Pinkgothic played:

Dread and Noko

His request to be forcibly kept human had been granted with several days delay, it seemed. No one had taken him seriously when he'd been his pawn, that hideous nightmare to Liska, a tool in the hands of a sociopath. His own whim had taken care of the rest on short notice, arrogance of besting the memories combined with the sheer strength granted by the avatar letting him do as he pleased. No one had stopped him then, no one had turned his own words back on him and insisted he stay true to his own resolution. Now they all preached a different mantra. Now, when he could finally be *their* tool, act on what they were all secretly or not so secretly thinking, now they granted that wish, stole his pendant, bound him, even, degrading him to the very level the monster in their midst himself had been.

They were nothing alike. They would never be anything alike, either, and the symbolic equality they currently shared burned in his gut as a prolonged insult.

Nothing at all alike.

Jagged, broken shadows fell across the smooth stone floor lit with the compact fungal lamps of the Crust Guardian's lair, briefly disturbing Frederick's stubborn desire to ignore their owner with a twang of frantic horror that was carefully concealed. Excess tension bled into the muscles of his jaw, distinctly unwelcome elsewhere. He was lying on the floor on his side, 'thinking about what he'd done' - he didn't want any visitors, even neutrally speaking, and this sure as hell did not class as neutral. It morphed 'thinking about what he'd done' into more of a 'thinking about what he hadn't done'.

By what fluke of nature was this man still alive? Did he want part of a universe that forgave such evil and rewarded it with continued life and health? Three scratches, a few plucked feathers? What a laughably shallow simulacrum of adequate punishment. An excuse at best, more likely a bitter farce.

A motion in the corner of his eye prompted a sliver of revulsion. "Don't touch me," he growled, narrowing his eyes, not bothering to look. "I swear to god, if you touch me, I will find a way to kill you slowly right here and now and I'll make it happen," he concluded, venomously on the one hand, listlessly on the other - both a thick, practised shell around his fear.

There was no verbal response. Instead, the shadow turned to flesh and folded itself into a sit beside him at an arm's length distance, bound wrists held in his lap.

Warily and reluctantly, Frederick let his gaze wander to Dread's face, glaring daggers right along with it. His attention turned inward for a moment, assessing his own breath. Steady. Good. "What do you want?"

There was a definite urge to simply say 'you' as past instances might have played out, but that wasn't constructive. Dread's lips parted from their light smile and instead said: "Speak to you."

"Oh, well then, well done," Frederick deadpanned. "Quest completed." There was no snarl to his voice, his psyche too worn out by the shock that held his system fast from how he was being treated - not by Dread, but by those he would have once deemed allies against him. In truth, he wasn't altogether dismissing the idea that they still were, either, but he wasn't sure if that was simply a calmer, more rational outlook than the rest tainted by his primal hatred... or a desperate attempt not to lose his grip on sanity.

"I have an offer for you." The ex-psychic tilted his head lightly, adopting a benevolent air. His gaze travelled along the form lying passively on the ground, lingering briefly on the barest hints of the tension that was buried deep within that frail human form - at the shoulders, in the curve of each hand's outermost two digits insomuch as they could be seen, in the details of the grimace on his face. "I'll free you if you want."

That was entirely doable. It simply took outside intervention with nimble fingers to properly get at the knot binding Frederick's wrists behind his back, and Dread's hands could certainly do the job. However... "I'm not sure if 'I'd appreciate that' is the right phrase," Frederick grouched. "Seeing as you won't be budging from the point of absolute zero on the temperature scale of despicable or not." A pause. "In English, I'd still kill you."

"I know."

That provoked a response. A deep, guttural growl not quite befitting the fail, human, bound form spilt from Frederick, lazy exterior abruptly dissolved, shoulders having twitched as if some part of him had wanted to jerk itself up and launch at him but last instant intervention had prevented it. "Do you think you're immortal?! You're a sack of meat now, that's all! A sack of meat infected with a putrid personality that really, really needs to be exorcised, you fucking bastard," he snarled.

"I understand that," Dread said, voice still soft, not giving any indicators that he felt insulted.

That, at least, suited him. That he'd taken into mortality with himself, apparently, that notoriously arrogant air where nothing anyone said ever mattered. Where everyone else's opinions were futile to express. The phrase 'pathologically narcissistic' came to mind.

"Don't misunderstand, I enjoy being alive," Dread clarified. "I also fundamentally enjoy being undamaged and in good health, but there are some things beyond one's own influence." Another pause, scrutiny dragging itself across the raptorian trapped in human form. That's what he was, wasn't that so? This wasn't his true self, not like the human guise was truth to others. "The regretable thing about murder is that you can only do it once."

"That's rich, coming from you," Frederick sneered, half-heartedly, a part of him refusing to pay this conversation any heed or grant it much energy. There was nothing to say. He was wasting his breath, technically speaking, and in the past this would have been obvious to him and better executed. The past, where his friends were still undeniably his friends. "Are you begging for your life, in your own special sort of indirect way?"

"Well, at the very least I doubt I can say anything to dissuade you from that belief," Dread pointed out, one brow arching lightly to denote his sincere scepticism.

Silence fell, hateful, disengagement for the sake of spite. Spite was all he'd ever had in light of Dread. Spite, and a vivid imagination what it might be like to turn the tables. So near and yet so far. He yearned to make them real, yearned to see this man beg and cry and scream, yearned so much that it ached in every bone of his body, and yet it had been denied to him all those past days, only to culminate in this awful mockery now.

"I think you should accept that we're not as different as you'd like to believe," Dread disturbed the settling serenity, scattering any remnants of it into the nine winds.

"Bullshit," Frederick barked, only to gather himself enough to prevent an uncontrolled scream of the phrase that followed, instead simply delivering it within a parcel of flat venom: "You're not even human."

"To be fair, neither are you," Dread observed, knitting his fingers against each other.

That prompted a low, shallow groan from Frederick, his eyes squeezing shut and left edge of his forehead smacking itself against the ground a few times. "Just zip it," he growled. "And fucking die already."

"You'd be heartbroken if someone else killed me," Dread pointed out aloofly, unconcealed mockery gradually bleeding into his words now, hints of amusement infecting his tone.

"I'd survive," Frederick half growled, half spat, glaring daggers at a point in the distance.

That prompted a single syllable of a chuckle from the ex-psychic, shifting into a more casual sit, weight-distribution subtly lopsided, right shoulder leaning outward, head tilted the other way. "'Survive'," he echoed. "Like all you've ever done."

"Go away," Frederick listlessly poked those words at the air between them.

"This must be so frustrating for you," Dread observed. "I'm not even in your head and you still can't get rid of me," he chuckled, an odd sadness entwined with those words.

"When I get my hands on you, I promise you, I'll make you regret this conversation," Frederick hissed, still drained of vitriol in favour of a cold, distant, would-rather-just-be-ignoring-you hatred, though his nose was lightly wrinkled in a silent, light snarl. It felt like he was back to losing, all over again, starting from scratch in his perpetual attempt to achieve a victory over Dread. Any victory. A small one would do.

As if that were his cue, Dread tipped forward lightly, enough to be a useful motion and narrowly but expertly missing the threshold where it might be considered a threatening one, and pressed his bound hands against the stone floor, pushing himself to a stand as gracefully as the bound hands allowed. It wasn't much - but Frederick's situation hardly let him judge the motion without criticising his own current slouch in the same breath.

The silence came as a relief to Frederick, as was the promise of Dread's presence removed. Any moment now, the monster would leave and go back to his corner of the room, leaving him to safely focus on his self-pity again.

Any moment now.

"Good," Dread exhaled brightly, voice filled with an odd life. "I'm looking forward to that."

There was a comeback to be made about how that had just become part of the conversation, and how that would slot in nicely with the rest of Frederick's threat. But as it was, it was too obvious, and Frederick's care had just evaporated to a point that left zero desire to get in a last word.

He'd get something far better later.

Much later.

He could wait.