-Rehabilitating a Child Soldier-

A Ruined City

Tommy slowly crept out of his room, stepping over the splintery pieces of wood that had fallen off his door.

It had been a few hours, and the sun was beginning to set on the cool, winter day, stretching shadows. The sky was a mesh of several colors melting together. From indigo, to yellow, to orange, to red. The scattered clouds looked like cotton candy in the sky, glowing a faint pink.

Bad and Sapnap weren't home yet, which was beginning to worry him.

He figured he'd go talk to the other adult in the house, hoping that Skeppy wasn't upset with him for one of the many things he had done wrong. In all fairness, he didn't know Skeppy very well, the only time they had ever really talked before now was during The Battle of the Lake...

...Which he should probably never bring up so long as he is living in this house..!

To anyone. Seriously. That's probably a very sour memory.

Skeppy almost died in that fight, and Sapnap did die in that fight... In the cold water of the October river... That doesn't seem like a pleasant memory.

The halls were filled with a chill, something from outside. There must have been a window open somewhere. Tommy couldn't imagine this house having bad insolation if the demons who lived here couldn't get too cold. It suddenly became his mission to find the open window so that the halls would be a little warmer. You know, because Bad had already done so much for him. He could do this one simple thing for Bad.

Then, after he accomplishes that, he will get back on track with his other plan. His original plan...

It actually didn't take him very long. There was a light hum coming from the direction of the living room. One of a voice, and the other of the wind.

Perfect.

But when he entered the room, he was shocked to see the state of it. The fluttering sound of paper rattled from open books strewn over the floor, and the tables... and the furniture.

But among that was other miscellaneous items.

Empty bottles, a few bottles of something here and there, half eaten plates of food... half eaten plates. Literally. Which was slightly disturbing. Random writing and cleaning utensils, though, Tommy didn't see the point in them, because the room only seemed to get worse the longer he stared at it.

You could barely see the white carpet anymore.

It looked like a bomb went off, or like someone was preparing for war.

But there was an open window on the far side of the room. And in the center of the disaster, in seemingly the only clear spot in the entire room, was the diamond person who seemingly had more demonic potential than the actual demons living in this house.

He was laying on the floor, in a puddle of some unidentifiable fluid, holding an open book up in front of his face while his tongue hang out of his mouth thoughtfully as he squinted at the pages.

"... What am I even supposed to fucking ask..?" Tommy blurted out, drawing Skeppy's attention away from the book as his tongue quickly snapped back into his mouth.

"Hey Tommy! What's up?" He called over, with a goofy smile on his face. As if nothing was wrong with this situation... Like this was a normal occurrence, which was somehow more concerning.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out how to get nail polish out of the carpet."

"... Are you busy?"

"Eh." Skeppy shrugged, "Not really. I'm kind of bored actually. These books are just full of letters, and it's not making any sense."

"...What..?" Tommy blinked, not sure how he should even process that sentence.