abrightboy | Voicemail (IC Contact Post) NEW

A dramatic sigh.

"Yes."

"Then I think it's going to be a while," Malcolm tells her. "Sorry about all the noise. When you finish your restitution, you can sleep in your own cabin again." He pauses. "If, at that point, you ever feel like anyone might be... plotting anything against you, please come to me. Some people here seem to have an insane amount of regard for mashed potatoes and walls." And less for lives.

She scoffs, waving a claw.

"I have been handling plots since I was freshly hatched. I will not bother you with such trivial matters."

“Kikimora… I want you to bother me with trivial matters. I’m here to support you,” he insists gently.

"I can support myself. WITH my magic!" She insists, frustrated about this circular argument.

"I could even protect YOU better."

"I know," he says sympathetically. "But any time you've had access to it, you've proven that what you'll be is a danger to the population. I think that we're going to have to see a diminishment in your tendency to use violence as a solution for violence and your tendency to see might as right before we can talk about a really big restoration of your power. Do you understand why?"

Kikimora scowls, glaring at Malcolm's feet.

"How am I meant to PROVE I can do something unless I am given the opportunity?" She says, ignoring his question to her.

"By proving you're open to the principles that would govern that. You haven't displayed any tendencies that aren't about using power to exact punishment and control," Malcolm explains.

She mutters something very unkind under her breath, scowling. Taking a breath, Kikimora smooths out her bangs and addresses Malcolm properly.

"Then I hope others who have power here also have the same attitude as you. I'm sure I won't run afoul of anyone who could, say, toss me over the ship or throw me around. Fortunate I'm such a small target."

"If someone threatens you with violence or tries to harm you in any way, you call me immediately. You're clever and you're resourceful. I think if you were going to get thrown over the side, it would have been during the ages and ages you didn't have a Warden to look after you at all," Malcolm tells her. "But that's also a pretty long and dry desert from having anyone you could try to manipulate into giving you your full powers back before you were ready for that, am I right?"

Titan damn it, that was going to be her next move. She sighs, irritated. Might have to cultivate an arch rival, even plan a death toll while she's at it.

"So instead of being a threat, I'm now inconsequential. Such an improvement."

He studies her for a moment.

"Are those the only two options in your mind?" he asks.

A pause, before she looks back up, glaring, with some humiliation in her face;

"They were the only two options if I wanted to survive."

"Not anymore. This place isn't like that place," Malcolm tells her. "You need different skills here."

"Until I return to the Demon Realm." She crosses her arms, annoyed. "I loathe this place."

“When you return to the demon realm, what do you plan to do there?” Malcolm asks.

She lapses into an angry silence.

The truth is, she doesn't know. Kikimora has never been a very forward thinker, usually the person to latch herself onto the aid of others with more grand ideas of her own. Even the few times she was able to do something original, it was cribbing off of someone else's answers.

“Maybe by the time you graduate, you’ll think of something,” Malcolm suggests.

"Doubtful." She mutters, under her breath.

“…Then why do you want to go there?” he asks.

"Must I have a plan to satisfy you, Warden?" Kikimora asks, her fists balling up. "I don't KNOW what is going to happen, but at least I'd be around familiar things and people and animals! I would know the terrain and the smells and just...everything. Titan! Why are you so irritating?!"

“I’m told it’s my primary personality trait,” he admits. “But it’s not an interrogation. I’m just trying to understand you so I can help you graduate.”

"It doesn't MATTER what comes after! I didn't get here through any future planning, I CAME here because of past actions!"

“When you took those past actions, were you thinking about the future?” Malcolm asks.

"I was THINKING about clawing my way up to a position of power and authority! But oh, wait! That was a LIE, wasn't it!"

She throws her claws up, dramatic!

"Because the person I most aspired to be wanted me DEAD. And all my planning and work went into making myself HIS PERFECT SERVANT! So NO, Warden Bright, I do not plan for the future, because it's burned to ashes somewhere in the Human Realm, but at least it's less confusing and isolating than here, where nobody LOOKS like me or acts like me or wants to KILL ME. I don't want to go to a human realm, EVER."

Kikimora has to take a breath here, panting, her face red from effort.

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