#kalrin

Well, you hadn’t said it in those exact words. Should you have been more specific? Was that not implied? It probably wouldn’t have mattered, given that you explicitly told them not to get a fucking concussion, and there is no way that is not the literal, actual first thing they did.

You feel cold and wrong. The tension in your body has ratcheted up, but it feels like a vice – it holds you in place, unnaturally still. The basic movements of life are smothered out. You try to suck in a breath and you don’t. You swallow but you don’t. Nothing happens. 

You dig your nails into your palms. That works. It doesn’t hurt right. It doesn’t snap you to attention like it’s supposed to. 

Well, that tracks. Of course it feels different to be an ambush predator, you think, trying not to linger on how much you feel like a prey animal.

Okay. Focus. Okay. 

The Phoenix lands. It is some distance away from them, at least the length of a solid sprint. Your heart sinks even as you put together the pieces of how this is going to go. It isn’t just going for them, which means it’s going to make some threat display, and then it’s going to make their life hell. 

At least it isn't just going to kill them. You’d be fucked if it had.

Not that you're any less fucked after they concussed themself plowing through your fucking porch railing. You cannot even begin to comprehend what kind of move that was supposed to be. Was it a jump? You mean, yeah, that sure was a jump. Undeniably half marks for technically executing it. But even you usually at least try to stick the landing. 

What the fuck were they even trying to do?

Seething with exasperation that does not properly cover your growing apprehension, you spin on one foot and you sprint for the kitchen. Your balance is off. Everything about being in their body is off. You can’t go out there and fight like you’re supposed to; you don’t know how to use it.

Your body will come back. This body will not. And you can’t do what you usually do here. You can’t afford to get them killed. 

Unfortunately, if they die without making it off that cliff, it is simply not going to matter.

Distraction. You need a distraction. You could try your room, but you think maybe you have one stashed in the top cupboards. He’s still there, you think, surely. You certainly don’t remember that fucker atoning for his sins.

You crawl onto the counters, swearing violently when you nearly slip off, and grab onto the side of your rightmost kitchen cabinet. It lurches a little, like you’ve yanked a nail out somewhere. That's probably fine. And then you prop yourself up on your knees, pulling open the doors and squinting inside. 

Empty chip bags, metal pan lids, safety scissors, unsafety scissors. A few bright plastic pencil holders of minutiae. You check the top shelf; it is a deadly labyrinth of mismatched Tupperware containers. You don't remember getting most of them. You suspect they may simply grow inside of unoccupied cabinets, like mold.

You don’t see him, however. 

Fuck, wrong cabinets. Did he move? No, you just forgot which ones you put him in. You just forgot. Probably.

You don’t think he can move. You’ve never seen him do it. But you can't rule it out.

You try the next one over. He's not there either. You don't try the third cabinet, because you know that's where you keep the dirt. That and the tent. You don't know why you picked it up on a whim; it’s not like you can go camping. The bird fucking hates tents. 

You consider the pros and cons of trying to use the tent instead. It could work, maybe. Send that fucker sailing and the reaction would probably be the same. But you suspect you’ll need the audio component – you can’t very well shout without giving yourself away – and one glance out the window tells you that it is not windy enough. Not for a sure bet. 

Besides, you don't want dirt on your stove right now. You don't open that cabinet for a reason.

You kick your toaster out of the outlet and crawl across the counter, hands and knees pounding in the grim march of stubborn perseverance. Kitchenware clatters to the floor around you. You are making a complete mess. It is a pleasantly new kind of mess – your dimensions are not the same, and your weight changes your speed. Different things are within reach at different times. It feels more like barreling than it does like scrambling. This is how you really figure out how to move, you think. You’ll have to experiment with how things go in a fat and stocky body.

You lurch up on your knees again and toss the cabinets open. Nothing on the bottom shelf. Grunting, you push yourself to your feet, sticking your head in through the doors, and–

There! 

There he is, a few doors down. His candy red fur, his glossy dead eyes. His gaping, mocking smile. The light does not touch him directly. Even just the sight of his face in the dark sends a chill up your spine. 

For a moment you waver. Some things not even you should trifle with. But – no, Ohnyxx needs you. Your house and life are on the line.

You grab that fucker by the throat and you drag him out from behind the oversize plates. They came with the house. You never use them. You squeeze his throat and you put a finger to his open mouth to preempt his evil whispers.

“DO NOT FUCK THIS UP FOR US,” you tell him. “I WILL PUT YOU BACK IN THERE. I AM NOT JOKING. YES, IT’S ME, I’M SURE YOU CAN TELL.”

He stares past you and does not make a sound.

“DO NOT FUCK THIS UP,” you repeat. “SERIOUSLY. I MAY KID ABOUT A GREAT MANY THINGS BUT I KID YOU NOT RIGHT NOW. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN YOUR TRICKS AND THE AMOUNT OF BULLFUCKERY I WILL TOLERATE COMES TO A GRAND TOTAL OF ZERO. THIS IS NOT A TRANSACTION AND YOU SHALL KEEP YOUR WRETCHED LITTLE MAW AS QUIET AS THE SHALLOW GRAVE I WOULD OTHERWISE PUT YOU IN, BECAUSE FAILING ALL ELSE, I WILL SEND YOU BACK INTO THE DEPTHS OF KITCHEN SOLITARY AND LEAVE YOU THERE, FOREVER UNABLE TO ROT. KAPICE?”

He does not say anything. You choose to take this as compliance rather than him biding his time, on account of how yours is running out. 

You pull your head back out of the cupboards and find that you are floating.

Just, casually. You had lifted off the counter to reach further back. Now you’re just suspended on nothing, with the small, furry body of a horror in your arms. 

Your eyes dart to him incredulously. There’s no way. There’s no way, right?

Wait, no. 

“OHNYXX WHAT THE FUCK,” you shout, staring down at your bent, unsupported knees. 

They don't answer, of course. On account of being busy getting their ass murdered out there. 

Okay. Okay! So Ohnyxx can fucking levitate. You wrack your brain for what this means for your options.

A crazed semblance of a terrible plan emerges from the dark and watery depths of your mind. You don't give yourself time to second guess it. Instead you fly to the window, scanning the field to see what is happening, and then kick your way over to the dislocated door.

You grab onto the sparse remains of your splintered porch railing, hard. They really did blow through that fucking thing at full force, you think, fondly. What a moron. Then again, could a moron execute something so beautiful? Could a moron birth such a catastrophic headbutt attack? Perhaps this is only the domain of a true moron. A moron is one who sees the gates of beauty and shoves with all their breathtaking, desperate might, and completely fails to register that it is a pull door. 

Still, that has to smart. Your body is going to have so many fucking splinters for the next minute and a half, or however long it takes them to die. You hate shrapnel more than anything else; sometimes the skin heals first and it gets stuck in you for hours. At least they don't have to deal with it long enough to process the fact that they're itchy. 

Wait, was this what they were going for? Did they forget that you can’t fly? 

Nevermind. They are a complete moron.

You take a deep breath. Ohnyxx is on their feet. The bird is chasing them, seeking to punish them for their wrongdoings. They’re doing better than you expected, all things considered. It looks almost comical from the outside. 

That won't last. They aren’t going to make it. They haven't done this before. You have no idea if the shock will incapacitate them if they get speared through. The first true perforation, you think, is when the fight always begins to end. Even though you can heal it away.

Unbidden, you glance down at the little red body in your hand. He hangs limp. Mercifully quiet. 

You never thought you would say goodbye to him. It might be a dereliction of duty to let him loose like this, you think. After all, if killing him were possible, you would have long since obliterated this giggly little fuck. Keeping him trapped on this mortal coil is all you can do. 

But it’s Ohnyxx. And it is also your house. Sacrifices must be made.

You bring him up to be eye level with your face. He stares out past you. 

“I WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU PULL THIS OFF,” you lie. 

You squeeze him tightly in your fingers. You obligingly scritch him under the arms. And then you bring your arm back, and you hurl the dark patron, TICKLE ME ELMO, high, high into the sky.

His horrible laughter begins belatedly, as it always does. He is far out of your reach by the time he begins to contort and wiggle and laugh. It is a hideous sound. It is his death warrant, you think, but he can’t resist his nature. He never could.

The bird’s head snaps around immediately. Its beak gapes in a silent howl of outrage. You can see it tracking him through the air, watching him sail up and up, his laugh echoing down faintly into the fields below. Its back and wing feathers are starting to bristle up in warning, the down of its long, serpentine neck lifting in a nearly imperceptible threat.

You are looking for a class that both of you go to, where everyone stands, and where Royvin has carved out a spot with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. Of those there are six. Gym class, theater, art and sculpture, food preservation, the debate side of debate and history, and sometimes (but not always) home economics. Also sometimes band, but you’re not doing this in band class. Out of the question.

Out of all of them, food preservation is the only one where the floor is made of the right material, and she happens to be standing exactly on the end of two long, wooden boards.

If this were a game of clue, then this murder is taking place in the wine cellar. The culprit: yours truly. Now you just need a weapon.

You creep out during the day to make your preparations. First, you examine the boards themselves. They are wide and thick, but they are also old; they won’t hold up to what you need them for. Improvements are needed.

You pay a little weirdo to get you a piece of metal that is exactly two boards long and two boards wide. 

Then you consider the matter of mass. Royvin is heavier than you; it will not do to balance this straight down the middle. The hinge will need to be much closer to her than to you. There is a space under the floor (this whole building is raised slightly off the ground, much to the pleasure of all the clowns who like to scurry beneath it) and the old floor rests on a perpendicular set of support beams. When you check, you find that the beams in question rest unfortunately right down the middle. 

You also pay the little weirdo to make a metal hinge attached to the piece of metal, about three quarters of the way to the top. You have them drill some holes in the corners while you're at it. Sawing through the support beam will have to come as a later step.

After some frank discussion about what exactly you want this thing to do (and no small amount of exasperation at your lack of understanding of basic mechanics), the weirdo gives you a hinge with two parts. The first is the part that is already affixed to the plate. A long, flat metal bar is now extending out to either side, with instructions to attach this to several planks that you don’t want moving – that will keep the whole thing braced with the floor. At the heart of it, there is the familiar shape of something like a door hinge. 

The second part is a metal rod. The weirdo shows you how to fit it into the hinge, so that relative to the metal bar, the original piece of metal turns. You ask if they can make it so it only moves if you step on it from one of the two sides. They give you a look like you are the biggest moron on Alternix, tell you that you should have asked for that in the first place, and say it will cost you extra.

You agree. They say they’ll have it by tonight.

You can barely wait.

It is with incredible, quiet care that you remove the boards and punch holes in the wood. You fit them with screws and affix the metal plate to the bottom of them, and then put them back.

This is the key to a good prank: doing all the steps that can be hidden first. The floorboards do not move at all; they sit there like nothing happened. Royvin stands right on top of them, none the wiser.

You are nearly caught, once, by Hanque and Ishaza. For a panicked moment you think that they are using the cellar as a place to conspire, but then you hear giggling, and – after another moment of confusion, you realize they snuck out together because they are looking for a place to make out, and cannot seem to keep their hands to themselves. This is a stupid and incomprehensible reason to sneak out, but whatever.

You scare them off by making a little noise before they can do anything gross. 

Your preparations continue. You make a little hole in the wall of the adjacent closet, carefully placed to give you a view of the scene of the crime. You enlist an accomplice (one of the students in the age group below you; for subjects like this, you often share a class.) on the promise that you’ll protect them, both generally and from consequences. You put a box of salt and pickling supplies (a wide one, one that can rest four boards across) on the other side of your contraption-to-be, one week before its fruition is due. This is to ensure that people are well-accustomed to not stepping there long before there is any risk of wobbling. It works; nobody moves them. They part around your plan like a river around a boulder. The food preservation room is always full of bullshit, and everyone just picks their way around it.

And then, with trepidation, you sneak in and finally put in the hinge. 

You are not the handiest of trolls, but it is a simple enough job that you manage. The hinge itself only goes one way, and was made by someone far more clever than you. You carefully push down on your side of the boards, making sure that it goes down while the other side rises. It works like a charm. 

You drag a bag of funky flour over to Royvin’s side of it. You leave it on where you like to imagine a big red X. 

You mostly manage to catch the bag out of the air before it breaks and gets bright orange flour everywhere. It wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion – this is a clown church, weird shit happens sometimes – but Royvin might get pissy if there is a cheeto crime scene directly on top of her spot. 

Great news: it works.

The only thing left is to wait. And oh, you wait with such delicious anticipation. You have some very stupid wheels that will be turning for a decade; this will happen so soon that you can hardly sit still. It takes all of your willpower not to burst out laughing in every class you have, thinking of exactly how funny this is going to be. Curse your incredible gift for visualization! 

You are ready three days before you do it. You wait in the empty closet and watch her like a hawk. The first day, she isn’t standing right; the second day, someone else is in the way. But the third day is perfect. 

You give a tiny nod to your accomplice – Candio, you think. He nods back, and once everyone else has filed in, quietly drags the box out of the way.

The teacher calls attendance. You wait. 

“Ishaza Ailmar,” says the teacher. Pretty girls always get their full names read, you think; pretty girls and teacher’s pets. That, or having the first name on the list. Or maybe this teacher is just weird. Being a pickler might do it to you.

“Present,” she says, sweetly. You roll your eyes.

“Jaipes.”

“Here.”

(Ohnyxx isn’t in this class, unfortunately; the list skips over the letter B entirely. Neither is Valope. You know Ohnyxx would fucking love to make terrible pickles in a cellar, but no dice. You hear it conflicts on the schedule with some sort of advanced math.)

“Garlad.”

A grunt.

“Gar-lad,” enunciates the teacher, icily.

“Here,” Garlad mocks back. He’s in the age group below you, too. You like this kid.

The teacher clicks their tongue and then clicks their pen, but moves on. “Jrapes,” they say.

“Present,” says Jaipes, or someone who sounds exactly like them.

The listing continues. You quietly open the closet door and slip out into the hallway. Slowly you creep up to the doorway, letting yourself feel the excitement pounding through you as you wait for the alphabet to tick down. So close to showtime. You know the order these names will go in. It won’t be long now.

“Hanque.” Ah, right on cue.

“Here,” drawls the jock.

“Candio.”

“Here,” says your accomplice. He sounds nervous.

“Olives.”

“Present,” whispers a girl you don’t know.

“Royvin.”

“Here,” Royvin says, sounding bored. She often sounds bored. 

Boy, that sure won’t last long.

“Rajole.” 

“Here,” he mumbles. It’s a funny coincidence, that you are right next to each other, you think, not for the first time. The alphabet itself contrives to keep you together.

Ugh. He’s rubbing off on you.

“Kalrin,” says the teacher. Curtain call.

You wait.

A silence.

“Kal-rin Pyr-his,” enunciates the teacher, clicking their pen. The disapproval is audible. Skipping class is even worse than grunting during attendance. 

You wait.

“Hm,” says the teacher, and makes a mark.

You sprint into the room at full speed. Everyone startles. A few people scuttle out of your way; Rajole is one of them, looking like a deer in headlights, and then looking like a deer looking at another deer in headlights once he realizes it’s you. Royvin’s head snaps around and her fists come out of her pockets, but she does not move.

“FORSOOTH!” you holler at the top of your lungs as you leap, and you stomp with both feet on the other end of the boards, launching Royvin into the fucking roof. You hear her shout.

She punches clean through the shitty wooden ceiling, hornsfirst, and gets stuck in the rafters.

You laugh so hard that you fall on your ass. Everyone loses their minds. Even the teacher.

Prying your legs out from the hole beneath the floor, you catch a glimpse of Rajole giving you a pained look. You are not fooled for a second; you can also see him trying to hide his mouth twitching. 

“I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!” Royvin roars. Her horns are stuck, you realize – even with her whole weight dragging down on them, they’re too huge to come back down through the holes. That has to hurt. You see her flailing her legs, trying to knock herself loose to beat you to hell. Her fists pound on the wood until it cracks.

You lose your shit laughing again. 

She falls back down as the old wood gives way and breaks the floor with a massive crunch. She is covered in splinters and dust and seething, embarrassed rage. Everyone has cleared well away from the impact. You leap to your feet, still wheezing, and nearly slip again in another fit of cackles as you start to run.

Royvin snarls, punches the ground, and gets up with the violent, unstoppably building momentum of a steam train that hates you. Her eyes have already gone from yellow to wrathful orange-red. 

You get the fuck out of there, trying not to let your cackling slow you down. She chases you down with another roar.

It takes half an hour to lose her, when Regius finally stops her in the hall. You can hear her voice, strained from cursing you out non-stop, protesting as you make your getaway.

You love it here.

-:-

Royvin is merciless in picking on you for the next two months. You break five teeth and three thumbs in the first two gym classes. You could not care less. Victory is irrevocably yours.

The story is still being repeated and laughed about. Royvin punches anyone she catches telling it. Everyone has started yelling FORSOOTH! before throwing things. It caught on like wildfire. Your fingerprints are on their souls.