Chapter 49: Tony Returns

The blizzard gets worse. It rages all week and into the weekend, making it impossible for anyone to leave the house.

With everyone cooped up for so long, there's plenty of time for moody painting.

And neurotic painting.

And vexing encounters with ghosts.

Polaris can hear their thoughts, and they are loud. Much louder than human thoughts, and they have an echo-y dead quality that makes his head hurt and his stomach feel sick. It's very unpleasant and distracting, and prevents him from actually hearing the contents of their thoughts. He can tell they're thinking things, and can sometimes tell if they're feeling a particular emotion (which is rare), but the actual words are near impossible to parse out.

Basically, Polaris really hates ghosts. He wishes he could convince his parents to move them to a real cemetery, but without telling them the real reason behind his dislike, they assume he's frightened of them and simply pat him on the head and assure him that these ghosts would never hurt a fly.

Sage and Polaris have a joint birthday, celebrated by the whole family and two cakes in the dining room.

Sage is an outdoors-lover, and is disappointed that he can't play outside today because of heavy snowfall.

Polaris ages up next.

The sparkles tickle his nose, making him sneeze...

It's kind of an uncomfortable transformation. (That's his formalwear, BTW.)

To make up for having to share a room with his younger sister, Sage is given a chemistry set to do experiments on.

He immediately blows something up, and is banned from the set until his logic skill is high enough for him to actually make useful progress on the thing.

Nova, the baby, ages up as well this weekend, to the sound of wind howling outside and tree branches scraping the windows.

The puppies have a birthday too...

(Poppy)

(Milo)

...And then the lights go out. The children freak out, and it's several hours before everyone can be calmed down and ushered into bed. 

Polaris goes to bed in his street clothes, determined not to fall asleep. He's not going to be woken up by some nightmarish creatures in his room anymore, dammit, he's a teenager now and determined to find out what in the world is going on.

It's several hours later that Polaris finally begins to doze off, only coming to when he hears the slightest creak. He's a very light sleeper.

The man.. thing... in his room is his uncle. Or was his uncle, before he became this creature. Polaris knows all this from his telepathy, but Tony's thoughts are faint, distorted, and difficult to hear. Pol blinks. Then he squints. He's terrified, but also exhilarated, in a way. He twitches his foot experimentally, and is delighted to find that it's not paralyzed. He can move!

Polaris stands. Tony freezes, shocked that Polaris is awake. Or is he scared? Or does he just not care? Polaris stares hard at Tony, trying to figure out why he can't hear his thoughts clearly.

They face off in the darkness. Then, Tony begins to laugh.

"I was right," he says. "Her power is weakened by the snow! She won't be able to follow me here this time!"

Tony studies Polaris closely, stepping into his personal space, startling him.

"BOO!" he shouts, and laughs again as Polaris shouts in fright. "Ah-ah-ah... no screaming... or I'll tear your jugular out with my teeth!" Tony grins, his fangs gleaming in the moonlight.

He tilts his head at Polaris. "You can feel it too, can't you?" he giggles. "The hold she has on you... it's lessened, hasn't it? Me, too." He grins. "I'm going to have so much fun hurting you..."

Polaris... can't help it. He wets himself in fear.

Tony practically howls with laughter, then shushes himself, grinning maniacally. 

"Ah.... ahahaha... you poor little freak, I'll put you out of your misery... Wetting yourself like a little baby..."

The words echo in Polaris's head. Like a baby... Baby.... Baby.... He pushes past the strange distortion in his head and focuses on Tony's thoughts. Second grade... being picked on by an older kid.... so scared, so humiliated... the hot release of liquid against his leg... the taunting shouts of the other kids: Baby... baby... baby....

Polaris straightens, ignoring the stench of his own urine and focusing instead on the man in front of him. "That's what they called you, isn't it?" he says, his voice shaking with fear, but not breaking. "When Duke McClellan challenged you to a fight? You wussed out and pissed your pants, and they called you 'baby.'"

"H... How do you know.. nevermind, it doesn't matter, I'll --"

"In the fourth grade," Polaris interrupts, warming to his theme, "your teacher told you you were manipulative and would never amount to anything, in front of the whole class." This was after he gave all the girls in his class wedgies, but that's not relevant to what's happening in Tony's head.

"In high school, you were rejected by three different girls and were too ashamed to go to prom alone, so you pretended that you didn't want to go." The taunts are working. Tony begins to break down under the memories of all his childhood slights. Polaris keeps going.

"Your father never looked at you, never cared for you. Your mother barely noticed you. Even Josie," Polaris stumbles over the name, confused, his voice trembling slightly, but he picks the thread back up easily. "Even Josie loved -- my father -- but she never cared about you, never gave you a second thought. You were so pathetic, so undeserving of love, even your plants died because of you."

"How can you..." Tony breaks off, his voice trembling behind tears he's just barely keeping at bay. He thought he was over all that, and here comes this twerp bringing it all back to the surface...

"You think that's all I can do?" Polaris bluffs quickly. "I'm a telepath; I can communicate by thoughts. And if you lay a hand on me or my family, that woman -- Rhianu --" Tony shudders at the name, "will know in a heartbeat, and what do you think she'll do to you then?"

Tony stumbles back in fear. "You can't -- you won't -- she'll kill me --" 

"Then LEAVE," Polaris says. "And DON'T come back."

So Tony leaves, whimpering as he goes. Polaris stands still for a moment, staring after him. What the hell just happened? he asks himself, stunned.

Finally, he strips out of his dirty clothes and drops into bed. He'll shower in the morning; first, he needs to get some blessed sleep.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get much, because only a few minutes later, the burglar alarm goes off.

D'oh! The policeman who responds to the call is completely useless, and gets his butt kicked by the burglar. So Blaze takes matters into his own hands.

Zinnia is too busy wondering when the lights started working again to really react.

Officer: "Unfortunately, the burglar was able to get away."

Zinnia: "Actually I think my husband is handling it..."

Officer: "Oh, right."

Blaze: "You're going to get credit for catching her yourself, aren't you?"

The officer pays Blaze 500 simoleons to keep his mouth shut and pretend that the police are actually good for something in this town. Blaze shrugs and pockets the cash.

Sage takes the opportunity to sneak a midnight snack.

The next morning, Polaris finds Ambrosia and tells her all about his nighttime visitors, and his confrontation with their supposed uncle.

"I seriously thought I was gonna die," he admits to his sister. It occurs to him that he should maybe not be telling her all this, since she's still a kid... but he doesn't have any other friends, and Ambrosia is tough. Tougher than he is, anyway. 

"But you scared him off," Ambrosia says admiringly. "That was really brave."

"It wasn't that hard, really. He was kind of a bum." They laugh together as they head downstairs for breakfast.

"But we should definitely find out more about the fairy-thing," Ambrosia says. "Maybe the internet? Or the library?"

Polaris nods. "The weather's looking a bit better now, we could probably go to the library tomorrow... I think I'm too absent-minded to look at books for that long, though."

"Oh, don't worry about that, I'm a genius," boasts Ambrosia, even though she's not. Polaris smirks and pulls on her pigtail. 

For now, Ambrosia browses the internet for fairy-related information, while Polaris hovers.

"Everything I'm finding is, like, Tinkerbell crap," Ambrosia complains. "Not big scary wing creatures like you saw. There's a lot on vampires, though... And stop reading over my shoulder, it's annoying."

Polaris gets distracted easily, anyway, so it's not long before he stops reading with Ambrosia and focuses on something else. Today he's picking up on the particularly loud thoughts of a neighborhood cat. It's surprisingly easy to get lost in its thoughts, and forget he's not actually a cat.

Ambrosia: "You are such a freak sometimes, you know that?"

Polaris: *skittish about the full moon*

Sage: "What... is happening."

What is happening is: Polaris deciding to embrace his "ability."

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Notes -

Blah. Yeah, that scene with Tony is real corny I know, but he is a loser and I figured he'd be pretty easily scared off by Polaris's "power." Tony's evilness has always been due to a combination of being a sensitive baby, not having enough love shown him, and imitating the evil behavior Racquel modeled from a young age. So his psyche is easily broken once you know his weaknesses, which are surprisingly juvenile and pathetic. Lol. 

Also, sorry for the dark pictures, the lights really did stop working. I restarted a few times, but it wasn't working, and I figured a dark scene would be better anyway. The glitch later fixed itself when I restarted my computer for updates. >.>