Obey

Chapter 2: Overstimulation ❤️

Cue narrator's ramble...

Upstate New York, near the Catskill Mountains, is home to a special university. It started to flourish when those in power began donating it money, determined to understand the odd phenomenon of Guardians and Protecteds. For their attendance, G/Ps have been bribed with everything from free tuition to the promise of future success. On the outside, the university appears normal, its secrets well-hidden behind its multicultural students, vast course variety, and wide campus involvement. It's only to those on the inside, the "Advanced" students and their specialized staff, that the house of education shows its true colors of being a training ground, a place for G/Ps to master relieving the world of paranormal maladies.

Tina, Roscoe, Monáe, and Denzel are Protecteds, humans with psychic abilities who between the ages of 16 and 18 are assigned a Guardian, a sort of animal-like bodyguard. Every Protected has a minimum of three skills, their unique gift and two abilities that directly impact their Guardian, the latter being Telepathic Communication and Command, a spoken order that a Guardian cannot fight.

Majorly Guardians look human, making them indiscernible to the layperson. In line with their surnames, as all Guardians share the name of the creature they represent, their identifiers are their animalistic traits and behaviors.

The critter a Guardian personifies represents their Protected. In simple terms, Guardians are a Protected's spirit animal come to life, hence most pairings get along. They are two sides of the same coin, like day and night or black and white, what one lacks the other possesses, and when they come together, they become whole.

Notice the word, most.

Research has discovered five Guardian/Protected statuses. The personalized, unable to change type or partners once established connections are known as Mutual, Friendly, Lovers, Enemies, and Abuse.

In Mutual G/P pairings, participants are more or less indifferent to one another, usually working in tandem once they realize their partnership is advantageous. Denzel and Dee are in a Mutual relationship. With their union akin to being co-workers, oftentimes the pestering panda Guardian and her Protected of over five years forget how long they've been together.

G/Ps in the self-explanatory Friendly range look like Monáe and Hailey. This Protected and her sheep Guardian are the best of friends, their almost two-year-long partnership sturdied by their five-year-long friendship.

Lovers, the kind of relationship Roscoe and his lynx protector, Ashley, share is one in which parties complete each other and, by extension, fall in love. Lovers can be a difficult classification to shoulder due to a majority of the Guardian/Protected community believing that these Guardians' personal biases regularly clash with their intended purpose.

Rarely are G/P duos incapable of getting along, behave like fire and ice, water and oil. However, when pairings do not mix, are not complementary, like Tina and her wolf Guardian, Brandon, labeling them is easy. Enemies. Though, the attachment style is befuddling to G/P scientists since it conflicts with what they know of the mystical matchup or G/P process.

Lastly, there is the category of Abuse. In this bond, Guardians are at the mercy of their Protecteds. It's within the Abuse Protected's nature to forget that Guardians are living beings, consequently, they'll regularly and selfishly misuse them. Guardians trapped in these exploitative situations often find them lethal...

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Back at Tina and Brandon's rental home...

Tina screwed the shower knob in place, the warm stream cutting to a trickle as she stepped on the cool tile of her nippy bathroom. Her body trembled from the air conditioning Brandon refused to turn any higher than fifty degrees. He didn't seem to care that fall was in full swing, the autumn leaves a myriad of color and the rest of humanity breaking out their precious peacoats, shearling jackets, and the good old-fashioned leather monstrosity.