Put That Kid Down

Chapter Nineteen

Space Kid wasn't sure what it was about Harrison's statement that made David turn into a pillar of steel, but he definitely knew that he no longer wanted to be held in the counselor's previously comforting arms when David said, too calmly, "What the fuck did you just say?"

Gwen's instinctive, "Holy shit!" went unnoticed by Space Kid - he was more caught by the fact that Max had just hauled back and kicked David in the shin without getting a reaction.

"You delirious shit," Max hissed up at them - well, at David, probably, but Original Neil - as Space Kid actually thought of himself - was up there, too, and could thusly hear Max spit out a whisper perfectly well. "You know that's not what he means. He's a camper."

Space Kid tried to wiggle away but David's arms of metal grip force didn't seem to notice.

Harrison seemed similarly taken aback, "Uh, I mean that there is a medium to high chance that dark spookery," his fingers waggled, even as his eyes remained wide and he stayed safely out of reaching range of David - the lucky sod, "is going on to weaken the seal and let the Kronics' influence seep into our dimension and... mindfreak reality?"

"What an interesting theory you thought up just now using only deduction," Max ground out, eyes pointedly wide and still fixed on David. Space Kid couldn't help but feel that maybe Max was addressing David more than Harrison.

"Right," David said, closing his eyes and repeating in a strained tone, "Right." The muscles Space Kid was uncomfortably crushed into untensed one by one, and the concerned space cadet finally wriggled free of the counselor's death grip and to the ground with a light cry of triumph. With a short, tired laugh, David shook his head, "Magic." The word sounded like a curse.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on?" Thanks to that cornucopia of shadiness that Max and David had just dropped on them, Gwen appeared to have roused from her panic with reddened eyes and some snot still dripping from one nostril but also a righteous fury matched only by the unholy variant Max could produce on command, "David, Max, you're going to spill what you know right the fuck now or I- I'll-" she glanced around for help and, finding none in the kids both conscious and not, pointed at the duo with determination anyway, voice coming out in a low promise, "I'll do something you won't like!"

Max turned on Gwen with surprising ferocity. Well, surprising in that it was in defense of David, anyway. "It's just David being gullible and delirious!" His fists were clenched, now. "He's got some weird fever dream shit going on to do with that phrase that- that he's talked about before and it's nothing."

"We could all die here," Gwen broke in, but before she could continue her impassioned protest, David had put a hand up for silence in an uncharacteristically sharp gesture, making the words die on her tongue.

"I think it's connected." David's gaze slid over to Max, "And I'm not smart enough to figure out how on my own." Before Max could even draw breath to cut in, David added, now directly addressing the boy without acknowledging the rest of the campers at all, "You're much smarter than I am, Max, but you don't know much about magic, right?"

The averted gaze and how Max's hands sought pockets he didn't have was answer enough. Instead the kid's hands twisted the hem of his shirt before he shot David one last baleful glare and deliberately crossed his arms over his chest, lips thinning into a grim line. It seemed Max would let David dig his own grave if he didn't expect Max to help him out of it again.

Still, there was no way David could just let his campers get stuck here and starve and die when he'd already done so much to ensure that wouldn't happen.