#ranny

After The events of Backfire, Stein is panicking. He needs to take Bruno as he did in the past when he captured Bruno and Nels. Since he still had their blood to manipulate them he’d do exactly that. But he also found something- interesting.

Co-writers & Rooks Used:

Ezra - @lunammoon

(Rachelle) Bruno - @hedgiestail

Ranny - @hedgiestail

Once again to my writing partners pleas call me out on my mistakes-

Stein paced his lab looking at the two vials remaining. Bruno was his only option of the two, more fragile the mind the easier the manipulation and Bruno’s was a sure way. He used the blood linking him to Bruno. “Ah, so you’ve been busy. Let’s see what you hide.”

Stein entered Bruno’s mind, each thought they had probing them. Ezra would be a problem they are the ones who read his notes. He would have to find them, and Bruno was trusted by them. Stein noticed the pregnancy. Perfect. Something to cling to. “Oh Bruno, There you go again, messing up, like the mistake you are. Oh- pregnant again I see, and guess what. You’ll fail them just as you did her. Now let me take the reins.”

Bruno was about to try to... say something. Do something when he feels hands around his throat again.

He knows that feeling... Those chains. Stein.

Who else but him, so steeped in bitterness, so consumed by spite?

His words are sharp, yet Bruno steal his mind and heart. It was venom, not truth, dripped from each syllable, a vile attempt to poison his heart. Though powerless to resist the blood magic, Bruno refused to yield his mind. He wouldn't grant Stein the satisfaction of shattering his spirit. "Stein," he retorted, the word a cold steel in his thoughts. "My daughter is extraordinary – brilliant, insightful, a radiant star. There was no failure then, and there will be none now with my youngest. And this time," he mentally shoved against Stein's encroaching presence, fighting to protect his thoughts, his body, his children, "I have a loving partner, a family that stands with me, a fortress of support you cannot breach." A silent snarl ripped through his mind. "Dare to even contemplate harming them, and I will tear you apart, limb from limb, with my bare hands if necessary." The mana in his blood surged, a tempestuous storm threatening to break free.

"...Mom?" Ranny looked at her mother with creeping feeling of something going horribly wrong, but she can't understand what it is.

“It’s funny truly, to think you stand a chance against me. It’s funny that even know when you and Ranny are at odds you give her such grace. You are a fool and I’ve have to show you it time and time again. You think you can grow a backbone now? People will tire of you as they always do. So feed yourself your fault illusions, enjoy those thoughts because no matter what Roxy, you are mine.” Stein pushed back into their mind.

Stein Successfully took over Bruno’s persistence, though the yelling and screaming in his head was a new annoyance he’d have to get use to. Stein looked up at Ranny, “We will discuss this later. I- need to leave.” Bruno’s body making a swift exit out the room

"Mom, wait-" she darts forward, but Bruno already out. "What in the Nine hells?

•••••

Ezra returned to their room exhausted. They wiped their hand even though their staff hadn't allowed blood to stain their hands, stuck a nail into a candle, and lied down in bed, not even bothering to get under the covers.

Bruno’s body was taken and controlled by stein now. There was little the voice inside steins current vessel could do. Stein wanted to make sure of one thing, Ezra. Ezra had no issue finding out his plans his words, while he needed to stop them from persisting, stein allowed himself to be fascinated with them.

He had used Bruno’s knowledge to find their room entering as they rest. Stein reached out his hand to Ezra, touching their hand to form their connection. Entering a dream state with them. An image of his lab, “A pleasure to finally meet you properly.”

Ezra was asleep and then they still were but they were upright and standing in an elaborate laboratory space. They only saw him twice and once was from afar, but they know how his magic feels. It's a dream but they are still a mage. Lightning jumps from their finger tips, far more chaotic than when they demonstrated their talents to Bruno's spirit friends. "I would say the same, but I do strive for honesty when I can. What do you want, Stein."

“Then I’ll appreciate the honesty, as sour as it may be.” One hand of his behind his back and the other waving around, “You read my notes, call me curious, you’re a brilliant mind from what I saw in Bruno’s mind, you didn’t seem all that confused by it, so please enlighten me what you think.”

"I think you have a genuis mind who had the potential to help many people but you don't and you refuse to because you don't see anyone but yourself as a person who should be allowed agency." Ezra paused. "And your obsession with Bruno is sick."

“Bruno tangled themselves to me years ago, that will always remain. As long as they live.” Stein snapped, “Put aside your notion of good and evil Ezra, as a person, people should be allowed their selfish acts, they should care for themselves and I’m doing just that. This world is a prison in the mind. We could accomplish much more had you set that ideology aside. There’s are plenty of this world to explore but the limitations of ethics and morality are so- contagious. What is the purpose of it, Ezra. You can see the vision of this work, of what I stand for and you sit like a wet dog with your morality.”

"Are you a child or just an idiot. If people only care for themselves and not one another the world becomes unpleasant and miserable for us all. Your research is worthless in all the ways that matter except for two in that it paints a facinating portrait of your psych and that it takes some of trial and error out of breaking what you've built. "

“What is childish is not viewing the bigger picture outside of this constraints. You read through my notes, you understood it, clearly you had the potential to be like me, why did you choose the way you chose, Ezra, why be this defeated, weak version of yourself?! If more could be like me, this world would thrive!” Stein pushed his notes across the table.

"I didn't." Ezra looked down at the notes Stein has pushed on them. Remote control? Possession? Another note that wasn't a note just a man rambling about a lost toy that wasn't a toy. "I didn't chose to be defeated and I didn't choose to be weak. I chose to be kind and I chose to be helpful. They're not the same. They're not even close. I'm not like you because I don't want to be like you. Helping people makes me happier than hurting them." Their eyes skimmed one of the passages that they had had to read twice and see Bruno's old body before they realized was about their friend and not a moldable doll. "Most of the time. What's the purpose of me being here. I'm dreaming, I know that. Do you imagine if you talk at me long enough I'll eventually become as good for nothing as yourself?'

“I had such high hopes for you, Ezra. As someone who could understand, now you’re nothing more than a disappointment. I had hoped to use your brilliant mind. I had hoped we could be partners. All your potential is wasted, but when I succeed Ezra, you’ll see. And I’ll let you have that opportunity had you just submit to me. But I see this was wasted, and now your friends would pay for it.” He had lead Bruno’s body to walk out the room and to his lab. Stein maintaining the connection with Ezra. “Your friends are going to suffer, and I mean that as a promise. They will not be a part of my new world. But you still have a chance. And I don’t give many of those.”

"I had hoped we hadn't heard from you because you had either recognizes how childish and pitiful you aspirations are, or because the Grand Necropolis had swallowed you whole." Ezra retorted, perching on top of a desk looking down at him. "Bruno cares about you enough to ask me not to kill you if I could find another option. And not an option that ends with you suffering. Something kind and peaceful that offered you a chance at redemption. After all you've done to him, that's what he wanted for you. I had hoped if I spoke to you that maybe I'd see whatever it was he loved about you. His hope for you has nothing to do with you I think, it's everything to do with how despite all that Bruno is, at his core, despite it all, a kind and hopeful person. That's not easy. I would know. It's very very easy to be cruel and if you touch them you'll see just how cruel I can be. Do you know why I can understand your research so well Ser Stein?" Ezra asks smiling softly and stepping closer and closer their hands behind their back. "It's because you can't take blood magic apart without learning how it fits together. I've dealt mages more powerful and less powerful than you and as powerful as you. It's my job. You're older than me. There's just enough time between us that if that if you had been kinder more compassionate it might’ve been your job too. Those mages are dead now. Sometimes I stopped their heart. Sometimes I merely offered my assistance. I promised not to kill you. But listen carefully Ser Stein." Ezra's smile thins. "There is no one you can take from me that doesn't have other people other than me who care about them. We will find them and we will find you. And I will not kill you. I will stand back and smile holding my staff as you realise your enchantments are unravelling around you and the knots you tie in blood unwind themself and that just it doesn't matter that I won't kill you in the name of the one you hurt because there are others who will while I smile"

“If I were to crumble so easily, Id be a weak minded fool.” Stein snarled, his eyes on theirs. “Bruno has always been a weak fool with no back bone, had I been captured and tortured I would have killed them myself. But I am no Weak minded fool. I’m sure you get the idea.” He circle Ezra looking them up and down, waving his hand as if to dismiss them. “And had I your job, I’d use your gift properly.” He paused, chuckling to himself, “There are enough people to care in this world. I’m aware of those who care enough, so much that when something they care for is gone, rage bubbles, I’m aware of how it guides us and I’ve grown to expect it. I am not expecting someone like you to understand where I come from when I say this but the simple truth is, I don’t care. Each person who cares becomes another entry in my journals. So care, walk into my home, Let you all fall into my trap. And when the fight ends, the only smile you will see is mine when I write your entry in my notes.” The scenery changed in the vision, exposing just where his hide out was. It was sloppy and something unlike stein to do. But stein felt excited, for the first time in a long time. Stein had met his match, and the may not kill him, but their eyes on him when he ruins their plans excited him. “In another life, You’d see my brilliance, Ezra.”

Ezra took in the surroundings Stein's anger caused him to show. They knew that place. They knew exactly where that place was. They'd been there many times. I wasn't too far away from a place where they played as a child.

What a terrifying thought.

And then Ezra stared at Stein and blinked. "Do you tell yourself that because you know that if you were were taken by someone who looked at you the way you looked at others unless your captor was already on someone's radar no one would be coming for you because you've pushed away anyone who could possibly care and you've haven't made the kind of impact in anyone's life where they would go searching? Is it frightening to live that way?" Ezra stepped closer to Stein. They weren't much taller than him, but they knew that they were. "To know that you are truly alone and have to look after yourself because there's no one anywhere who cares and knowing that it's entirely your fault? Perhaps in another life, I might be as blinded and cold as you are." Ezra never denied this, and they knew that Nyx would argue that they could deny it a little bit more. "In another life you could have had a family that loved you."

For a moment, Ezra almost said that they could have been family and then they realized that they wouldn't have been. Even if at the end, Bruno's rescue had come as a happy side effect of saving Nels, but the fact that Ezra had been willing to find and save Bruno, the fact that they and Nyx had travelled through the Necropolis that was why Ezra had been welcomed into the family in the first place. Perhaps Ezra and Bruno might still have been friends, but what reason would Lida and the rest of them have had to think them as family if not for Stein.

"But in this life you're alone. And I think that's why you're so sure that your words scare me. You're right about one thing Ser Stein. You do make me very angry but unless you're very fast you won't have time to write much of anything."

Stein felt a tug at his lips, listening to Ezra in a surprisingly calm manner. His mind was actually at peace for a moment. He moved away from Ezra and took a bow his eyes never leaving theirs. “May we meet again, Ezra.” With that the image fades. Stein let his connection with Ezra dissipate. Stein was reckless but he felt excited. He knew he had to act fast. He doubted they’d waste much time to find him now that he exposed himself. Stein had to prepare for a fight he was not ready for. He looked over to the possessed Bruno standing in the middle of his lab. “You know where to go.”