aterat | Imagine a fancy title here, you will

Mono was really not enjoying this in the least. This was probably the first time he’d been caught in a while. At least the first time someone had actually, you know, given chase and caused a fuss. Most people either hadn’t noticed him, or figured if he meant to do something bad that they’d stop him when it came to it. So this was not something he was used to, at least not here. It was a little too much like home, and it takes him a long moment to really register that Harry said he only wanted to talk. So… Vaguely feral growls and yelling it would be. “I’m sorry! Let me go!”

When he did realize what Harry said, Mono was still kind of suspicious and definitely not going to do so until he was on solid ground and put some distance between them. “Then put me down Mister! Please!”

Please. It was finally an intelligible response to Harry's demands, and he nodded. "On one condition. You don't run. I'll even get you get you an ice cream if you work with me. Deal?"

Yeah, that was a condition he could work with… Or at least he would, so long as he didn’t feel like he had a reason to run. Hopefully not. This guy could do things that he wasn’t sure he knew how to get away from if that solid air trick was his ability or something. “I won’t just let me go, Mr.”

Ice cream was also a strong contender for good reasons to stick around if the guy really meant it and wasn’t trying to trick him, he didn’t think he’d ever had it before… But it looked good from the pictures he’d seen in the old run-down shops in the pale city.

"Okay, deal."

When trying to build trust, it was important to be the one to offer it first, and with that idea in mind, he let the kid go, taking a step back to show he was being reasonable. He raised his hands to show he didn't mean anything by it, too.

"Okay, how about names first? I'm Harry."

Back on solid ground definitely helped, and he moved a few steps back himself once he was on his own two feet. Folding his arms slightly and giving Harry a decidedly guarded look. Still, he kept his word and didn’t run. Not yet, anyway. He wasn’t sure if he’d use Harry’s name yet or just keep calling him mister. That seemed to depend on how the conversation went…

He was quiet for a minute, though, thinking about giving his own name. There didn’t seem to be any harm in it, but he was still a little anxious about the whole situation. Finally he nodded, “My name’s Mono, and I really didn’t mean anything bad following you. Didn’t think you’d notice.”

Mono was small, and Harry was not, and so out of a show of peace, he crouched down to put himself more on the level with the kid. He was still nearly a head taller than him, but it was better than the Lurch impression he'd been doing. He even smiled a bit, nodding.

"I didn't think you did. I just wanted to see what kind of kid followed a wizard around all day."

The kid was a little unsure when Harry went to crouch, tensing a bit as the vague mental image of another very tall individual crossed his mind. Then the man simply kept talking, just a little more on his level… That was kind of nice, so it at least scored Harry some points. Made him just slightly less intimidating.

Mono had to tilt his head a little. “Then why’d you do the thing with the pipe and the air?” That had felt very much like something someone upset and intending ill would do, or at least it was the kind of behaviour he was used to from those bigger than him in very unpleasant ways. “I didn’t know you were a wizard when I started following you. They look different in stories.” He gestured to the hat and the duster coat.

He looked at the boy apologetically. "I just didn't want you to get away. I didn't mean to scare you." Admittedly, he may have been a bit overzealous with it.

"Yeah, well, all those old guys used to be young guys who thought they knew everything." Was he admitting fault? Maybe slightly. "So, why were you following me?"

Mono hummed a little at that, he guessed that made sense but it had scared him. The kid gave a little shrug of his shoulders as he figured he’d just have to deal with it, and then decide if he’d see the man again after this conversation was over or if he’d make a point of avoiding him.

The comment does get a slightly curious little glance though, definitely sounded like the guy was admitting something, at least slightly. “So they used to be like you? Then they got the funny robes and hats?” Said with all the tact of someone who was only just getting better at socializing and was maybe 10 or 11 years old at best. Sorry, Harry.

The question gets a slightly awkward pause though, "Um… ‘Cause I follow everyone. And you’re one of the people I don’t know anything about and you’re really tall like someone from where I’m from… So I was trying to make sure you weren’t like them.” And the whole chasing, magic blasting had not helped that case.

"I don't know if they used to be like me or not." The thought made him shiver. It suggested people like the Merlin were once at least slightly hip, and if that was the case, one day he might end up just like the guy. That was horrifying. A little voice in his head told him he was already on the way, and that just made him shiver again. He had to do something about that quick.

He frowned at the boy's explanation, though. "Well, what's this other person like? I'll do my best to make sure I'm not like them."

Mono waited, curious about how Harry seemed to be contemplating what he said. But the question gets a little shrug, “Well… He’s got these weird powers.” Most of them were like his, but he’s not bringing that up at the moment. Tommy had said that didn’t make him bad, so he was hoping the guy was right.

“He comes from the signal tower through the TV, and once he finds you, he doesn’t stop chasing you till he’s got you. You know he’s following because the air gets all… Thick? Everything goes really slow, except sometimes he speeds up like when you make a TV picture go fast to skip to the next part and then he’s there and he can get you.”

So many close calls with that, too many. “And if he gets you, he takes you back to the tower. No one sees you again. Well… A shadow gets left behind, all static-y and weird.” Glitchy shadows of the kid taken. “So tall, has a hat, chases you and uses his powers to catch you.” He fussed a bit with his jacket, tilting his head up at Harry again.

"He comes through the TV?" He'd read fiction like that. Before, where demons and other creatures could use television screens are portals into our world. He'll, it wasn't even that unbelievable. It was a reflective surface and they used those just fine.

"He sounds like a demon. You were pretty good to get away from him. They can alter their reality in a lot of ways to get what they want." He smiled. "But I promise I'm not a demon."

Mono supposed it was a small comfort to know the man wasn’t a demon and wasn’t going to try to chase him again… Maybe he wasn’t as bad, though it would still be a kind of weird to not be able to follow the guy around for a while longer to make sure of that.

Still… The kid got a little preoccupied with something else Harry had said. It was hard to not when he knew so little about himself. “If he’s a demon, does that mean anyone who can do that kinda thing is a demon, too? That they’re also bad?” Because that was kind of a big deal for someone who really didn’t quite understand how his own abilities worked and worried over how he could do a lot of the same stuff the scariest person he knew in his world could.

Harry's expression softened and he shook his head. "Hey, I said he sounded like a demon, not that he was one. A lot of things can do stuff like that, they're just the most common. The problem is, most often, Demons have to be summoned, like when Illyana brought her imps here."

“Oh…” He responded, taking a moment to consider that… That was better than 100% sure it was a demon thing, he guessed. “Illyana’s imps just kinda took stuff and did weird stuff. They didn’t really hurt anyone or take people.” They didn’t seem so bad, even if she said they were nuisances and not good friends. “But I kinda understand what you mean?”

Harry seemed to know a lot though, but he guessed wizards would know about these kinds of things more than the average person would. “What else can do that kinda stuff aside from demons?”

"Well...demons are individuals. They want different things, just like you and me." They weren't exactly the same, demons didn't have souls like humans, but that didn't make them any less people.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, several things, but the fae come to mind. Have you heard of faeries?"

Faeries? That seemed to be a surprising response to his question, at least by his expression. “They’re kinda little people with wings and stuff… Right? Some of the kids at the orphanage liked stories about them.” And he’d seen some books with pictures of them in the school. They usually looked pretty. Which meant they didn’t really fit in with his world. At least Mono didn’t think they did.

"Not bad, that's close, and some of them." He nodded. "The minor fae, dewdrop faeries, are like that. I'm friends with several of them." Which was an easy way of saying he'd bartered with them for pizza enough times that they just call him the Za Lord. That wasn't a necessary bit of information. "Dewdrop faeries are pretty simple creatures who have a hard time thinking about more than one thing at once and really bad memory for 'mortal stuff'. The major players are more intense, and a lot more like what you described."

“So the little ones are just… minor?” They sounded kind of nice, and he guessed that’s why they were in the stories he’d heard. “I didn’t even know there was more than one kind. That’s…” Well, not neat. Kind of scary to think about… But also interesting. “So they could be a ‘fae’ too? But not demons… So are they not bad like demons, or are they sometimes bad?” The Man in the Hat was definitely intense... Slower, more methodical than the others he’d come up against. Just so very tall, and radiating something that Mono couldn’t quite describe. Where everyone else had been feral or almost animalistic in nature, the man had been the one to scare him most.

"Faeries are hard to define. They aren't like mortals, and they like toying with them for their amusement. They like tricking us into deals, and they have a lot of power to convince us to do it with. It's a little more complicated than 'good' or 'bad', though."

Explaining the Fae was more difficult than Harry anticipated. "And those are the ones who are beholden to one of the Fae kingdoms. Then there are the Wyldfae, or get to do whatever they want. Do you know Santa Claus?"

More complicated… He really didn’t want things to be more complicated. Every time he asked though, it always seemed like that would be the case with people… But at least people here answered (could answer), and he knew they probably didn’t mean to make it more complicated for him.

“Umm…” He mumbled uncertainly, the question about Santa Claus. He might have seen pictures of the man on old Christmas decorations left from before the corruption… But he didn’t know the story or the name, he wasn’t even sure what Christmas was. He shook his head. “I dunno, doesn’t sound familiar?”

That said, a strange old man in a bright red suit breaking into your house once a year might’ve seemed very alarming to the child based on what he probably would imagine.

It didn't occur to Harry until that very moment that a boy who dressed like Mono might not have been from a world with a Santa Claus, or even worse, had never had the chance to believe in the innocent magic of a Christmas miracle. He was struck by the profound sadness of it. Even Harry, an orphan, had Christmas memories that were among some of his favorites.

He didn't know what the tall man was to the kid, but he did know one thing: this boy deserved Christmas.

"...you know what? It's okay. Why are you so interested in faeries, anyway?"

No, Mono certainly had not experienced such a thing. Innocence was not something kids kept for long in his world.

The question gets an uncertain little shrug. “I dunno… I just didn’t know there were more kinds with different kinds of powers. There’s a lot of weird powers in my world, and I thought maybe there’d be things similar enough that I could figure out how it all works. The man in the hat has powers like… someone else… and I sometimes think if I can figure him out, I can figure it all out.” He rambled a little, waving his hands a bit as he tried to say things in a way that didn’t sound entirely obvious. Mono didn’t know Harry well enough for that, not like he knew Illyana… But the guy clearly knew stuff, and that might be important.

“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about, and I dunno how long I’m gonna be here for… So I kinda try to ask when I don’t know something, while I got the chance?”

Harry had spent a good amount of his adult life investigating things and his best friend was a cop, he could pick up on subtlety, and a lot of things people weren't saying. He frowned at the little guy, but nodded. It was scary, having powers you didn't understand, and more than that, it could be dangerous, not just for others, but for the individual as well.

"Let me tell you a secret. I know how scary it can be, finding out you can do things others can't, and I've kind of made it my profession to help people figure it out, if you're interested."

The kid perked up a bit at the mention of a secret; it seemed a strange thing to offer someone you’d just met… But Mono could appreciate keeping a secret, and… It was an extension of trust, one that he wasn’t entirely sure why it was being granted to him.

“Yeah? So it’s like… your job to figure stuff like that out? What it turns out to be something bad?” He asked, looking a bit apprehensive again. Quickly, the child followed up with, “You know, in case I um… Know someone who might want help but doesn’t know what could happen.”

Imagine a fancy title here, you will

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