Prototype : A New Start

Life Can be Beautiful

Damian watches as Valeria accurately throws an empty can of Sprite directly on the back of the head student whom he doesn't recognize. The kid yelped, before quickly leaving with their tray of food, all the time, she and her other friends were laughing together.

He noticed that no one moved to help them, no one did anything, not even a scold to these delinquents. Instead, everyone just continued on with their conversation, with their own lives, acting as if this was completely normal. As if nothing wrong just happened directly in front of them.

Some of them even laughed.

What he saw sickens him, both at them, and himself, as he could have intervened. But alas, he just sat there, quietly nibbling on his tray while watching Maria eat her brocoli, either oblivious, or unbothered by the entire situation.

He can talk all mighty as he likes, but in this situation, he is not any better than any of them. It makes Damian feel worse, as he knows how wrong this entire thing is much better than anyone....

And yet, despite all his strength and powers, he didn't do anything about it.

Because he's a fucking coward, afraid of losing Maria and Ilya if he ever actually confronted Valeria about it. This is not a problem which you can solve by bio-bombing an entire city or decimating multiple batallions.

Damian figured that he needed to understand how Valeria's mind and logic worked for her, and the complexity of her emotion and the possible outbursts; Something which he had yet to master himself, as evidenced from the last several days.

If this is how brave she would be in the open with her group, then God knows what they would do behind closed doors.

"You know," Damian divided a part of his own mind, letting his train of thoughts to continue without actually pushing off his ability to banter with the others without muting them out. After figuring out that he could do that, he decided to do so rather than just ignoring them, which would possibly offend or hurt them, just like what he did to Ilya in class, two days ago. "You can't keep doing this."

"What do you mean?" He asked with a frown, starting to panic already. "Uh, did I, well, do something to bother you? Sorry, I-"

"It's not that," She brushed him off, "But you can't keep clinging on any of us."

"I... I see," He lowered his head, staring down at his food. "You... don't want me to be around any of you for, like, a period of time....?"

Maria stared at him for a moment with a mouthful of food, before glancing down back and forth between the piece of carrot on her tray, and her fork. Letting out a sigh as she lets the utensil drop on the table with a clatter, the sapient weapon of mass destruction cowered.

"...I'm sorry, I should have worded that better." The dark-haired girl facepalmed. "I'm not exactly the best partner for talks, let alone starting one."

Is... she opening up on him?

"It's okay..." He replied, "I'm still worse than you..."

"Listen, what I mean is," She breathed, "You need more friends."

"W-What?" Damian blinked, clearly taken aback by what she's saying.

"Damian." The Italian girl leaned down on the table, crossing her arms in the process. "None of us could always be here for you, sometimes Valeria or Ilya have their own friends to spend time with instead of all three of us. Sometimes even I would be off to be reading books in the library or working on my assignments back in class. And I meant that as some time alone for myself. And despite how I actually have no issue with this, You can't keep following us around like pets all day, all night, all week long."