for mine is the power and the glory

Chapter 01: i pledge allegiance
Chapter 02: so keen, so mean
Chapter 03: siriusly, dude
Chapter 04: daddies dearest
Chapter 05: halloween spirit
Chapter 06: just hearing things
Chapter 07: just punching things

"Forever and ever, amen," mutters Flora. "Would that we all were so lucky."

A bitter lady she'll become indeed, if Malos has her ear for more a moment. He's stiff around her, unsteady and unable to be cocky in full spectrum, but the things he says are still full of such a vital arrogance.

He'd not gotten that from Addam, she feels sure to say.

As if it's your right to be a scientist. As if divine curiosity via experimentation were inscrutably gifted unto you.

Klaus makes a point to instill in his integrated halves a healthy cynicism unafraid to engage with the petty problems of the peoples in the worlds below. His fault had been, by alternate methodologies, to assume that humanity remains basely incapable in all forms and iterations. Meanwhile, the humans are crawling to absolution, gripping their flesh-melted claws into any possible scrap of meaning.

Of all people, Klaus should know. This is how they are. This is how they remain tenacious to the bitter last. This is how they persist to keep arising and begetting themselves.

So Amalthus should be no surprise to him. So Amalthus should be the very best of what he has created, in terms of those that take after the holy father.

But Klaus is derisive, dismissive. Seeing it reflected in another makes him wrinkle his already-wrinkled nose, bare of a helmet or eternity-long hair.

It's about blue people and about short people, Seren thinks. It's about people who are blue emotionally, malcontent with everything that they've ever seen.

Seren's a moot-pointed adventurer, happy to wander wherever their souls will strike the ground. Or that's how Minoth would describe them, anyway. And Minoth has a lot of high-falutin' ideas.

Still, Minoth has a vested interest in people who dare to be carefree. People who dare to throw up a middle finger at God because, actually, they don't care at all!

Seren's chief trait is being happy-go-lucky. Beyond that, they're swiftly-come-justice.

Oh, what a dashingly unbothered Light Blade. You've never seen the like.

"Ashera, my love..."

"Oh? The brat's gotten back in your good graces?"

Dunban's nose is long enough that wrinkling it is properly difficult; the level of derision must accordion the whole thing up to his eye. But he does it, with squinted cheek to boot.

"Our daughter never leaves my good graces. I am always enamored with her and keeping of her best interests."

But Mumkhar appears to be of the belief that children are both insignificant maggots (worms, grubs, what have you) and miniature adults, simultaneously. There's no point coddling them, because they know what they're about, even now. He certainly did.

That's as he professes. Still, it's not that Dunban's never caught his husband smiling with a pure heart at Ashera's devilish little face - yes, he admits it, she's terrible, she's trouble! Why should that change anything at all?

"That's ridiculous," Mikhail mumbles, feeling cowed from his latent flamboyant nature by the flop of a polyester crown looming above his head. "I can't believe he would make you leave the house wearing that."

"What?" Milton spreads his arms wide, nearly daring to spin in a circle. "Lady Flora thought it was hilarious."

And Milton always did love to earn the favor of his mistress sponsor, even if he'd never admit it.

Mikhail doesn't have the patience for hilarious, though - not when he's risible himself, garbed in the irregular stripes of a strip of bacon.

"See?" Milton bobbles over to Mikhail's side and gives him an awkward squeeze, hindered by the bulbous bowl of the mac 'n' cheese suit. "We match!"

There are better ways to match, though, surely? Why not superhero costumes or pirates in the night? Why not Blades of fantastical proportions? Why not cats and dogs?

"And if that's what they got you to wear, I can only imagine..."

"You've got to come back from the dead, my friend!"

And that can't possibly be right, because L never addresses cimself in the first person. Seren must be hearing things - and Seren can't hardly hear, because Seren's been decommissioned. It would only be right, considering the nowhere from whence they came.

Nobody ever asked a star from humanity's earthnight sky to be blessed into a body that could jump and wriggle and yelp. Nobody ever asked this spontaneously-conjured animal to be given a name and nascent associations.

No passport. No birth certificate or social security number. Seren's been over the fact of it in their head hundreds of times, it feels like, with no record of the process. This, of all and only things, they mull.

But they are here, now. They were there, anyway. And though it feels so jealous, so arrogant, to think of L as my friend...

"I can't hear you," they reply matter-of-factly, and turn over the rock of conversation in their mind. Shut off. Gone. Done.

"I feel as if I've been biding a thousand lifetimes, testing me through so many experiences, and none of it was enough to prepare me for this."

Big judgement, from Lora. Big talk, to underscore her point that she's so timid. That Malos is so...not, moreover.

He levels the angle of a gaze at her, not just unwilling but unable to indulge in the human notion of frailty. No, I won't agree with you. No, I won't talk it out. I won't even talk myself up - because you seem to be willing to do plenty of that for me.

For me. As if he's not stuck to her, now. That much, admittedly, is true. It's not like with Amalthus, who wouldn't follow him because he really didn't care. Lora is ready here and now to chase, to snare, to bite.

"I don't really see what the rest of the humans think is so great about you. You're just another one of them. Why should they care? Why should they lift you up, when all it does is drag them down?"

And there Lora is, staring at him with that gnarly fierceness of animals and the people that pretend to be. "That'll just have to be your little mystery, won't it?"

If Malos didn't like being handed homework, well, then he could study up.