“Don’t look at me like that, like you’re afraid of me.” The Discord chose Chase and Anti for this one. They have no one to blame but themselves.
“Wh-why are you looking at me like that?”
Chase dropped his mug. It slipped from his suddenly lax fingers, crashing to the kitten tile and breaking into pieces. It was the last sound before the long silence, a silence that descended upon them with the weight of tension and the sharp foul stench of fear. Chase starred. He stayed frozen and he stared.
This wasn’t a new ego. This couldn’t be a new ego. This…this was him. But it wasn’t him? It was something new, something terrifying, something horrible-
Because it looked back at him with an expression that could only be described as soft, and a concern that Chase never knew could exist in corrupted code. It looked at him like it cared, and Chase suddenly wanted to throw up and cry and scream all at once.
Chase stumbled back, crunching over the broken mug, and screamed. He screamed with all the strength in his lungs, with all of his horror and fear and pain thrown into it, just so his brothers would run faster to come save him. The creature flinched, looking around, behind itself, like the threat was somewhere else, wasn’t it. It turned a full circle, letting Chase get a good look at it, and it was different. It wore different clothes. It had wrapped up the ugly deadly wound, it only seemed to have one eye, it didn’t glitch and spasm with every step.
It was stable. It held itself firmly in reality, and Chase cried. He sobbed and tripped over his own weak feet, scrambling back against the floor until he wedged himself in a corner. Where had it gotten this power from? Where had it fixed itself, made itself stronger?
The creature was still taunting him. It turned around, put its back to Chase, and looked around, looking for the threat. Protecting him? Saving him. Waiting for his brothers to come, to come stumbling into this trap. Chase cried harder, curling in tightly on himself. Oh god, oh god-
“Chase, what’s wrong? Where is it?”
The way it said his name- like it had said it a thousand times before, like it loved him, like his brothers said his name. Chase gagged and it turned back to him, looking panicked. It stepped closer and Chase screamed again, scrambling back. Where were his brothers? Where had they gone?
“Ch-chase, don’t look at me like that- don’t look at me like you’re afraid of me. It’s me- it’s Anti. Chase? Chase, can you hear me? Chase?!”