recommended daily dosage (Hyper)

@"hyperhurricane"

"Oh. Wow." Alex had nothing much to say, as most of his discussions had to stay inside. Internally, he was wondering why the hell he wasn't the slightest bit disturbed by Coral's admission of mass murder. She had a much higher bodycount than he had, and the fact that he was fine with that somehow made him feel unease. It also bothered him that the words "What a cute murderer" kept ringing in his head, to the point that he wasn't quite sure he was just thinking them.

In an effort to reroute his attention, Alex began to dissect her words as best he could, trying to squeeze more unnecessary interpretation out of them. "Accomplices huh... let's just say that's not really what I expected? To be honest I'd have expected you to have made me bleed again by now." One hand shot up to his left cheek again before he remembered that it was the other one he should be paying attention to. If that was going to be a reflex, he should at least have figured out which side to work with.

It hit him that he came here with a pizza that was supposed to smooth things over. No matter how unlikely he thought it was that it would work however, he went for it anyway. One of his hands darted toward the box on the table and carefully pried it open, not wanting to make a mess in this room. "I, um... you want a slice of poorly chosen pizza?"

Alex took a slice of the pizza for himself and began to eat slowly, taking extra caution to not get sausage pizza all over the table. His eyes darted back and forth, moving from his food, to observing Coral, to inspecting the place, so rapidly that it made his eyes blur. "Lovely, um, place? Yeah, place."

@"hyperhurricane"

"I heal fast, don't worry... if you ever need someone to beat on, I'm always around. Why did I say that? Uh, why would I say that? I just said that. Ignore that. Please don't hit me again." Alex chuckled nervously. Never before had he felt this pressured. A bite of pizza calmed him down a bit, but he needed to stop being stupid.

He caught on to that muttered hint of past troubles, as he'd always had incoherence in his own words, but Alex just let it slide. Prying would be for much, much later. Maybe when he could be less stupid.

"I see. Well, I think I can learn how to shut down my brain for a bit. It's not like it's helping me any around you so far anyway," Alex said, chewing on crust absent-mindedly. It was true - his attempts to think rationally and clearly around Coral had all failed miserably so far. Probably due to her striking similarity and difference to Crystal. At least he hoped it was that, and not that he was just plain crap at thinking in the first place.

Alex's fingers tapped on his pants, following an unheard beat. His head nodded, and considered how life would be with feathers. Did Coral have to molt or something? Where did the feathers go after - did she just throw them or maybe use them in some weird way? The image of her plucking one of her feathers out to use as a quill popped up in his imagination for a moment, and it made him choke on cheese.

He coughed into his sleeve, reeling from the pain. Hot sauce lined his throat, and he had to get it out somehow. With his eyes starting to tear up, he asked, "F-friends of y-y-yours?"

"Not really," Alex said, chewing on thin air. It tasted empty and bland. "I had Crystal, and.... nope, that's it. See, unlike most of the other kids we were kept in the lower, more isolated levels, and they threw her in with me because she sort of, hmm, negates? Nullifies? She, she slows me down enough to keep me in check."

Alex ate more air, and noticed that he was indeed eating air before taking another slice, this time of pizza. He chose not to point out the pointless and distracted act, thinking back to his stay in the labs. There weren't that many people he met, nor were there many for him to care for. Other than Crystal, the lab was populated with people who were too fleeting or too abusive to pay attention to.

There was Alec to consider though, and the mere thought of him darkened his expression. The mere fact that someone was getting pampered and treated like an actual person in the labs irritated him. But it was the fact that he was part of why Crystal disappeared that frustrated him the most. Again, without his notice, he shredded the slice of pizza with a vibrating hand.

"Crystal, well, she's gone," Alex said, staring out into the distance. "She disappeared during that breakout, as did many other of us lab kids. All because they didn't bother planning ahead properly and only attempted to sneak out one guy. The guy who already had a decent life compared to the rest of us. So, no, I didn't have friends and did I just shred the pizza? I just shredded it, didn't I? I'll clean it up. You got, uh, anything I can clean it up with?"