Life is too unpredictable to be so rigged.
He deals us a fixed hand, then punishes us for trying to get more, to survive.
We got sick of playing his game so we made our own, in a land where there are no rules. The land he left us to rot in.
Only now...
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It's estimated that human beings have around fifty to eighty thousand thoughts per day.
I am not human. I probably have around three times that much.
For most of my kind, it's usually the opposite. No, we're not stupid, not all of us anyway. It's just our circumstances. Where we live, there's little time to think and it usually only furthers the suffering. Sometimes it's better to just shut your mind off and let your body go through the motions.
For me, thoughts are dangerous.
Not emotionally, not just to myself. One wrong thought and I could wipe the whole population. I could turn everyone inside out, make them writhing piles of blood and organs, twitching as they—no. Stop.
What was I doing?
I think I was doing something.
"Miss Devon?"
My whole frame starts, eyes swinging up from the PSP I'd long abandoned being invested in, too lost in my own head. I cannot afford to do that. The world cannot afford for me to do that. I have to be more careful.
"You interrupted Mario Kart." my voice is soft, breathy, small, high-pitched, as it has always been. It would be childish, cute, unintimidating if I was anyone besides myself. But, as for right now, I am me and my voice instills terror in the biggest, most emotionless of demons. I have proven that it's not someone's physical nature to be scared of, it's their desires and how far they will go to achieve them.
The boy, whose name I don't know if I have ever known, is trembling before I even finish my sentence.
He does not want to die today.
A liability.
Maybe if I — no. No, I can't. But I can. I can do anything. I—
Did I beat my high score? Shit, I need to— no, no what do I— I can't— I-
"I'm so sorry ma'am," he must be at least two millennia older than me yet his voice wavers like a stretched rubber band. I wonder if I remembered to grab an extra to put my hair up la— "but the K/DA team just came back. They completed their assignment."
......Who?
What team? What assignment?
Where the hell am I?
The last thing I remember, I was in the Venom Hills, shackled to— no.
No, that's not me.
I'm Devon. I'm Devon. I'm Devon.
"Excellent." the boy is more terrified by my change of mood and bright smile. He didn't see any of my confusion or dissociation. No one ever has and they never will. And if they do...well...there's an easy solution to that.
