Chapter Text
“Hello! Is anyone at the service desk?”
Berdly looks back, setting down the cleaning rag he was using to clean the top of the bookshelves. He resists the urge to sigh, to express the irritation he feels at his internal monologue being interrupted. Instead, he uses his masterful sense of composure to squawk “One moment!” before climbing down the stepstool he was using, and heading behind the counter.
Ah, not this person again. Berdly keeps an internal register of different customers that have given him a hard time before, and this… manticore monster has bothered him on several occasions. They have a folder filled with random, important-seeming documents this time, which they’ve set atop the counter and have splayed out. The manticore is holding a phone with one hand, and they appear to be in the middle of a phone call.
With a white-furred paw, the manticore gestures at the spread of financial paperwork, before covering their phone’s receiver. “I would like to have you file my taxes.”
Berdly’s first thought was something along the lines of ‘Sir. I am seventeen.’
Berdly’s second thought is the rapid understanding that he was dealing with a stupid adult. Unfortunately, Berdly has been made well aware that the vast majority of people are less intelligent than he is. His peers still have the potential to change, and he can freely tell them off whenever they fail to live up to his genius, but adults? It’s impossible to get an adult to ever believe that they could be wrong. They will never understand the objective truths that Berdly has deduced through his impeccable intellect, and they will only understand the inferior truths that their inferior brains have compiled.
Some part of him recognizes the hypocrisy.
Finally, Berdly thought about how to actually defuse this situation. This is both a stupid adult and a stupid customer, and no matter how wrong they actually are, it is socially unacceptable for Berdly to correct them, or to tell them an unconditional no. The manticore continues to look at Berdly as he processes this, before he decides to make an educated guess as a way to dismiss them.
“I’m sorry,” Berdly pushes his glasses up, “but if you’re looking to file this year’s taxes, you’re going to have to wait until January.”
The business-like manticore doesn’t seem deterred. Crap. “I would like to pre-file, then.”
Is that even a thing? Whatever, for the sake of this conversation, it’s effectively a thing, since telling the customer otherwise isn’t an option.
Quick, he needs to buy time to think of an answer. He raises a wing, holding up a single finger. “Give me one moment to check our system.”
Berdly grabs the librarby’s tablet, opening up the librarby’s employee app and logging in. For such a small town, the librarby is surprisingly well funded - likely because it’s the hometown library of Mr. Boom. Lord of the Hammer is one of the quintessential works of the fantasy genre within the modern age, and Berdly’s pretty sure the librarby received a large portion of funds from Mr. Boom’s will.
Opening up the library app, it near-immediately gives an error screen warning that the internet is down. Berdly turns the tablet around and shows it to the customer, who’s currently having a minor argument with whoever they’re on call with. “Apologies, but it seems with the wifi down, there’s nothing I can do.”
Now, it’s time for Berdly’s ace up his sleeve. Whenever he has to tell an adult no, there are two steps that he always tries to take. First, he needs to make sure that it’s not his fault that he has to tell them no - blaming the internet outage has been his go-to excuse for the past few days. Next, he always makes sure that he has some way to turn that into a ‘No, but…’ as a way to evade their negative attention.
“However, if you’d like to get your, er, taxes ready now, I believe we have a book that covers the necessary steps.” Berdly pushes his glasses up again, and it takes significant effort to prevent a smug grin from climbing onto his face. A flawless plan executed perfectly, as always.
The manticore ignores Berdly for a moment, talking more on the phone, before staring at Berdly. “Why can’t you just do it, then?”
Drat! It is as if a dreadful black wind blasted Berdly back, as he grits his teeth in surprise and determination. This foe is so stupid that they’re brilliant!
Berdly tries not to think of how relieved he was in his dream, when his peers told him that he didn’t need to be smart. A scenario where he could be dumb without judgement. He refuses to allow himself that indulgence. That was a dangerous dream, encouraging him to let his guard down like that.
He was treating this customer like a random encounter, but truly, this was like a miniboss from Dustbourne, and he parried before the boss attacked. In his haste to defend himself, he has left himself completely defenseless!
No, don’t panic. Panic is the enemy. Panicking is how a single mistake spirals into a game over. This can still be salvaged. He just has to give a valid reason as to why he can’t do this right now, and to give the customer a solution.
He spots the time on his tablet. It’s about fifteen minutes until close, now. That could work? He decides to try it.
Berdly dons his best customer service voice, like a knight in shining armor raising a shield. “Unfortunately, we will be closing soon, and we here at the Hometown Librarby cannot help you file at this time. If you’d like, you may check that book on taxes out and take it home, so you can file them yourself?”
The Manticore squints at Berdly, before muttering “Useless,” and walking out the door. Berdly’s heart beats three, six times before he lets out a breath.
Not ideal, but they are gone and that is all that matters right now.
After confirming that no one else was within the librarby, Berdly begins some of the final steps of his closing routine. He pulls out the weekly closing checklist for cleaning tasks, and he marks down that he has finished wiping the top of the bookshelves. He always gets things done as early as he is allowed to do so - nominally because it makes him seem prompt and punctual, but partially out of boredom. It’s especially out of boredom this week, given that the internet has been down for days now.
Normally, he works alone. Berdly’s not sure if that’s even legal, but if it isn’t, no one seems to mind. It’s rare to have an evening with two volunteers, and unfortunately most of the other volunteers here are as competent as most of the library visitors are literate.
Which is to say, barely.
Yesterday’s volunteer just drew a line through the checklist rather than filling everything out, and Berdly’s sure that he didn’t actually do the once-per-week cleaning tasks. Ugh. That Know Cone sure knows how to piss him off, but, at least the missed task isn’t too arduous.
Berdly grabs an electronic-safe cleaning rag from the mop closet, and heads to the server room. Stepping through the computer lab, he can’t help but remember that strange dream he had. He’s not the type of person to fall asleep in the middle of the day - he strictly adheres to his sleep schedule, for a well-rested mind is a well-cared for mind. He didn’t even feel rested afterwards.
Of course, there was also the fact that someone apparently robbed the computer lab shortly after the study session ended. Officer Undyne mentioned that a band of thieves escaped that same day, and that she would be on the case. The room still feels emptier than normal, however. Probably because his dream seemingly took the environment around him to make up the landscape of that strange dream city, and now key pieces of that environment are now gone.
Berdly blinks, and refocuses. That customer must have ratted him more than he initially assumed.
Sometimes, Berdly wishes that he had a HUD like a video game character, a way to see what exactly is going on with him. As complicated as his feelings are on The Whims, how helpful would it be to see an affection meter with someone? How helpful would it be to see pop-ups whenever someone’s attitude with him increased or decreased, and vice versa? How helpful would it be to get a print-out list of everything that’s wrong with him, and why?
Berdly catches himself before he succumbs to this tangent. Bearing such an unfathomably large cranium is a curse as much as it is a blessing, and he must corral his thoughts, keep his mind focused on the task at hand lest he be consumed by his own genius.
Truly, he is suffering more than anyone else he knows, in this moment.
Berdly focuses once more on his task, holding the microfiber cloth as he prepares to wipe down the librarby’s servers. A little part of his mind is screaming at him to be careful, as he approaches the closet door. Sure, his dream started with some b-list horror movie villain kicking open the server room’s door, only to use a large sword to stab the ground… but that was only a dream. There’s only one person in town who could appear out of the shadows with an anime sword, and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t done anything to piss off Mayor Holiday recently. Berdly huffs, there’s nothing to be scared of.
He extends a wing, and turns the handle. The light from the rest of the room doesn’t make it into the server room closet, leaving it filled with darkness. Fumbling with his phone, he turns on his flashlight, casting light into shadow.
The room doesn’t look as dusty as it normally does after a week without cleaning. Perhaps that Know Cone - Berdly vaguely remembers his name as Conner? Connel? Something like that - did actually clean this room, and he merely forgot to write it down?
Then again, this is the same person who keeps putting cleaner on the microfiber rags and ruining them, so Berdly should redo everything just in case.
Stepping further into the room, Berdly feels as his talons slip partially into a crack on the floor. Berdly freezes, before aiming his phone’s light down and examining it.
A thin, narrow slit in the floor. The gap is only a few milimeters wide, about eight to ten centimeters long? (Berdly internally prides himself on instinctually defaulting to the intellectual’s measuring system, rather than that inferior measuring system based on the lengths of human body parts).
His smugness forms a shield to hide the nervous part of himself away from the rest of his mind, the part that’s screaming it’s real, it’s all real!
The part that’s screaming you nearly ended the world.
Berdly tells himself to relax, that surely there must be a perfectly logical explanation for this. It doesn’t look like a crack - the wound in the earth is too precise, too artificial to be the result of damage.
That creature that burst out of the closet couldn’t have had the precision to make this cut, right? It would have shattered the concrete, split the earth with its fury.
More likely, this was a way to run some wires under the building, and it’s just something he hasn’t noticed before. It’s rare that something slips past his bespectacled gaze, but he is equally as humble as he is intelligent. Sometimes, Berdly gets something wrong! A shocking development, sure, but that is the tragic truth.
That must be the tragic truth here.
Berdly takes his phone light, and shines it down into the hole. He can’t see the bottom. That means it goes into the foundation. Surely, that must be the case.
With this mystery solved, Berdly pulls away from this strange hole, and returns to the task of dusting the server racks, even as a part of his mind refuses to look away from the black mark in the libarby’s floor.
Berdly closed the door leading into the lobby of his apartment complex. Honestly, he’s not sure why it’s even called that - he finds it all to be quite simple, really.
This building isn’t the nicest. The lobby smells like cigarette smoke, and the elevator has been out of order all week. His mother hasn’t been happy about that.
He plants his talons on the rickety metal of the staircase, as he begins the winding walk up to the fifth floor. The stairs are metal grates, and Berdly is careful to avoid getting his talons stuck again. Some of his other classmates live here as well, but he doubts that he’ll run into MK or Snowy tonight - it’s about nine in the evening now, and the only other student he’s seen out and about at this hour is Susan.
He doesn’t know why his heart has turned fond of her recently. She was a strong, gamer woman in his dreams, but he doubts that would be true in his day to day life. Even despite that, there’s something about her that seems inexplicably alluring to him. Something about her that demands respect, even if nothing she has ever done would seemingly deserve such an honor. He can’t help himself but to honor that, using her full name to show his own respect to her. He would use her last name too, but he’s somehow never noted what it was. He’ll have to pay more attention, this is critical information that he’s going without!
Unconsciously, Berdly was wrestling with how he saw her. Why have his feelings for her grown so rapidly, based entirely on a dream? Some part of him insisted that there was no way that experience could be a dream. Why does the sight of a power cord put fear into his heart now? Why does he feel like he’s rejecting a part of himself, more than usual?
Some part of him recognized that he didn’t want her, he wanted to be her, and Berdly’s conscious self rejected that conclusion out of hand.
As he climbs to the fifth floor, he sees that his neighbor across the hall is sitting on a plastic lawn chair, smoking a cigarette. The pink-purple gut of the drake is barely contained by a white sleeveless shirt, stained and with a large hole right next to where a mammal would have their belly button. Berdly tries to ignore the man, but his eyes follow the drake’s black claws as they curl up to the man’s maw. He can’t ignore the sharp, yellowed teeth that peel back as the man pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, nor can he ignore the plume of smoke that he forces out of his mouth.
Like a true dragon.
Berdly tries to walk past him, to turn to his own apartment door, but he makes the mistake of turning back to look at the man. As he does so, the bald drake speaks.
“Hmmmm… You’re one of my brat’s faggot friends, right?”
Berdly freezes. His mind races, trying to find a way out of this. Whatever he does, he cannot respond to being called… that.
He panics. “Um. Yes sir.”
Angel above, Berdly. He berates himself for the slipup, but his composure is leaking.
In the boss battle of life, he’s been hit with dozens of debuffs, and his normal erudition is failing him! He wishes his life were a video game - the kind where you can take as long as you’d like to find the right solution, where any foe can be defeated if only you deplete their hit points.
His life isn’t a game, as far as he knows. There’s no way out of this trap. Social convention is as effective a net as any other.
The drake sits up, pulling out arms as thick as his waist from where they had been resting behind the lawn chair, and the dragon’s gut recedes as he slouches forward instead of back. “Good. Good. Come closer now, Bluebird.” Shadows cover the man’s eyes as he leans in further. “I don’t bite.” He chuckles as if he were repeating an oft-used joke.
Berdly, against his better judgement, stepped forward. If there was no way out other than through, then so be it. His wisdom shall burn as a torch, so that his light may guide him through the darkest night.
The man reaches out, hesitates for half a second, before grabbing Berdly’s shoulder. He shivers in place, feeling the dull, bear-like black claws press into his back. “You seem like a good kid. Tell me now, son.” He pulls Berdly even closer. “Has my brat been showing up to class?”
He gulps. Berdly should tell the truth, right? However, if he had skipped class, his mother would probably actually kill him. Or, worse, take away his computer! Susan’s father seems to be just as much of a delinquent as she is… but he will try to defend her honor.
“She… she, erm, I saw Susan in class yesterday! Not today, but, well, we don’t exactly have classes on Saturday.”
“Oh? That’s nice.” His smile grows sharper, as he spins the lit cigarette in his claws, before bringing his other hand close to Berdly’s right shoulder. The ash from the cigarette drips onto his uniform. The man was looking at Berdly like an artist might appraise a canvas.
“I’ll have to try that one out on the kid next time. That brat hates nothing more than when I ‘mess up’ that name, geheheh…” What? Oh Angel, was his attempt at respect truly something she detested? Does Susie get treated like this every time she heads home? Berdly hopes not. He hopes that this is just the kind of humor their family enjoys, and that he isn’t truly trying to threaten Berdly.
Berdly knows that he’s wrong, for once.
“So she was there for class at least…” The man’s tongue runs over his yellowed teeth, like a predator sizing up its next meal. “Now, featherhead, there’s something very important I want you to tell me.”
He breathes out, and Berdly can smell the smokey rot from his mouth. “I’m nothing but a concerned father, you see. The brat has found someone else to mooch off of, it seems. The little shit tries this stunt every now and again…” The man squeezes Berdly’s shoulder tighter, the claws pressing hard into his back. “It never ends well for anyone, geheheh. Why don’t you just spare everyone a little pain, and tell me who she might be with right now?”
Kris. It has to be Kris, right? The two of them have been inseparable ever since Susie skipped class with them on Thursday. Still, Berdly would rather get an unforgivable A- than tell this man something about Susie. It doesn’t take much for Berdly to deduce that she would prefer if nothing was shared with her father.
Berdly’s gaze hardens as he musters all of his willpower, and he tries his best to keep his voice firm. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not actually that close to her.”
With mounting dread, Berdly watches as the cigarette slowly draws closer to him, before pressing into his shoulder. The heat quickly turns into a prolonged flash of pain, flaring like a star as different muscles cried out in pain. He grit his beak, but refused to give the man the satisfaction of seeing his pain.
He seemed to find Berdly’s endurance amusing, if anything. Berdly couldn’t even find a hint of sadism or cruelty in his expression, merely a mild curiosity.
“Curious, then. Someone without scales in the game wouldn’t just stand here and take it. Most ‘folk wouldn’t give a shit, and by now they’d have learned how to fear. You, though, you think you’re fighting for something.”
The pain flares like a dying star. Berdly can feel the heat directly against his feathers now, and his knees feel like they’re about to give out. He refuses to show any weakness, however, and he remains firm. Apathy has killed more people than any weapon, and if her father was willing to do this to a stranger… he will remain firm.
Underneath all the intellectualism and bravado, underneath the insults and desperate attempts to gain approval through pursuits of the mind, this is who Berdly is. For just a single moment, who he could be shines brighter than who he is.
“You’re staying quiet, eh? Bad idea, kid. Quiet people piss me off.” The man growls, pressing his weight into Berdly as he stands. “Do you want to see me mad, kid?”
Berdly knew there was no good option here. Staying quiet would only piss him off more. He refused to crumple and give in. Politeness seems to have done nothing, no, less than nothing.
What would Susie do?
He… had never considered that before. He would have laughed at himself for even considering that question seriously earlier in the week. Berdly would have stomped out any notion that her mind, that Susie’s delinquent behavior, had any value at all.
Susie has been shaped by her parentage too, hasn’t she? She’s become the kind of person that could live under this wyrm, just as he had to become an intellectual phoenix to meet his own expectations.
So… what would Susie do?
Berdly lets his gaze become dulled, hides the light behind his eyes, as he tries to act as unbothered as possible. With as much disdain as he can muster, Berdly remarks, “Are you done yet?”
The man seems surprised by his show of gumption, and Berdly shakes his shoulders, using the momentary lack of composure to slip free, away from those claws and the burning heat of the man’s cigarette.
The man stares down at Berdly, and Berdly watches as pride wins out over wrath. Berdly has never felt a connection with this kind of machismo, but he understands it enough to play around it. Berdly, a child, has just shrugged off and dismissed the man. The man’s pride demands that he either escalate, or retroactively claim to have never cared at all.
Most people take the path of least resistance, when offered. A risky gambit, but one that paid off this time.
“You’ve got guts, huh kid? Geheheh… lucky for you, I have better things to do than tease answers out of someone else’s brat.”
The man turns to his own door, opening it up to a dark interior. Berdly continues to stand his ground, as the man turns back to face him one last time. He is now a silhouette, with only his teeth illuminated by the hallway light.
“Enjoy your night, neighbor.”
With that, the door closes, and Berdly is left alone. His heart beats once, twice, three times before he lets out the breath he was holding.
Did Susie have to deal with that every time she went home? Angel, he knows he doesn’t have the best relationship with his own parents, but at least they’re trying to support him.
Berdly knows not to linger, after receiving such an opportunity. He digs out his keys before letting himself into his own apartment, directly across from the man’s door.
His talons click across the hardwood floor as he heads through the dark house. It’s around nine in the evening at this rate, and he can see his mother slouched in her recliner, eyes weary yet focused as she attentively focused on her laptop. His mother hasn’t turned the lights on, as she plays in the dark - perhaps she’s having a bad pain day, given that she’s kept her cane close. Still, Berdly’s mother plays The Whims like a priest prays to the Angel - which is to say, whenever she isn’t playing the game, she’s thinking about what she’ll do when she plays again. One day, Berdly wishes to have the same level of dedication as she does, though he’d rather not pay the same price his mother has.
Berdly waves to her, as he closes the door, but she doesn’t look up from her computer. He can see the reflection of the screen in her round glasses. After a few moments, she looks up at him, smiles, and turns back to her screen.
He’ll talk with her in a moment.
Berdly strides into the apartment’s small kitchen. His mother has already finished her own dinner, and the sink is full of dirty dishes from the leftovers he had left for her. She can’t always cook on her own, so Berdly makes one or two extra servings with every meal he prepares for himself. In this case, he withdraws an ICE-E Ice Cold Ch’E’ller p’E’zza from the freezer, before setting the oven to 222 °C. He’s pretty sure that 425 °F translates to 222 celsius, given that he has trained himself extensively to master the empiricist’s units of measurement. Only through true and total immersion can he fully understand the sublime beauty of metric.
While Berdly waits for the oven to heat up, he puts on a set of dishwashing gloves. Only a barbarian would allow grime to touch their bare hands. That’s why he feels like hurling every time he does the dishes, as the intense concoction of smells and textures assail him. Still, if he doesn’t do them, who will?
A sponge runs over plates as he wipes away the remnants of yesterday’s meals, and Berdly allows his mind to wander. Susie’s way of thinking really did save his feathers, didn’t it? He had dismissed her for so long, being so ready to write her off as a simple brute. Shame doesn’t reach his mind - of course not! It is not shameful to change one’s mind upon receiving new evidence, and the truest fools are the ones who believe otherwise. No, instead, he ruminates on what he has learned tonight.
Clearly, if that was her home environment, Susie had no support whatsoever. Who would Berdly be if he didn’t have his own support, his own opportunities for growth?
Berdly shudders at the thought. His math skills would have floundered, if he hadn’t been forced to make a budget for the family’s groceries every week for the past five years. He had learned to effectively communicate only the important details when video calling his father every week. His allowance of one new game per month (not including additional copies of each new The Whims expansion as gifts from Mother, nor the section of the budget set aside for DLC) has forced him to become exceptionally skilled at planning ahead and setting reasonable goals, to ensure he can beat each game he acquires within a single month, without burning out too quickly on shorter experiences.
Clearly, Susie has had none of the support and adoration he has earned, if she has that beast as a father. Hmmmm. Maybe he should find a way to give her some academic assistance, since she clearly isn’t receiving any assistance at home. That is clearly the most important thing he can do for her! After all, if one doesn’t get a good education, one can’t get into college. If one doesn’t get into college, then one can’t get a respectable job. Without a respectable job, well, one might as well be dead!
Berdly is quite skilled at self-reflection, however. There is no corner of his mind that he hasn’t meticulously sorted within his mind palace! And, as such, he is aware that his ability to teach… needs improvement. He does not have the practice nor patience of his closest friend, Noelle.
Ah, Noelle! She has prepared study material for almost everything that has been covered in class, and Berdly has kept copies of that information within his own yearbook binder such that he might reasonably reference said material. He regrets leading her on like this, but why else would she go to such lengths for him? Such material is more detailed than what Alphys offers, typically!
It’s a shame that women aren’t respected for being smart, that her own brilliance can never be adored as much as his own. Mother has complained more than enough about her own experiences as a professor for Berdly to know that’s true.
Berdly takes a particularly stained plate and sets it aside to soak, before beginning to carefully clean the silverware, making sure to run the water hot. He could take the preparations she has given him, and he could use that to teach Susie. He could take that work, and claim it as his own. No one would know. Noelle is nice to everyone, it’s probably the only reason she’s nice to him, after all, but it’s not like she’s spent any time with the class delinquent.
No. Even if he can’t stop himself from leading her on, given how much he appreciates her company, that would break her heart. What if she found out that he had so callously been regifting her heroic labors? That would be profoundly unjust, and he will not stand for it.
He congratulates himself for suckling on the sweet nectar of wisdom. He can practically feel his wis stat gain an ability score increase!
With that, the oven beeps. Berdly finishes the fork he was cleaning before removing his gloves. He tears open the box for the p’E’zza, before setting it on the counter. Hmmmmmm, what toppings should he try today?
First things first, he throws away the packet of ice chips included with the pizza. He has never met anyone who has actually enjoyed ice chips as a topping, and frankly, Berdly’s surprised that they even still offer it. Given his own experiences, he’s sure the vast majority of the world’s simpletons would put the ice chips on before putting the p’E’zza in the oven, which would just ruin everything.
Berdly opens the fridge, and digs around, before pulling out a block of feta cheese and a bag of mozzarella. He scatters the mozzarella atop the cheap cheese of the p’E’zza, improving its flavor profile immensely. He then takes a knife, and carefully cuts off a section of the feta block, before chopping it up into centimeter-sized chunks. With practiced ease, he carefully ensures an equal distribution of the goat cheese, making sure it fits his exhaustive standards. He makes sure to set a cooking timer, lest this timed quest expire with disastrous consequences.
The final step. Berdly exhales, before steeling himself. It’s time for the quick-time event. The oven mitts are in the laundry right now (and Berdly knows that his stamina meter is too depleted to properly commit to such a task), so he must carefully slide the pizza onto the oven rack with nothing but his own feathers. A task he has successfully done many times before, but this mission should be given its due caution!
Carefully, he balances the p’E’zza, carefully lowering it to make sure none of the additional cheese falls out of careful alignment. If any cheese falls into the oven itself, he’ll have to clean the inside of the oven tomorrow, which would in turn remove it from his kitchen’s adventuring party, necessitating a change in his meal plan for the week. Careful, careful…
Berdly squawks as he quickly pulls his fingers back, as the p’E’zza clatters onto the oven rack. Mozzarella scatters onto the floor of the oven, as he quickly grabs his own hand. Pigeon shit, hasn’t he been burned enough already? Berdly winces, but despite the pain flaring through him, he keeps his cool.
Berdly slams the oven shut with the talons on his feet, before stomping out of the kitchen. He passes briefly through the living room, earning a bit of his mother’s attention, as he storms into the bathroom.
Sink. Water. Cold. He has the faucet spill as much cold water as it can muster, before he sticks his feathered fingers underneath. Berdly barely holds back another squawk as the sudden cold feeling washes over him, only giving way to a soothing sensation after a few moments.
Berdly looks into the mirror. He looks… awful. His eyes look dead, far from showing his inner brilliance, and that bastard burned a hole straight through his uniform. The black, charred fabric clings to the feathers on his shoulder, and he tries not to think of the sticky sensation he can feel. He puts it out of his mind.
Looks like a first degree burn on the underside of his middle and pointer finger on his left hand. Unfortunately, like most monsters, his left was his dominant hand. He hopes this won’t interfere with his ability to write and take notes. It would be unacceptable if this caused him to fall behind in his classes. The stinging sensation barely matters in comparison to the dread he feels. He has to keep up. There is no room for failure, no room to slip.
Berdly breathes out, before heading out of the bathroom. As he does so, he hears his mother call out from the living room. “Berdly? The way you’re not acting as you should. Come here.”
Ah. He slammed the oven, stomped through the house… of course. Berdly clasps his wings together in front of him, covering the burn with his right hand, as he softly treads into the dark living room.
Berdly walked out shrouded by the light of the bathroom, casting his silhouette in shadow. His mother was surrounded by darkness, only the pale blue-ish light of her laptop casting light on her. Berdly can see the reflection of a familiar house in her glasses.
Berdly looks down, as he shifts slightly in position. The light from the bathroom reflects in her glasses, such that he may no longer see her eyes.
Her expression does not change. “I can’t see a thing with that glare. Stand over here.” His mother gestures to the other side of her chair, such that he might be facing the restroom’s glow.
Berdly’s mind surrenders to the demand without further thought. There is nothing else to do, other than to obey. His talons click against the hardwood, careful as to avoid scratching it. Berdly walks around, as the light casting him in shadow instead reveals him.
His mother notices the cigarette burn on his uniform, deep and black. She takes his left hand, and with a dispassionate glare, she tilts her head as she examines the discolored mark from the burn.
“You’ve been smoking.”
Against his better judgement, Berdly speaks up. “No! I swear I wasn’t. I had an encounter with… a bully, who put out his cig on my uniform, Mother. I just burned my hand while preparing dinner. It’s not what you-”
“Berdly. What have I told you about lying?”
Berdly freezes. No, no, no, he isn’t lying! That’s the truth! He knows better than to argue against her, however. She deals with university staff on a regular basis, she’s the smartest person he knows! However, once she has come to a conclusion, one that the evidence seemingly leads to, words alone cannot convince her otherwise.
Evidence. That’s all he can offer her. “Mother, please. If I had smoked, you’d smell it on my breath. Please.” He stepped closer to her, grabbing her wing and holding her hand with his own, and she leaned closer to him.
“Hmmmm. You’re right, I don’t smell it on your breath.” Behind her glasses, her eyes narrow. “You’re protecting someone, aren’t you? Why else would you allow someone to burn a hole into your uniform?”
In a way, she was right. He earned that mark protecting Susie from her father, even if she would never know what he did that night. He lets his head hang low, offering neither defense nor objection.
“Little Jay, your sense of justice has left you blind. Whoever you are doing this for, they do not deserve you. You’re smarter than this, my son. You are smart enough to never associate with whoever has tainted you, aren’t you?”
Berdly remembers his dream. How Susie told him it was okay to be stupid. He might be acting dumb now, but he doesn’t feel smart. Berdly needs everything to be for something. So, if he needs to be a little stupid, perhaps that’s okay.
He lies with a nod.
His mother stares at him, seemingly observing his behavior, before turning back to her computer. “Good. Your whim needs to go through a character arc after this. He needs to re-earn everything.”
She gestures with a wing, and he stands slightly behind her chair. He won’t be excused until she is done.
She returns her laptop screen, and Berdly takes a look at her current whims save. It’s a life simulator, and his mother has recreated her family within the game.
The home they live in is a recreation of their old home before they moved to Hometown, if it were a mansion the size of Noelle’s home. His father is home, rather than working overseas, and his physique is inhumanly muscular and defined. That whim only shares a name with Berdly’s actual father, he suspects. Berdly himself is the same way, within the game.
His whim is built like a superhero barely hiding his identity, rippling muscles and overexaggerated masculinity ripping out of the game character that shares Berdly’s name. His mother flicks through the character’s tabs, showing several skills at their highest rank, before scrolling through the false idol’s relationship tab.
Some part of him feels sick when he sees that his mother had somehow recreated Noelle in the game too. His mother must have found a picture of her online, though she looks wrong. The broad strokes might be correct, but too many details about her were wrong, too many things are off about this accursed effigy of the closest thing he has to an intellectual peer. Oh, fucking angel, the relationship bar between his video game representation and Noelle’s was pink. Was his mother making his whim get together with her??
Berdly feels so, so exhausted already. His legs hurt, as his mother talks about all the accomplishments for his whim that are about to be lost.
He wishes men and women could be friends without some underlying romantic context, without one falling for the other. He wishes he could actually just be close to someone without having to also master the skills of the IRL dating sim, without having to constantly fill the other’s affection meter. That’s not how anything works. Every game with companions locks the truest doors to a companion’s heart behind love, because that’s how the world works. That’s the final step of any kind of love between peers, the only one that matters.
Berdly watches as his mother directs his video game equivalent, the one that bares his name and his intellect but none of his heart, to jump in the pool behind the house. She opens the game’s build mode as catchy music plays, before selecting a fence tool. She draws a fence around the edge of the pool, removing every ladder and entrance into the pool of water, before exiting the game’s build mode and speeding up the game to 4x speed.
Berdly watches as his in-game character swims in circles around the pool, and she selects the character to view his needs. Berdly watches as his whim becomes more and more exhausted, until he can no longer swim. Berdly feels his legs growing weaker, as he stands by her side, watching everything being done.
The game returns to 1x speed, as his in-game character begins drowning. His mother unplugs the headphones, and he hears the character splashing against the water. This hypermasculine, idealized version of himself chokes on the water, and Berdly can hear the squawks and desperate pleading in whimlish echoing from the game’s laptop.
The rest of the false family has run to the side of the pool, unable to help because of the fence. He hears them panicking.
Berdly’s mother speaks. “This is what you’ve done to yourself, little Jay. Continue acting like this, and your future will be drowned.”
Berdly can’t tell if his virtual self is coughing and hacking so realistically, or if he himself is.
His mother continues looking at the screen, and Berdly can’t make himself look away as his idealized self, as everything he should be, sinks beneath the water with an open beak. Berdly barely feels anything of himself as he watches the whim reappear outside the pool, as his mother’s beloved virtual recreation of his family mourns him. Death appears as a white wraith, ice-cold mist emanating from her robes, and with a swipe of her hand, Berdly turns to dust.
He feels cold, watching this cutscene play out, as his mother selects the option to have his character’s dust be spread on his homework binder. “This ghost will be your whim’s conscience, guiding him back to the Angel’s light. Now, let’s recreate you, fitting the mistake you’ve made tonight.”
She exits to the town view, before selecting the option to create a new whim tied to her existing household. His mother loads the saved preset she had made to ‘recreate’ Berdly, and he sees the hyper-masculine version of himself flex as an idle animation, before intellectually stroking an exaggerated chin.
“You’ll have to earn everything back, Berdly.” He watches as his mother removes Genius from his whim’s list of traits, replacing it with Disruptive. “Until your whim is back to the state he was in before this, you won’t be allowed to use the internet. That also means no new games until then.”
She’s been in this save for about two months. Sure, the internet is down already, but… angel, why? His phone data won’t even allow him to view any websites right now, for some reason. Berdly manages not to cry, and as he buries that feeling, it is replaced with a pervasive and dull hollowness. He deserved this.
In the end, the only trait of his left in his whim is loyal. Despite all of this, Berdly finds that describes something he recognized in himself earlier, but not precisely. He isn’t loyal to the point of destruction, like his mother thinks.
While Berdly doesn’t realize it, he has stumbled across a part of himself that could be fostered. A true virtue, unattached to who Berdly thinks he is, that represents what Berdly could be.
A far more accurate trait would be Just.
“Red.”
Berdly jolts awake as the window by his bed shatters.
He had managed to escape his mother when the oven alarm went off, and Berdly ended up taking the entire p'E'zza to his bedroom. He had felt empty, curling up under the covers and wallowing in everything he had done wrong.
Now, glass glitters like falling stars all over his bed. What? Did something, someone break his window? He looks into his bedroom, and it’s strange - his TV and computer monitor seem fine, but his Minecrap themed lamp has shattered, and the ceiling light has exploded, scattering small shards from the lightbulb all over his Dragon Blazers II rug.
Berdly carefully crawls out of his blanket nest, before looking outside onto the fire escape. He can’t see anyone out there, but he can see that every window in his apartment and the neighboring ones have shattered as well.
Did a plane fly too low and cause a sonic boom, or something? If it was loud enough to break glass, though, he should have heard it. Felt it. Maybe it was beyond the range of his hearing? That must be it.
Berdly hears arguing start. Susie’s Father yells loud enough that Berdly can hear it from his bedroom, and he can distantly hear his own Mother begin dryly and intellectually eviscerating him. By yelling back at him.
Huh. It seems like the two of them are blaming each other for whatever caused this?
Berdly… Berdly decides that he doesn’t want to hear any of this. He grabs his phone - the screen doesn’t seem to be cracked, either. Maybe something about electronic displays gives them a slightly higher resistance to that sonic boom?
For once, his mind is not craving answers. Berdly doesn’t care anymore. He’s done. He’s done with everything. He can’t stand to hear them yelling at each other, to have this day get any worse.
Berdly climbs through the broken window, onto the fire escape. His talons click against the grate as he steps into the cool, night air. His feathers slide against the cold metal of the stairwell’s railings, as he ascends.
Berdly lives on the top floor, and this isn’t the first time he’s gone to the building’s flat roof. This is, however, the first time he’s seen the stars above so clearly. The wind is quiet, like the world itself is holding its breath, and the stars glisten and gleam as if they themselves were crying for him.
Stepping away from the fire escape, facing away from it, Berdly begins to look up at the stars. He begins finding constellations, finding patterns in the sky. Curiously, Berdly notes that a particular star seems to be shining brighter than its kin. Maybe that effect is only in his mind, or perhaps it's a trick of the atmosphere. He can’t help trying to find meaning in it, anyway.
Polaris. The Northern Light. This guiding star has long been used as a reference to navigate uncertain paths by every people of the world’s northern hemisphere. Here, it shines so brightly, it's almost as if it has four silver points extending out from it.
How curious.
As Berdly watches the stars, he doesn’t notice that he has been watched in turn. He didn’t notice something watching him from the shadows as he ascended the fire escape. He doesn’t notice as the very dark around him seems to grow deeper, as a creature of shadow jumps five stories in a single bound, landing silently on the rooftop behind him.
He doesn’t notice as the creature arms itself with a blade made of its own black ichor, and the will to use it to avenge what has been undone.
