Upgrade
Roman was talking to Mettaton about the next school play when Patton dragged him out to the dance floor. Well, he would have had Wilford not taken over the whole thing with a disco flash mob with the Jims. Everyone was transfixed.
Soon enough they dispersed and the guests went back to dancing as usual.
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Anti was sitting in the rafters. Good thing this building was old. It was nice up here. Not too loud, not crowded…
His eyes flared green as he shot up in surprise, the empty plate in his hand falling down into the crowd below, shattering into a million pieces.
Whoops.
The crowd silenced instantly before looking up. He glitched away into the opposite side of the room, further away from his target.
His eyes locked on Loki. How had he gotten in? He knew that he and the Sanders kid had gotten friendly since the Riot, but he was here? And they were just drinking tea?!
He narrowed his eyes and glitched into the chair next to them, almost making Dee upset his cup of tea. Loki raised a brow and sipped his without taking his eyes from the Ego, not moving an inch in surprise.
“Hello. Dee, I believe this is a friend of yours?”
Dee looked at Anti worriedly. “Anti? What’s wrong? Is it because Loki’s here? I cleared it with Alphys and she said he could come-“
The teen’s fingers drummed on the mask in his hands. A fancy white one. Why did that only make him seem more diabolical?
Anti got to his feet, sneering. Dee’s eyes widened, and he was up and holding onto the glitch’s arm in a matter of moments.
“Anti. Not here, not now. We are in the middle of a wedding.” The tone in his voice at the end almost matched Dark’s when he was tense, without the echoes.
A few heads turned towards them. The sharks smelled blood.
Anti felt a ripple as if the air had hardened ever so slightly. An illusion? The heads turned away. Loki looked amused by the scene in front of him as he took another sip of tea.
Dee let go of his arm. “Anti. Please.” He said quietly.
How did a meager teenager sound so authoritative? Was it magic? Anti growled. Another ripple. Probably masking their voices.
“Anti. Please. It isn’t worth it. I don’t want to force you-” Was that a threat? “-but I will. I don’t want their day to be ruined.”
Dee stared into his eyes unflinchingly. Anti stared right back. He could do it… he could get away with it… And then a switch almost seemed to flip somewhere in his brain and he sat down. Nothing big, just something to be noticed- like his motive had disappeared instantly. Dee exhaled and sat down, the thickness of the air returning to normal.
“Good. I didn’t want to have to do anything.”
Then if he hadn’t flipped the switch… who had? He looked at Loki, who shrugged as if he could read his thoughts. He hadn’t done it.
Had Dee done it subconsciously? It wasn’t out of the possibility.
They sat in silence for the rest of the wedding. Anti gave up after an hour and grabbed some monster mead. He did not want to be sober right now.
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Dee walked into Frigg’s, Loki’s bookshop. Loki looked up from the register, a smile almost playing on the corners of his mouth.
“Thank the norns, someone who doesn’t want to buy a bad romance novel. Tea?”
“Yes please.”
He slid onto the stool and dumped his backpack next to him, hands cupping the mug gratefully. It was cold for the middle of May. Thankfully the wedding last week had been inside or they would have frozen.
He took a sip, eyebrows scrunched as he tried to place the unfamiliar taste. “What is this one?”
Loki took a sip of his own. “Peppermint and clover honey. I must say, I’m beginning to default to the Ebbot variety. Golden Flower… has a certain taste. Very pleasing.”
He sipped. “Yeah, people either love it or hate it. How’s the shop going? You said that a lot of people were getting trashy romances.”
“Trashy romances are fine in moderation, for instance Romeo and Juliet, but then they act as if they are actually good. What is wrong with the tastes of mortals?”
“Please tell me you just called Romeo and Juliet a trashy romance novel.”
“I did, yes.”
Dee laughed aloud. “Oh, that just made my day. Here that’s considered a classic novel- a tale of star-crossed lovers who love despite what their families think- glad you think it’s overrated.”
Loki raised a brow. “A classic? Who on earth would think-“
“People have weird opinions on books. But I agree with you. Juliet’s only fourteen, Romeo must be at least two years older than her, and they ‘fall in love’ in one night. Overcoming trials or not, Romeo’s still a stalker. The movie isn’t much better.”
Loki’s face soured. “They made a movie of that train wreck? Oh, by the norns…”
“If you value your sanity do not watch it. We had to in freshman year along with read the book, and it was really awkward when they got to the implied sex scene. It has not aged well, and that was definitely not in the novel as far as I remember.”
Loki’s mouth opened for a second and then it closed with a sigh, drinking another sip of tea in defeat.
“A shame they killed Mercutio off.”
Dee gasped. “Right?! He was the best character in the whole thing- Roman’s actually excited for that being the next school play. He’s either going for Romeo or Mercutio, and I’m hoping to convince him to do Mercutio. Roman does love a good death scene, and he’s always been rather put off by the way Juliet died.”
“And he only has to remember the witty one-liners.”
“That too.”
They drank in silence for a few seconds.
“What do you know about your hypnotism abilities?”
Dee started at the sudden question, the change in subject sending him reeling. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“How do they work, the level they work, that sort of thing.”
Dee suddenly looked uncomfortable, fiddling with his mask- now the usual snake motif one- which sat next to him on the table.
“Well, I can influence people’s actions by voice alone- I chance my inflection and tone to a way that can gradually bring them into a sort of trance- sort of similar to normal hypnotism. If they look me in the eyes I can turn them instantly instead of gradually- and it’s not always a suggestion like in the voice on. I can literally take over their wills, which is why I try not to use that one very much anymore. Yellow glowing cables sometimes connect the two of us magically, which I’m going to assume is either the universe playing a cruel joke or a simple magic transfer for it to work. Neither of them are all that hard either, but the second one takes more concentration.”
“And the hand thing?”
He frowned and shrugged, evidently uncomfortable with the direction the conversation took. “I don’t really know much on that one. I’ve been able to do it for a while- probably around the time the Monsters first came out of the Underground? It was still during school, and I didn’t know about my magic yet. Does it matter?”
Loki shrugged and swirled the tea in his cup. “Not particularly, I was just wondering if any of those had any side effects that leaked out.”
Dee gestured to his face impatiently. “What, does this not count for you?”
Loki shook his head. “That’s genetics coupled with bad luck. I was thinking side effects of the powers themselves. Like, say, they work when you don’t mean to.” He shrugged, looking at Dee intently, who had paled.
“You don’t think-“
“I don’t know. That is what I am focusing on here, Dee. You moved through your abilities so fast, yet they seem to be overtaking you.”
“I- I don’t understand.” But he did.
He’d gone from not having any powers to being able to use them all with a sense of mastery that defied his age in a matter of days- Determined or not, that was bound to have consequences. Like make him lose full control on his abilities.
He bit his lip. “I- I think I get it. What can we do?”
“Slow down. Stop panicking. Relax.”
“How can I when everyone around is forced to do what I want them to do?! I don’t want to go through that again-!” He pressed a hand to his mouth, cutting off his words and hunching into the counter.
Loki softened his questioning, obviously noticing the distress. “Again?”
Dee shook his head, not wanting to go into that topic. “Don’t want to talk about it… school stuff…”
Oh. He could imagine how the teen’s skills wouldn’t work well in a schooling environment, and he had heard something about him going to a boarding school before all of this. And the regret in his eyes every time he talked about it.
Loki poured more tea and materialized a plate of cookies- the same kind his mother used to make when he was feeling down. He slid them in front of Dee.
“Spill.”
And he did.
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Patton was working on some homework when he decided he wanted a snack. Ooh, maybe one of those granola bars with the chocolate chips…
A bar appeared in front of him in a burst of blue light, causing him to jump. Had he just teleported it there? He didn’t know he could do that!
He grabbed it and bit into it. Seemed pretty normal. Huh. Guess that was a thing he could do now.
He gasped at an idea. He could pet so many dogs…
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Logan was bustling around the lab.
“Hey, can you pass me that screwdriver?”
He slid it into the monster’s hand without a second thought using his ropes, walking down the hall from his spot passing in the doorway.
“Thanks!”
He made a non-committal noise as he walked, nose buried in the paper he was reading for Doctor Gaster.
He had just turned around the corner when he ran into Doctor Gaster himself, the papers flying everywhere. He instinctively went to stick them back into his hand when a glowing purple word flew from his fingertips and shredded the paper to pieces.
The two of them sat back and stared at it, surrounded by the other pieces of paper.
“Did you know you could-“
“Did I just-“
They stopped and stared at each other then gave a ‘huh’ and started gathering up the papers.
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Dee wrapped up his story, hands wrapped around the now-empty cup of tea. Loki was silent.
“I guess you know everything about, me, huh…” Dee said offhandedly, as if it didn’t hurt.
Loki looked at the top of his head, wishing he wasn’t looking at his hands and he could look into his eyes. “Deceit. Look at me please.”
He did. Loki took care in his word choice. “It is true that you did those things. But you seem to regret. As much as that doesn’t fix things now, it helps you improve the future, does it not?”
Dee nodded, looking back at his hands. “I guess.”
Loki bit into a cookie. “Good. It may keep you from making some of the same mistakes I did. Speaking of mistakes…”
“You’re going to tell me a story to keep my mind off of things aren’t you.”
Loki gave a small chuckle. “Indeed. My brother and I were playing in the gardens one day, and I decided to turn into a snake and prank him…”