should be keeping the whole matter hidden from. Marc was known for being unable to keep his mouth shut, although perhaps once he understood the gravity of the matter he would show that he was only a chatterbox with trivial things and not with the important stuff.
It was a gamble.
Yet, Albert found himself with the giddiness and the shakes. He wanted to share his stuff with someone. Someone who was not like his grandfather who, all things considered, had taken the news in stride and immediately assumed his usual mentor position and adjusted the lessons to account for magic in them. No, what Albert wanted was someone he could act all cool and irresponsible with. A partner in crime with whom to do all sorts of fun stuff with his newfound ability. Of course, all of this after an adjustment period in which he got to flex all his cool powers while he basked in the sense of superiority it gave him. Marc was going to sulk sooooo much for not being the one gifted with magic!
Not that Albert was the type to make Marc feel inferior on purpose for his own ego. The ego was an illusion, after all, Alter-Albert loved Buddhist texts said. It made no sense to feed it, and it would make Albert an exceedingly bad person to feed his own ego this way. No, what he would do was to make Marc sulk for a few minutes before offering to share all he knew and come up with fun new things to do together! All sorts of experiments and childish games they could do. Lots of fun.
“What up?” Marc said, noticing Albert’s frown.
Tantalizing. But he should resist the urge. “Nothing. What are we watching?”
His mind kept racing though. “John Wick. We can binge all three and, in fact, I plan on doing so.”
There were still a couple of hours left until the Hazegem was done recharging. “Oh. All three? Do you wanna eat during or we make a pause?”
“Pause.” Marc said deadpan. “You focus too much on food and get distracted. I don’t want you to miss the awesome fight sequences!”
“I don’t!”
“You do!”
It was after dinner that the idea finally took shape in Albert’s mind. The Hazegem was ready to be used again, and he had a full pool of mana to rewind up to seven hours of events in case he fucked up. Which all meant that there was a no-risk plan that he could enact: he could reveal his abilities and in case things didn’t go the way he wanted he could just undo the whole thing with a well-placed time rewind.
