Hi. This is my first story, and I'm using it to experiment with some stylistic ideas I've been thinking of for some time. As such, it is both not very good and probably going to be largely ignored. Consequently, any tips or advice on how to improve my writing would be greatly appreciated. Um... enjoy?

A/N: I do not own Tales of Symphonia. Namco Bandai, a money-grubbing, soulless corporation, does. Yes, in fact, I WOULD like to spend my money on increasingly ridiculous looking DLC costumes for Tales of Graces instead of getting a comprehensive bug fix for the game that you released after having playtested it with a small squadron of mentally damaged primates, whereupon you took its crappy sales (which were crappy not only because the game imploded on a second playthrough onward but because you decided to release it in the same week as Final Freaking Fantasy XIII) as representative of how the series would do on a Nintendo console and immediately turned around and made an enhanced remake for PS3 after hyping the game as a Wii exclusive.

I'm not bitter at all.

Chapter 1: Originality is Overrated

Subtitled: Adventures in First Person

Everybody knew it when they looked at him, and they did. He watched uneasily from the doorway while faces restrained in conversation flashed assuming eyes in his direction, cast surreptitious glances, stared openly. Instantly a bead of self-consciousness wriggled into the seams of his face. Was it just him, or did the eyes linger mockingly, a little overlong? Did mouths curl up a little, insultingly entertained? What could they possibly be entertained by, his clothes, his hair, his sex appeal, his seeming ethnicity, things he tried not to care about but lingered in the back of his mind like unanswered questions?

No. Wait. You're thinking too hard about this. It's simple. Very simple. Simpler than you're making it.

Thought.

The most unfortunate thing about transferring into a new school in the middle of a semester is probably that there is nothing particularly fortunate about it.

Strange faces, each brimming with some unknown petty malice, are swimming around him. People moving around with an assumed atmosphere of purpose that he wishes he too could shroud himself in. No, the most unfortunate thing, he decides, is looking at these faces and seeing a little bit of people you've known before in them, faces that seemed comically stretched and distorted when worn by other people. Faces that are empty of familiarity, that look strange and forbidding and silent. No. This is hypothetical, just a dream, a kind of joke. He'd never really known that many people before, anyway, where he'd come from. No big deal.

No big deal.

But then the bell rings, and he decides that the most unfortunate thing definitely has to be standing awkwardly to the side of the classroom while everybody else clatters into their desks, casting him occasional, snickering, unfair looks that question his competency, asking the unasked question. What's the matter, new kid? Can't find your seat? He sets his face into (what he hopes is) a casually defiant look, hoping it says something like, no, idiots, I can't find my seat because I don't have a seat because I'm the NEW KID. New. As in never been here before, never seen any of you before and likewise. My recently issued locker's in an inconvenient location, filled with the dust of disuse. I don't know what clubs are at this school, or where I'm going to eat lunch, or who I'm going to eat it with and talk with and laugh with and forget what I'm eating with. My textbooks are shiny and stiff and haven't yet been defaced with doodlings from idle times and sarcastic, self-righteous commentary in the margins. The teacher's going to have to ask my name when I come in, and she'll give the same mildly irritated-amused-perturbed look that all teachers do when they're saddled with a new charge, repeating my name as if making sure I know what I'm called.

And here I am, dressed in my stupid dark red shirt and my stupid black jeans and my baggy, overlarge grey hoodie and that stupid Army Surplus knapsack Dad always treated like some family heirloom and insisted that I use, looking more homeschooled than any homeschooled kid could ever look, wishing that I was anywhere but here, going to the local high school, while he goes off to tinker with missile targeting systems and radar and get shot at every day.

Where is this damn teacher?

He is just about to let his knapsack slide gently to the floor and lean against the wall when the door opens, surprising him and causing him to drop the bag heavily on his foot. A withering, ironic laughter breezes coldly through the class, accentuated with a few "Nice"'s and "Smooth move"'s, and he looks up to the teacher, a vaguely severe middle aged woman, giving him a faintly more professional rendition of the expressions on his shiny new classmates' faces. She gestures towards him as if languidly revving a faltering engine into motion. Asking the words that will start it all.

"And you are?"

Give me your name and I'll give you mine. First thoughts?

He straightens, feeling bizarrely sheepish. "Lloyd Irving. I'm... a new student. Just moved here."

He waits apprehensively while watching her nose ominously crinkle, disbelievingly. "Lloyd... Irving?" she repeats slowly, like the name tastes foul in her mouth and she is trying to say something polite about it. Lloyd resists the familiar urge to say "Yes, Lloyd Irving, the Lloyd Irving, insanely famous millionaire Lloyd Irving, haven't you heard of me before?" and act all insulted while she blusters around, thinking she must have made some mistake. But that's not like him, and he isn't famous or a millionaire anyway, and he doesn't want to hear another lecture from his father starting with the lines "Remember son, what I've told you before: lying is the first step towards thievery." So he stays quiet and nods in a fashion that he hopes is agreeable.

Being famous would be a drag, he decides, and if I was a millionaire I'd probably just stupidly spend all of it on food. Sichuan curry. Or maybe a couple million wooden sword set.

"All right, here you are on the roster, so just take a seat and I'll start class."

He is surprised, again. "Anywhere?"

"Anywhere. What, you didn't think we had assigned seats here, did you?" He feels his face set alight by the statement and shuffles agonizingly somewhere in the middle rows, feeling none of the security he'd thought he'd get from being seated. No duh. This is high school. Nobody assigns seats in high school. People just come in and sit down where they want, preferably closer to their giggling, stupidly similar friends, and their placement just gets accepted and assumed by everybody else over the year to be just normal, just the way things are.

This is just the way things are.

I wonder, he thinks, when I will also be accepted, sucked into the normal way, to be arranged like furniture and hopefully forgotten.

But now the teacher is talking, and he shifts his mind onto things like wondering who Macbeth was, and why the hell he should care about him at all.

Ahem. Eyes shut. The war is starting.

This is Lloyd Irving.

He strikes an absolutely nondescript figure, the way he is dressed, the way he appears. Probably the only thing that's really distinguishing at first sight is his somewhat ridiculous dark brown hair, which sweeps off into right field somewhere, giving him the appearance of a windblown, disheveled scarecrow, or something like that. Fortunately for him, he has stopped just short of the point where most boys with similar haircuts proceed onwards to things like dying their hair buoyant, unnatural colors and getting tattoos, something that is fortunate because it would simply make him look like a tool. A tool of what, we are not to know. Society, perhaps, the mimetic movement of fads rippling through impressionable youth. But more likely a tool of the berk who now sits behind him in English, a spiteful individual who will end up stealing his textbooks from under his desk later in the year, entirely for the sheer hell of it, and, occasionally and more pertinently, spray-painting his hair. At any rate, this solitary distinguishing feature cannot even claim to be the product of human intent, seeing as it results entirely from getting up barely on time in the mornings with severe bedhead, and has by now more or less solidified into his norm.

You weren't hoping for something classy, I hope.

His face is plain and almost handsome, but we can probably accuse almost everybody in this world of almost making it. His brown eyes are, unfortunately, eyes that are merely brown. No warmth. No enigmatic twinkle. No scintillation or the reflections of peoples' futures. As far as eyeballs go, they only succeed in directing visual input to his brain. He's fairly tall and faintly fit, but it seems like everybody is these days, and at any rate everybody's walking with the same, simian crouch, including Lloyd, a khaki military looking backpack crammed with books slung over one shoulder, so one couldn't really tell. He doesn't care about the books. He barely reads the books. The most wear and tear the books will ever receive will not be derived from constant use but probably from being crammed into a tiny backpack that eats paper for a living. In fact, he soon enough he will prove to be a middling, low to mid B student, with a rare C and an even rarer A thrown in for variety's sake. Similarly he will eventually take part in numerous school athletics, where he will discover that he is never the star player, but good enough to always prove to be a staple of the school's team. Not great but not bad, not good enough for the jocks and not good enough for the nerds, too smart to be dumb and too dumb to be smart.

Ah well.

He is wearing dark jeans and a red T-shirt over a dark long sleeved shirt, under a fleece-lined, grey hooded sweatshirt. There is no significant reason for this. He wears jeans and a long sleeved shirt and a hooded sweatshirt because it's cold, stuck somewhere in that meteorological twilight between fall and winter, and he wears that dark red, almost burgundy T-shirt because red is his favorite color and people tend to own clothing in their favorite color, imagining that wearing said color will make them more presentable on important days like their first day at a new school. The jeans are dark because jeans seem to be largely produced in dark colors, and wearing garishly, bizarre colors other than black and blue seems to be synonymous with looking like a rapist. Other than that, there's nothing from which any outsider could possibly divine anything about his character. No earrings. No tattoos. No glasses. No shiny looking watch, just a blatantly athletic looking one that anybody can buy for $5 from a chain sporting goods shop. The logos on his shirt belong to some obscure telecommunications firm that went belly up in the 90s or possibly an athlete who is now past his prime and merely produces clothes (the names are very similar, for sure), and his shoes are the same, familiarly scuffed, vaguely-for-a-sport-of-some-kind shoes that almost everybody has.

He's just a guy, another senior, another 18 year old at a high school with stupid hair.

Well, a 18 year old with stupid hair, and a significantly more interesting dog.

"What's with his hair?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, the dog's. Why is his fur...?"

They're on the packed bus, striking a bizarre pair, for all Lloyd's plainness, heading home while crammed in uncomfortably, shoulder to shoulder with a legion of other strangers. Lloyd is standing, gripping a metal bar and wondering why the old woman he has just politely stood to give his seat to is casting baleful looks at him, before she sleazes out "I don't think animals are allowed on buses anyway." She swivels her head, giving Noishe the most horizontal stare Lloyd has ever seen.

Noishe is a hulking, gigantic dog of some unknown species, but if we had to guess, we might suppose a cross between, say, a wolf and a small whale. For reasons that are obvious, he belongs to Lloyd Irving. It says so on his collar.

Not only is the entirely good natured creature roughly the size of an average grizzly bear, it (he) is spotted with bilious, aqua green smudges over his otherwise pure white, smooth pelt, which, for the point of future reference, is unusual. There's something about his pointed, canine snout and bright black eyes that suggests a significantly more feral and noble lupine heritage, but unfortunately for anybody looking for something more romantic about the legend of Noishe, the tongue slipping between clean, smiling teeth offsets any sense of danger or fear. Around his neck, he's wearing a stranger collar than most, laden with possessions from somebody else's trouser pockets that mysteriously exchange themselves for each other when times are necessary. At the moment they consist of what appear to be a wallet, a cellphone, a swiss army knife, a ballpoint pen, and, of all things, a housekey.

At the moment, he's sitting docilely and politely on the seat next to the old woman, panting cheerfully, giving off a permanently doggy smile. In response to the old woman's commentary, Noishe simply gives her a gigantic, slobbering lick on the face and smiles in her face, resuming slobbering over her grocery bags and beating his tail in a violently cheerful fashion, preventing her from reading the chintzy gossip magazine in her lap. From the look on her face, she really wants to know about what George Clooney has been up to in the past month. It's eating at her soul.

Lloyd is forced to grimace.

"Look," he says, "I'm very sorry, he doesn't mean anything bad at all, and he's really a great dog once you get to know him -"

"HE'S THE SMARTEST GODDAMN F***ING DOG I EVER F***ING SEEN," shouts the driver from up front, a stooped older man who is going slightly deaf because he insists on blasting loud rock music in his ears while driving, and has possibly been blasting this music in his ears for the last 50 years. He has decided to, for some unfathomable reason, tie his greying hair in a completely misplaced rattail, but it is highly possible that the loudness of the music has caused him to completely forget about this. Unfortunately it has also caused him to forget about the current volume of his voice. "I DON'T KNOW NO OTHER DOGS WHO PAY TO GET ON BUSES WITH F***ING BUS PASSES."

"... uh, yeah. But what I mean is that, is that... maybe you could... oh, COME ON. Look, I'm sorry, lady, but I have never met ANYBODY who didn't like large, happy dogs being happy for them. And I'm sorry you're so offended by my dog, so maybe next time I'll just stick him in the luggage and everybody can listen to him howling the entire way to where I live. And as for his fur-"

Lloyd turns, addressing the curious businessman peering awkwardly over his shoulder, "well, uh, when I was a little kid, I kind of painted him with green paint because I thought it would make him more interesting. But by the time my Dad found out, the paint was dry and we didn't want to give him bald patches, you know? But, well, he doesn't seem to have been hurt, luckily, and the paint stuck for some reason and now he's like this," he finishes with a slightly apologetic air.

The business man gives a snickering but not unkind smile. "Interesting. Unique, all right. Dead ringer for PETA, though, I'd watch yourself, kid," breaking into the sort of garrulous laugh that anybody who is left the only person laughing at their own joke gives before tapering off into silence. OK. It's not a really funny joke, anyway, and it leaves an awkward conversational vacuum in its wake.

Lloyd reaches down and scratches Noishe behind the ears, and whispers "Thanks for coming to fetch me, old pal." For a moment, the bus somehow clatters along in the complete silence only created by the weariness of a hundred tired strangers letting themselves be carried along to another place and time, when their lives will be forced into motion again, creakily, like an uncooperative door, by the tides of reality once more...

And then a girl's voice interrupts him.

"It's a cute story, and a cute dog... um, that's what I think, at least."

It's a voice that's timid and forthcoming at the same time, something that sounds so simple and relentlessly honest it feels like an epiphany to hear. It's unusual, no, to hear a voice that doesn't have those tinges of suspicion and restraint caught at the corners, of people wondering and fearing that whoever they're talking to isn't what they seem... but to hear a voice that speaks of somebody who is willing to give you their trust unasked for. The clarity slices through the air cluttered with the noise of a 10 year old city bus. But, though Lloyd hears the echoes of these thoughts racing through his mind, the most obvious things are that whoever's speaking is a girl, and that she's speaking to him, for some reason.

He cranes his neck towards the source of the voice and is only mildly perturbed to find a pendulous, bearded man in a tracksuit; a narrow, angry looking young woman engrossed with the contents of her watch; somebody dressed in obscuring clothing, earbuds plugged into their head; a veritable wall of people, looking like a cross sectioned population, none of whom look anything like a timid-but-not-timid-girl-who-likes-dogs.

Man, this bus is really crowded.

So he laughs and says, "Uh... thanks," and watches Noishe pant happily when a delicate hand worms its way through the crowd to pet him tentatively, wishing he had something more intelligent to say than...

"Do you like animals?"

Eh, worth a shot. Why are you still talking, Lloyd?

The voice rings back with a hint of laughter. "Yeah, I like all animals... though I guess dogs are my favorite. But I'm not allowed to own any pets, so..."

"Aw. That sucks. Why, are you allergic or something?"

You're prying, Lloyd...

But she answers anyway. "Well, no... it's just, well, my dad doesn't like animals as much as I do... actually, I guess it's more accurate to say he hates them. He thinks they're a waste of time and effort," she mimicks, her voice unconsciously donning a pompous and authoritative mask.

It's a little disturbing to only know this voice as coming from the direction of the pendulous bearded tracksuit guy, who desperately needs to make use of that tracksuit and go running. But the bus is packed and it's difficult to do anything beyond wriggle and wonder why the guy who's sitting next to you has such a knobbly elbow.

Lull in conversation. Crap. Crapcrapcrap. What do I say? Do I accidentally insult her father's tastes? Will saying "is that so" make me sound like some boring dolt and kill the conversation? Why am I thinking about this?

"Oh, uh, sorry, what's his name again?"

Thank Martel she's speaking. "Noishe."

"Noishe." She seems to test the name out like somebody taking a bite of a dish they've never tried before. "That's, ah... a very interesting name, I think. Does it mean something special?"

"Well-" he gets out before she interrupts in a fluster of apology.

"Oh, I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm making fun of him. I like the name Noishe, it's just that I'm the sort of person who names dogs silly things like 'Poochi' or 'Chappy,' so..."

Lloyd's mouth says "No problem" while his head says "Chappy?" But he continues on anyway. "Well, we didn't name him Noishe; his previous owner did. He was wearing the collar when my Dad found him and took him in, and I guess we were just too lazy to train him to respond to any other name besides Noishe anyway, so... yeah. The name stuck. I think he prefers the name Noishe, he's definitely smart enough to, so I think even if we had tried we wouldn't have succeeded..."

"Wow, your dad just adopted him off the streets?"

"The woods actually. But yeah. Him and me both."

The air is filled with the screeching sound of the bus coming to a stop and the movement of a hundred people being jarred by the sudden change in momentum. You need to get off now.

"This is my stop."

The hand stops petting Noishe and vanishes into the cloud of people after lingering a little... maybe wistfully. And the voice follows...

"Oh, OK. Bye! And thanks for letting me pet Noishe, uh..."

"Lloyd. My name's Lloyd."

The movement of people begins to sweep him through the door. But he hears it, and out of the corner of his eye, through a dusty, disused window, he catches a glimpse of golden blonde hair...

"I'm Colette."

This is home sweet home for Lloyd Irving: a blocky, simple apartment complex so completely plain and unadorned it looks like it was made by pouring concrete into a gigantic mold. It is composed entirely of right angles and rectangles and blocks and sits solidly on its foundation, not so much in the manner of something well built but like an airtight boxy cockroach that refuses to get squashed. The concrete walls are industrial grey and faded from what feels like centuries of existence. It's creased down the middle by the unholy union of a staircase and a hallway, made of some depthless metal coated with cement that reverberates with every step, sending jarring, metallic echoes through the entire building.

The apartment complex looks like a graveyard where dreams do not so much come to die as to stagnate and rot away into dust, waiting to catch a wind to blow the fragments to greener pastures. It's not a place where teenage boys come to live romantic lives away from their parents, or for disregarded genii to brew revolutionary, world changing plans, or anything else of the sort. It's a place where people simply do nothing more than exist for a time, and wait for the sun to smile their way...

Its immediate neighbors consist of a disreputable looking pawn shop, a gas station, several significantly flashier looking apartment complexes, a bustling boulevard bristling with cars, and, of course, a McDonald's, all of which are tastefully ornamented with a small legion of struggling, miserable looking bushes and trees. But all of these are positioned in such a way that the small apartment complex (which is even more boring to look at than a McDonald's) is sequestered behind them, in an obscure corner in an already obscure neighborhood.

Behind the apartment complex sits a nearly empty, puny parking lot. It is normally empty.

At the moment, it is occupied by a moving van, a teenage boy with ridiculous hair, a splotchy green dog, two men who look like former pirates weirdly dressed in working class clothing, and an expansive quantity of duct-taped, cardboard boxes.

"Well, kid, we've moved the heavier stuff into the room. 203, right? Right. But, uh, we're on a tight schedule, so..."

"You're leaving the boxes here."

"Yeah, uh, ideally after you pay us, but yeah. Hope it's no problem, bro."

Lloyd is pretty sure they're ripping him off. It sounds like a thin excuse. But Lloyd Irving is also the sort of person who feels that it is less difficult to argue with some people than to simply pay them and just move the boxes himself... and he has no reason to believe they're lying to him. Maybe they're really on a tight schedule, and have to be somewhere right now... so he fishes around in his pocket for the crumpled up check his dad gave him before he shipped off, hands it to them, and watches the truck thunder off in a cloud of dust.

I am such a sucker.

He turns around and picks up the first box, leaving Noishe to watch the rest of them, while he clambers up the stairs and winces subconsciously at his echoing foootsteps.

201... 202... here we are.

It's a sparse looking room that he props open with the first box: a small kitchen immediately to the left of the entrance, followed by a living room and a hallway behind which a bedroom and bathroom presumably lurk. The heavier furnishings have contrived to place themselves in highly inconvenient locations, so Lloyd dumps his first box and proceeds back to the parking lot, where Noishe faithfully maintains a vigil over their belongings. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. The occasional interlude spent straightening out a sofa and a television and an Army surplus military cot. Only when he and Noishe are heading back to the apartment, last box in arms and dusk beginning to fall, do they notice the small, stooped, silver-haired figure standing above them, shadowed under the roof and the retreating daylight.

Great. The mandatory crotchety, irritable elderly neighbor, come to berate them for whatever reason said neighbor could contrive.

Lloyd prepares himself for a lecture.

He is not prepared to hear the voice of a 13 year old boy who has not hit puberty yet.

"HEY! You there! You with the ludicrous hair and dog with the defaced pelt! Could you keep it down a little? Some of us are trying to get useful things done with our lives, and we can't get them done with you clattering up and down the stairs and making an unholy racket! Got it?"

The streetlamps in the parking lot choose this moment to snap on, revealing a shorter boy with astonishing white-silver hair and an annoyed expression contorting his young face into an older one. He has red eyes so vividly scarlet they seem falsified, but clearly solidify his identity as an albino, a far cry from a cranky old man, at least. Lloyd decides to go for the apologetic-but-polite stance.

"Hi, uh, hi there, neighbor... sir, I mean neighbor," he stammers out, wondering why he seems to have been subconsciously intimidated by this extremely belligerent boy. "Ahem. Hi. I just moved in five minutes ago, so you don't have to worry, I'm not going to be this noisy all the time. Sorry about the noise, I had to move boxes around and, well, you must know how it is (insert affected sheepish laughter here). It's a pleasure to meet you and I hope we get along in the future." He wonders if he should bow but decides it would look Asian, which he's definitely not.

"I KNOW you just moved in, you ignorant-look, the point is not that you are not going to be noisy in the future, the point is that you are being noisy NOW."

Guess that didn't work. Lloyd decides to commit his resources to giving this punk a piece of his mind, all pretenses forgotten. Dwarven courtesy can go throw itself out the window.

"Listen, you little-whatever. Forget it. It's pointless now because I just FINISHED moving. OK? No more boxes besides this one, got it? Look, I'm sorry I made so much noise, but I can't do anything about the noise I made in the past, OK? I promise I'll tiptoe around you in the future so as not to disturb whatever EXTREMELY IMPORTANT GRADE SCHOOL PLANS you must have-"

"I'll have you know I'm a high school PRODIGY, thank you very much-"

"HIGH SCHOOL plans. Yeah, way better there-"

"Do you even know what prodigy means? I'm a freaking GENIUS. Whatever plans I've got are a million times more important than yours-"

"Yeah, well, I bet mine a billion times more important-"

"Nimrod-"

"Stuck-up little-"

"Ignoramus-"

"Bratty-"

"Idiotic hair-"

"Oh, that's real mature, making fun of my hair-"

"Mature? I'll show you mature, I'm a TRILLION times more mature than you are, you bigheaded-"

"Yeah? What do you think is mature? Do you tie your own shoelaces?"

"I'll have you know I am virtually the master of my own establishment-"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you cook and clean for yourself? Do you fill out the paperwork for your own taxes? Because I'll have you know that I, Genis Sage, do all that and MORE, while you've probably had your mommy and daddy do all that for you during your entire wretched, easy life-"

"Well my Dad's gone off to WAR and my Mom's DEAD, so I guess I'll have to figure it all out for myself anyway!"

There's a dead silence, punctuated by an "oh."

Oh.

Dad's gone off to war and Mom's dead.

Lloyd sighs.

"You know what, forget this. I'm sorry we got off on such a bad foot. But I'd like to finish moving now and I'm sure you'd like to get back to whatever important stuff you're doing, so I'll just get out of your way and you can get out of mine. OK?" Lloyd doesn't wait for an answer and heads for the staircase. By the time he and Noishe get to the top, the boy seems to have taken Lloyd's advice and disappeared.

Lloyd shrugs and enters the apartment.

"Who the hell are you?"

There's a man sitting on his couch, playing video games. He's got dark, auburn hair cascading spikily over one eye, the other revealed to the world to cast an intense and unfathomable stare through blood red irises. There's an expression set so deeply into his face it seems implacable, more like a painted depiction than a mass of skin and muscle, prone to emotion and reaction. His face is agelessly handsome and chiseled, his body lithe and muscular, though obscured by loose, almost sloppy clothing.

He's reclining on Lloyd's couch and seems to have leafed through the cardboard boxes scattered on the dust grey-brown floor specifically to procure the bag of chips he's now eating.

The man stands up.

"Kratos Aurion." A deep baritone. Girls must swoon over this.

At the lack of response, the man... Kratos... raises an eyebrow. "Your landlord."

"My landlord," Lloyd repeats, in the manner of somebody who repeats something because they're not exactly sure somebody is lying directly to their face. Nevertheless, he puts down the last box and shakes the proffered hand while Noishe wanders off behind them to eat the remains of Kratos'... Lloyd's chips. Whoa there. There's an expectant lull as he waits for an explanation.

None is forthcoming.

"... OK, fine. Let's pretend that you actually are Kratos Aurion, my dad's retired commanding officer from the army, who has kindly decided to rent out a room to his foster son while old Dirk Irving runs off to the war. Then," he stabs a finger at Kratos, "Why do you look like you're in your mid-twenties when my dad is, like, 40, why are you in my apartment playing video games, and WHY DID YOU EAT MY CHIPS?"

"I should think that would be obvious," states the man, holding up a set of housekeys. "Didn't you notice? The men outside palmed a copy of your key. I've changed the locks and come to give you your new key. For future reference, carelessness breeds dire consequences, you should come and greet your landlord when moving in, and holding shouting matches with current residents is undignified and childish."

What.

"What, you mean with that crazy kid outside? I'll have you know that HE provoked ME and-"

"Genis Sage has extenuating circumstances that I'm not at liberty to divulge."

"Uh..."

"I mean that you are not aware of everything surrounding young Mr. Sage, and it's not my place to tell you," states the man calmly, raising a calm, chiseled eyebrow. "Therefore you shouldn't assume that he is any more at fault than you."

"Why not?" asks Lloyd stupidly, immediately regretting it. Kratos mercifully decides not to answer, opting instead to stretch languorously and painfully slowly before sidling out the door.

As he passes Lloyd on the way out, he adds, as a sort of afterthought, "and in reference to your previous questions, I drink a lot of water, I was bored because you were taking so long, and I was hungry. Consider it a small advance on paying for your new lock and key. Have a good evening. Lock your door."

And Lloyd is left feeling immensely stupid, so stupid that he almost decides to shout after the vanishing Kratos, "What sort of a name is Kratos anyway?", before slamming the door.

He examines the lock. Brand new. When the hell did he find the time to do that?

"Drinks a lot of water, yeah right, sounds like complete bull to me," Lloyd mutters as he pulls clothes and necessities out of cardboard boxes and looks pointlessly at the remains of the bag of chips on the couch next to Noishe, who has contrived to fall asleep. The console is still on and Lloyd is vaguely irritated to find that Kratos has taken the liberty of beating all of Lloyd's scores on Rock Band 3. He stares at his homework for longer than is necessary before muddling through it and crashing back on his couch, thinking about his day.

His day...

Cons. He's the new kid at school, he has no friends, and his Dad has gone off to be in the war, leaving him to move himself into an apartment run by an invasive and infuriatingly competant landlord, with his only known neighbor being an egotistical teenager with the personality of an 80 year old with a rifle. His apartment is riddled with half unpacked cardboard boxes he is too lazy to unpack all the way. He's already broken his promise to Dirk to stop letting Noishe eat his snack food, though at least half of it had been already eaten by his landlord. And, within minutes of arriving at this lousy, depressing apartment complex, he has somehow incurred the necessity to pay off an entirely new lock to said lousy, depressing apartment.

It's looking pretty bad for the pros.

Pros.

Well, the roof looks pretty waterproof, and so far nothing seems to have been broken or "mysteriously lost" yet. He's warm and relatively safe, and nobody seems to be out to kill him. Pshaw. Like that would ever happen.

You're reaching. The pros are getting whupped and you know it.

He met a girl who liked dogs on the bus today... who he will probably never see again. It's a big city, and he doesn't even know what she looks like.

Colette...

"PICK UP THE PHONE, LLOYD."

"Dad? Hey Dad. Sorry about not picking up the phone. I was, uh, busy."

"Are you still unpacking? Remember, Lloyd, industriousness is key to a better future-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Dad."

"Ha. That's m'boy. Now, tell me how you're settling in over there."

"Well..."

"I know the apartment's not the best looking, but there's not many places that are willing to let 18 year olds live by themselves with landlords that I trust."

"Yeah, about that. Was your old friend Kratos...?"

"Kratos Aurion? Aye, that'd be him. Why?"

"Uh, I don't suppose he's like 20 something, with dark brownish, reddish hair covering one eye?"

"Whoa now, he still looks like he's 20 something? I suppose the years haven't been kind to me, then... but, aye, that sounds like him."

"... no way-"

"What was that? I didn't quite catch you-"

"Nothing."

"... All right then. Did you meet any of your neighbors? How'd you get along?"

"Uh, well, my only neighbor so far seems to be this bratty little grade skipper."

"I suppose you didn't meet very kindly, then."

"No, he had the personality of an angry, violent old man. We kind of spent the first few minutes after we had met each other shouting insults at each other..."

"Then I expect you to go and make amends to him sometime in the future. Soon."

"But he started-"

"No buts, Lloyd. Remember, let's all work together for a better future. And considering you'll be neighbors for, well, as long as this war goes on-"

"Yeah, yeah, all right, Dad. *sigh* I'll do it."

"Besides, you haven't considered the circumstances. How much do you know about this boy?"

"Well, nothing-"

"And it strikes me as suspicious that he, of all people, would come out to yell at you, instead of his parents."

"... yeah. He said he cooked and cleaned for himself... maybe he lives by himself."

"You see? Where one dwarf sees stones, another dwarf can see a beautiful statue. Perspective can change everything."

"All right... heh."

"Is something funny?"

"No, it's just... well, that's exactly what Kratos said, more or less... oh, crap. Wait a sec. Just so you know, I kind of nearly got ripped off and Kratos ended up replacing the lock and key for the apartment and now I have to pay him back-"

"Now you don't worry about that, son. I've arranged for you to do part-time work-"

"What?"

"-part-time work on the WEEKENDS with another friend of mine. A friend of a friend, actually. Kratos knows where it is-"

"I have to go talk with him again-"

"-yes. Now, I don't want to hear you complaining about this, Lloyd. This is a chance for you to gain valuable experience for your future, son, and a little spending money can't hurt while you're out there. A dwarf doesn't spend anything he hasn't earned."

"Well, I'm not actually a dwarf but-"

"You get the point."

"I get the point. Fine, I'll talk to Kratos. But I can't guarantee I'll like it..."

"Grit your teeth and do what has to be done. I'll be seeing you soon, Lloyd."

"You don't know that."

"Now, Lloyd. What have I always told you? Goodness and love..."

"Will always win, yes, I know, but real life doesn't work that way, does it? You're at war, Dad, and people die every day."

"But I'm promising you, as one man to another. And you remember, like I've always said. A man's nothing without his word."

"... All right."

"Then I won't say any more. Wait-before I go, has Noishe been eating..?"

"Gah. Sorry Dad, I swear I won't let him do it again. Promise."

"*laughter* Then I'll be holding you to your word. Stay safe, son."

"Bye Dad. You too."

*click*

"If you'd like to make a call, please-"

Knock knock.

There's a bowlful of steaming Italian food and a card that reads, "Sorry about earlier today. Here's a housewarming gift. Genis Sage, apt. 204. P.S. I want the bowl back. You better wash it well before you give it back, or I'll set your hair on fire. P.P.S. I'm serious. P.P.P.S. I have the means. P.P.P.P.S. I'm warning you: don't try me."

Nice.

He eats it anyway.

Thanks for reading this travesty. If you have any tips or advice on how to improve my writing, I'd be happy to hear them. Heck, you don't even have to leave a review...