"...let me get your check."
"Oh..." Schuldig's slightly nasal tenor stopped the woman in her tracks. He leaned back in his chair and flashed his most playful smile, fresh gaze and confident manner betraying the visage of a boy who had just spent a night sleeping in the sewers. "We already paid."
His voice was airy and vampiric, the two gazes met, the waitress' eyes hazed over slightly.
What an odd group they must have been, Crawford mused, as he glanced across the table. All four boys had wolfed down their meals with disturbing speed and desperation. Even the great Bradley Crawford had been unable to educate his hunger and submitted to the urge just to inhale his eggs and sausage. Farfarello had dug in unabashed, so caught up in stuffing his face, that he made a grab for Schuldig's orange juice, mistaking it for his milk shake, and gulped it half down before either boy noticed.
Aside from eating as if they had never seen food before, they were also mismatched and out of place. How often was it that four young boys came in, order a giant breakfast platter for themselves, with no adult there to supervise or pay for them? They couldn't have been family, Crawford was so plainly American, Nagi so Asian, Farfarello so plainly snow white and round with the features of Irish, Scottish, or British blood, and Schuldig so sun-worn and sharp featured Germanic. Their ages obviously varied, they couldn't have been friends. So what were they?
"I'm going to check on that," The waitress said.
Schuldig batted his eyes, "Do you really have to?" His smile widen and he tilted his head to the side, red-orange hair cascaded down his shoulders. "Don't you trust me?"
Nagi shoved a piece of fruit in his mouth to keep from snorting.
Crawford drummed his fingers on the table, wondering how they were going to do this. This whole surviving thing. Este, Rosenkreuzt, and Sweepers aside, they stood out.
Who screamed for attention the most was debatable. Perhaps Farfarello, because it wasn't every day one saw a red haired albino child with a deadly calm amber eye and a hole in his face. Farfarello had come to Rosenkreuzt with his right eye taped away with cotton swabs and medical wrap, he had an eye patch for awhile, but it was quickly torn off in one of his frequent temper tantrums. He preferred to go around with the gap exposed and frightening, half because it felt better in the open air, where the wound could breath, half because it scared the other students.
On top of that wound, he had two long pink scars running along his face. One slashed across his lip, the other crossed down his eyebrow to his ear. Just looking at him, any normal person would have been filled with pity, thinking the poor child had been attacked, mutilated. Crawford suspected the scars were probably self made, and he would have more, if Rosenkreuzt didn't keep him away from everything sharp and pointy.
He didn't fidget or fret the way a child his age should have. Farfarello possessed a cat-like grace, a liquid slickness that was apparent in his every move. Every jerk of the hands, ever movement of the neck seemed skillfully thought out, like the steps in a long, haunting dance. He was also very young looking, soft and unmoving, which betrayed his entire demeanor. The childhood roundness had yet to decay from Farfarello's face, his lips were still full and swollen, his body still weighed down with baby fat. He didn't look twelve, and that, Crawford decided, could be a problem.
The boy's insanity was on the top of the oracle's mind. Farfarello suffered from childhood schizophrenia, made worse by some unnamed traumatic event the Irish Manipulator was rumored to have suffered through. He was unstable, swinging between the positive and negative symptoms of his disease quickly and without warning. Schuldig had expressed concern about using Farfarello in their plans from the beginning, not because the boy was, as Schuldig said "fucking nuts", but because as a telepath, Schuldig was privy to every shrill whisper and demanding hallucination that trembled through Farfarello's clouded mind.
Medication didn't work on Farfarello, risperdale, seroqual, even clozaril didn't affect him. The voices in his head were real, not in the psychic term, which meant that aside from drugs, there was no away Rosenkreuzt could cure him. They just had to wait out each psychotic spell, pump him full of sedatives, and use him when the more manageable, apathic swings of his condition hit him.
Eight, Crawford counted. He had eight shots of tranquillizers to keep Farfarello under the control. What he had to do after that... he didn't want to think about. Least Schuldig pick it up his plots and blow his top.
For someone who had ranted and raved about using the "fucking nut" in their escape, Schuldig was oddly protective of Farfarello.
Schuldig, now there was a body that screamed out for attention. He was a little tall for his age, gawky. It looked like his bones had undergone a growth spurt that his flesh and muscle had yet to catch up with. At the same time, he was eerily pretty, in a used, soiled way. His eyes, more than his blazon orange hair, stood out like a snapdragon in a field of daisies...
(Nice comparison.) The red head in question looked up from his meal and grinned.
"Stop that." Crawford growled, causing Nagi to raise an eyebrow in question.
Schuldig cheerfully returned to his waffle, "I know you want my body."
Nagi indiscreetly lifted the table cloth to see if anything was going on down there with Crawford and Schuldig that he hadn't previously noticed.
Farfarello took another sip of Schuldig's orange juice and blinked, asking plainly and tactfully, "Are you going to have sex now?"
"Yes." Said Schuldig.
"What??" Said Crawford.
"...when you want someone's body, you have to have sex." The worldly twelve-year-old reasoned. He blinked again in thought. "Unless you want to kill them. That's different. American, you want to kill the telepath?"
"I have a name." Schuldig growled.
"Don't say...telepath...Farfarello." Crawford corrected in a voice that was no longer steady or comfortable.
"Okay." The psychopath replied, pushing his empty plate into the center of the table, against the salt and pepper shaker rack. He sucked the maple syrup from his fork, than grabbed Schuldig's plate and slide it in front of him.
"Hey!"
====================================================================
The trio waited for the American outside the cafe. Crawford insisted on staying inside, claiming he needed to use the restroom. As soon as he left Schuldig informed the other two that he was really just fixing his hair, the silly vain American. Neither Nagi nor Farfarello pointed out the fact that that had been the first thing the snickering telepath had done the minute they entered the building.
"So..." The Asian child opened, tilting his head towards Schuldig in his frightenly placid manner, "...that is the power of a...telepath?" The last word was half whispered.
Farfarello walked out to the street curve and sat himself down, cradling his head.
Schuldig shrugged, (Not really. Suggestion is defined as a Hypnotic ability, which apparently is an entire different power all together. Telepath's can read thoughts and channel psychic communication. By definition.)
Nagi jumped at the invasion.
(...Mmm, Rosenkreuzt is big, you know?) Schuldig shook his head and laughed. (Funny, I think... some of the most powerful telepath's in the world... all they can do is name a shape or number on the back of a card. You've seen those tests, haven't you? Psychic power... it isn't what Rosenkreuzt makes it out to be. People like Crawford, myself, even you, you little brat... our power is almost unthinkable. It's no wonder we were the ones able to escape...)
Crawford stepped through the doors, clearing his throat. Schuldig helped Farfarello to his feet and they started to walk.
A streak of dark crimson hung over Nagi's pale face. (So...) He timidly tried to stretch out his thoughts. Schuldig nodded an affirmative, encouraging the child to continue, and he did, thinking a little more bravely, (those who can float things like me...)
The German almost laughed out loud, (Kid, the top of the telekinetic class can bend a spoon, that's about fucking it. Lifting those guards, ripping out those chip thingies, unbelievable.) He paused, frowning suddenly. Schuldig wagged a finger in front of the child's face, "Don't let that go to your head."
It was true, Crawford thought. Schuldig had hooked him into the conversation at the beginning and he had been silently following. Walking a little ahead of the three, he mused. Nagi's power was indescribable. According to all his studies, ability like that shouldn't even exist. And if they did, in the unlikely situation they did, the user would have destroyed himself a long time ago with the uncontrolled energy.
Every student of Rosenkreuzt had seen the sketches of what happened to the telekinetic who didn't learn to control his power, or didn't use it. The energy pent up and finally blew; head, limbs, and guts flying everywhere. Crawford had always known that the representation was too melodramatic to be completely accurate, but the idea behind it wasn't something to dismiss.
How could the mysterious Naoe Nagi have gone that many years with that power and still be walking beside them?
Why did he have so much control.
(Telepathy.) Nagi suddenly thought. (If you can just read thoughts and talk inside other people's heads, how'd you convince that waitress that you already paid and she didn't need to double check the register?)
They crossed a street into a park, it was still early in the morning. Only a few children and their parents were on the equipment. The others in the park were either joggers or dog walkers. A group of college students, all male, sat on a park bench off in the distance, chatting and reading from some text books.
Crawford kept his eyes trained in their direction as he and the other three stepped across the lawn.
(That woman was bare-ass stupid.) Schuldig tapped his head, (She thinks so infrequently that she wouldn't have recognized me speaking Klingon to her in that empty void. I could just as easily have conned her out of the check verbally than made suggestions.)
A rifle of confusion floated from Nagi's mind.
"Schuldig has an annoying voice, doesn't he, Nagi?" Crawford said softly, they had just reached the play ground.
The youngest psychic backed up, expecting a retort from the redhead.
Instead, Schuldig grinned, "Yeah, I sound like my nasal passage caved in, don't I?" When he spoke he increased the whine in his nose. He laughed at Nagi's uneasy silence. "I'm not setting you up kid."
Farfarello moved to any empty swing and sat down.
(Listen.)
"It's my voice when I talk to you?"
(A little high. Nasal.)
"When you hear..."
(God, I'm hot and horny, I think I should just beat off right here. RIGHT NOW, BABY!)
Nagi's eyes widen.
"...you're not going to do it, because you know its not your own thoughts." Schuldig shrugged, "well if you have half a brain cell and aren't used to schizophrenic suggestions, you will." He joined the Irish boy on the swings.
"Hypnotists can put a mind in a state of suggestion. Even so, their voices remain their own. Technically, a telepath should not be able to make suggestions to a conscience mind and expect them to be followed through. Theoretically... a true telepath is both a mind reader and a hypnotist." Said Crawford.
The book definition of a 'true telepath' was one who could control every aspect of another person's mind: thoughts, decisions, will. As Schuldig had mentioned earlier, most telepath's weren't on or anywhere near that level.
Their German redhead however...
"I believe Schuldig has the ability to get to that point."
"Crawford!" The boy replied, swinging forward, grinning like a madman. "You flatter me."
"I do nothing of the sort. I'm merely making an observation." Came the calm reply.
Nagi, the bore, lowered himself onto the wood chipped floor, folding his legs underneath himself and placed his hands in his lap. He watched the two teenagers on the swings with a cynical frown. "What about him," he asked, indicating Farfarello.
"I'm crazy." Farfarello replied.
"A manipulator." Schuldig said dully.
"My purpose is to bring about the end."
"What is a manipulator?"
"Hey, anyone been worried about the Sweepers lately?"
Crawford shook his head, dismissively. "They wouldn't attack in broad daylight, especially in a crowded area. They have that much tact." He smiled and remained standing, positioned in-between the swings and Nagi. Only Farfarello caught the secret glance Crawford took over Schuldig's shoulder.
A manipulator, Crawford explained, was a person who possessed the ability to convince their body to do things it physically shouldn't have been able to perform. The term "mind over matter" was the best way to describe someone like Farfarello.
"Think of the freaks that walk on glass or hang themselves in the air by their nipples with fish hooks," Schuldig supplied in his characteristically crass example.
Any "normal" person could train themselves to become what Rosenkreuzt called a manipulator, however, most of the time, it was something the person was born with. Farfarello couldn't feel pain, not for any medical reason. Farfarello couldn't feel pain because he convinced himself that he couldn't feel pain.
"No," he argued sullenly, "God took the Pain away from me."
"We called it the Peter Pan Complex in my dorm." Schuldig chuckled. "I think I can, I think I can. If a Manipulator really believes they can do it, they do it."
"But most manipulators...the sane ones anyway, are always afflicted with doubt." The American paced a little, keeping an eye on Farfarello. "A manipulator should have the ability to do anything they convince themselves they can do. Flight for example, which is where I believe the term Peter Pan Complex came from, we used it in our dorms too. But the manipulator has to, at all times, believe they have can really fly, or levitate, or teleport. Having even a shadow of a doubt-"
"Fucks their whole plans." Schuldig interrupted. "Manipulator's suck. Most of them are pussy scared 'cause the instructors kick their ass all the time, because they can't do what they're suppose to."
Students who didn't meet up to psychic standards were punished, often physically.
"Most manipulators, like Farfarello, posses the inability to feel pain. That's the most common side affect of manipulation." Crawford finished the explanation.
Nagi took all the information in, focusing on the way Crawford described their power as a 'side affect.' "...you make it sound like a disease. Psychic powers." He said softly.
The American did something frightening and unexpected.
He grinned.
"It is."
==================================================================
The leader of the second Sweeper team had to practically hold two of his teammates back.
"C'mon." One of them, a Manipulator, growled. "They're right there! Ready to be plucked. Let's move."
The team was adorn in civilian clothes, gathered around a park bench, trying to look like a study group. They were all young men, college students it may have seemed, nothing about them, save the ear pieces, were suspicious.
"Not in the open," The leader hissed. He snapped his fingers in front of the Manipulator, grabbing his attention. "There are too many people, and none of us have the ability to wipe their minds. Hoztmann said, keep it clean."
"...but...but they killed Lucero." The other whined, pathetically.
"Don't make me take you back home, Janssen." A little more squabbling and eventually the group settled down, forcing themselves to be content with glaring at the four little brats that the Institute prized so much as to order none of them to be harmed.
It was almost unbearable when Schuldig slowly turned his head in their direction and smiled.
"Oh..." Schuldig's slightly nasal tenor stopped the woman in her tracks. He leaned back in his chair and flashed his most playful smile, fresh gaze and confident manner betraying the visage of a boy who had just spent a night sleeping in the sewers. "We already paid."
His voice was airy and vampiric, the two gazes met, the waitress' eyes hazed over slightly.
What an odd group they must have been, Crawford mused, as he glanced across the table. All four boys had wolfed down their meals with disturbing speed and desperation. Even the great Bradley Crawford had been unable to educate his hunger and submitted to the urge just to inhale his eggs and sausage. Farfarello had dug in unabashed, so caught up in stuffing his face, that he made a grab for Schuldig's orange juice, mistaking it for his milk shake, and gulped it half down before either boy noticed.
Aside from eating as if they had never seen food before, they were also mismatched and out of place. How often was it that four young boys came in, order a giant breakfast platter for themselves, with no adult there to supervise or pay for them? They couldn't have been family, Crawford was so plainly American, Nagi so Asian, Farfarello so plainly snow white and round with the features of Irish, Scottish, or British blood, and Schuldig so sun-worn and sharp featured Germanic. Their ages obviously varied, they couldn't have been friends. So what were they?
"I'm going to check on that," The waitress said.
Schuldig batted his eyes, "Do you really have to?" His smile widen and he tilted his head to the side, red-orange hair cascaded down his shoulders. "Don't you trust me?"
Nagi shoved a piece of fruit in his mouth to keep from snorting.
Crawford drummed his fingers on the table, wondering how they were going to do this. This whole surviving thing. Este, Rosenkreuzt, and Sweepers aside, they stood out.
Who screamed for attention the most was debatable. Perhaps Farfarello, because it wasn't every day one saw a red haired albino child with a deadly calm amber eye and a hole in his face. Farfarello had come to Rosenkreuzt with his right eye taped away with cotton swabs and medical wrap, he had an eye patch for awhile, but it was quickly torn off in one of his frequent temper tantrums. He preferred to go around with the gap exposed and frightening, half because it felt better in the open air, where the wound could breath, half because it scared the other students.
On top of that wound, he had two long pink scars running along his face. One slashed across his lip, the other crossed down his eyebrow to his ear. Just looking at him, any normal person would have been filled with pity, thinking the poor child had been attacked, mutilated. Crawford suspected the scars were probably self made, and he would have more, if Rosenkreuzt didn't keep him away from everything sharp and pointy.
He didn't fidget or fret the way a child his age should have. Farfarello possessed a cat-like grace, a liquid slickness that was apparent in his every move. Every jerk of the hands, ever movement of the neck seemed skillfully thought out, like the steps in a long, haunting dance. He was also very young looking, soft and unmoving, which betrayed his entire demeanor. The childhood roundness had yet to decay from Farfarello's face, his lips were still full and swollen, his body still weighed down with baby fat. He didn't look twelve, and that, Crawford decided, could be a problem.
The boy's insanity was on the top of the oracle's mind. Farfarello suffered from childhood schizophrenia, made worse by some unnamed traumatic event the Irish Manipulator was rumored to have suffered through. He was unstable, swinging between the positive and negative symptoms of his disease quickly and without warning. Schuldig had expressed concern about using Farfarello in their plans from the beginning, not because the boy was, as Schuldig said "fucking nuts", but because as a telepath, Schuldig was privy to every shrill whisper and demanding hallucination that trembled through Farfarello's clouded mind.
Medication didn't work on Farfarello, risperdale, seroqual, even clozaril didn't affect him. The voices in his head were real, not in the psychic term, which meant that aside from drugs, there was no away Rosenkreuzt could cure him. They just had to wait out each psychotic spell, pump him full of sedatives, and use him when the more manageable, apathic swings of his condition hit him.
Eight, Crawford counted. He had eight shots of tranquillizers to keep Farfarello under the control. What he had to do after that... he didn't want to think about. Least Schuldig pick it up his plots and blow his top.
For someone who had ranted and raved about using the "fucking nut" in their escape, Schuldig was oddly protective of Farfarello.
Schuldig, now there was a body that screamed out for attention. He was a little tall for his age, gawky. It looked like his bones had undergone a growth spurt that his flesh and muscle had yet to catch up with. At the same time, he was eerily pretty, in a used, soiled way. His eyes, more than his blazon orange hair, stood out like a snapdragon in a field of daisies...
(Nice comparison.) The red head in question looked up from his meal and grinned.
"Stop that." Crawford growled, causing Nagi to raise an eyebrow in question.
Schuldig cheerfully returned to his waffle, "I know you want my body."
Nagi indiscreetly lifted the table cloth to see if anything was going on down there with Crawford and Schuldig that he hadn't previously noticed.
Farfarello took another sip of Schuldig's orange juice and blinked, asking plainly and tactfully, "Are you going to have sex now?"
"Yes." Said Schuldig.
"What??" Said Crawford.
"...when you want someone's body, you have to have sex." The worldly twelve-year-old reasoned. He blinked again in thought. "Unless you want to kill them. That's different. American, you want to kill the telepath?"
"I have a name." Schuldig growled.
"Don't say...telepath...Farfarello." Crawford corrected in a voice that was no longer steady or comfortable.
"Okay." The psychopath replied, pushing his empty plate into the center of the table, against the salt and pepper shaker rack. He sucked the maple syrup from his fork, than grabbed Schuldig's plate and slide it in front of him.
"Hey!"
====================================================================
The trio waited for the American outside the cafe. Crawford insisted on staying inside, claiming he needed to use the restroom. As soon as he left Schuldig informed the other two that he was really just fixing his hair, the silly vain American. Neither Nagi nor Farfarello pointed out the fact that that had been the first thing the snickering telepath had done the minute they entered the building.
"So..." The Asian child opened, tilting his head towards Schuldig in his frightenly placid manner, "...that is the power of a...telepath?" The last word was half whispered.
Farfarello walked out to the street curve and sat himself down, cradling his head.
Schuldig shrugged, (Not really. Suggestion is defined as a Hypnotic ability, which apparently is an entire different power all together. Telepath's can read thoughts and channel psychic communication. By definition.)
Nagi jumped at the invasion.
(...Mmm, Rosenkreuzt is big, you know?) Schuldig shook his head and laughed. (Funny, I think... some of the most powerful telepath's in the world... all they can do is name a shape or number on the back of a card. You've seen those tests, haven't you? Psychic power... it isn't what Rosenkreuzt makes it out to be. People like Crawford, myself, even you, you little brat... our power is almost unthinkable. It's no wonder we were the ones able to escape...)
Crawford stepped through the doors, clearing his throat. Schuldig helped Farfarello to his feet and they started to walk.
A streak of dark crimson hung over Nagi's pale face. (So...) He timidly tried to stretch out his thoughts. Schuldig nodded an affirmative, encouraging the child to continue, and he did, thinking a little more bravely, (those who can float things like me...)
The German almost laughed out loud, (Kid, the top of the telekinetic class can bend a spoon, that's about fucking it. Lifting those guards, ripping out those chip thingies, unbelievable.) He paused, frowning suddenly. Schuldig wagged a finger in front of the child's face, "Don't let that go to your head."
It was true, Crawford thought. Schuldig had hooked him into the conversation at the beginning and he had been silently following. Walking a little ahead of the three, he mused. Nagi's power was indescribable. According to all his studies, ability like that shouldn't even exist. And if they did, in the unlikely situation they did, the user would have destroyed himself a long time ago with the uncontrolled energy.
Every student of Rosenkreuzt had seen the sketches of what happened to the telekinetic who didn't learn to control his power, or didn't use it. The energy pent up and finally blew; head, limbs, and guts flying everywhere. Crawford had always known that the representation was too melodramatic to be completely accurate, but the idea behind it wasn't something to dismiss.
How could the mysterious Naoe Nagi have gone that many years with that power and still be walking beside them?
Why did he have so much control.
(Telepathy.) Nagi suddenly thought. (If you can just read thoughts and talk inside other people's heads, how'd you convince that waitress that you already paid and she didn't need to double check the register?)
They crossed a street into a park, it was still early in the morning. Only a few children and their parents were on the equipment. The others in the park were either joggers or dog walkers. A group of college students, all male, sat on a park bench off in the distance, chatting and reading from some text books.
Crawford kept his eyes trained in their direction as he and the other three stepped across the lawn.
(That woman was bare-ass stupid.) Schuldig tapped his head, (She thinks so infrequently that she wouldn't have recognized me speaking Klingon to her in that empty void. I could just as easily have conned her out of the check verbally than made suggestions.)
A rifle of confusion floated from Nagi's mind.
"Schuldig has an annoying voice, doesn't he, Nagi?" Crawford said softly, they had just reached the play ground.
The youngest psychic backed up, expecting a retort from the redhead.
Instead, Schuldig grinned, "Yeah, I sound like my nasal passage caved in, don't I?" When he spoke he increased the whine in his nose. He laughed at Nagi's uneasy silence. "I'm not setting you up kid."
Farfarello moved to any empty swing and sat down.
(Listen.)
"It's my voice when I talk to you?"
(A little high. Nasal.)
"When you hear..."
(God, I'm hot and horny, I think I should just beat off right here. RIGHT NOW, BABY!)
Nagi's eyes widen.
"...you're not going to do it, because you know its not your own thoughts." Schuldig shrugged, "well if you have half a brain cell and aren't used to schizophrenic suggestions, you will." He joined the Irish boy on the swings.
"Hypnotists can put a mind in a state of suggestion. Even so, their voices remain their own. Technically, a telepath should not be able to make suggestions to a conscience mind and expect them to be followed through. Theoretically... a true telepath is both a mind reader and a hypnotist." Said Crawford.
The book definition of a 'true telepath' was one who could control every aspect of another person's mind: thoughts, decisions, will. As Schuldig had mentioned earlier, most telepath's weren't on or anywhere near that level.
Their German redhead however...
"I believe Schuldig has the ability to get to that point."
"Crawford!" The boy replied, swinging forward, grinning like a madman. "You flatter me."
"I do nothing of the sort. I'm merely making an observation." Came the calm reply.
Nagi, the bore, lowered himself onto the wood chipped floor, folding his legs underneath himself and placed his hands in his lap. He watched the two teenagers on the swings with a cynical frown. "What about him," he asked, indicating Farfarello.
"I'm crazy." Farfarello replied.
"A manipulator." Schuldig said dully.
"My purpose is to bring about the end."
"What is a manipulator?"
"Hey, anyone been worried about the Sweepers lately?"
Crawford shook his head, dismissively. "They wouldn't attack in broad daylight, especially in a crowded area. They have that much tact." He smiled and remained standing, positioned in-between the swings and Nagi. Only Farfarello caught the secret glance Crawford took over Schuldig's shoulder.
A manipulator, Crawford explained, was a person who possessed the ability to convince their body to do things it physically shouldn't have been able to perform. The term "mind over matter" was the best way to describe someone like Farfarello.
"Think of the freaks that walk on glass or hang themselves in the air by their nipples with fish hooks," Schuldig supplied in his characteristically crass example.
Any "normal" person could train themselves to become what Rosenkreuzt called a manipulator, however, most of the time, it was something the person was born with. Farfarello couldn't feel pain, not for any medical reason. Farfarello couldn't feel pain because he convinced himself that he couldn't feel pain.
"No," he argued sullenly, "God took the Pain away from me."
"We called it the Peter Pan Complex in my dorm." Schuldig chuckled. "I think I can, I think I can. If a Manipulator really believes they can do it, they do it."
"But most manipulators...the sane ones anyway, are always afflicted with doubt." The American paced a little, keeping an eye on Farfarello. "A manipulator should have the ability to do anything they convince themselves they can do. Flight for example, which is where I believe the term Peter Pan Complex came from, we used it in our dorms too. But the manipulator has to, at all times, believe they have can really fly, or levitate, or teleport. Having even a shadow of a doubt-"
"Fucks their whole plans." Schuldig interrupted. "Manipulator's suck. Most of them are pussy scared 'cause the instructors kick their ass all the time, because they can't do what they're suppose to."
Students who didn't meet up to psychic standards were punished, often physically.
"Most manipulators, like Farfarello, posses the inability to feel pain. That's the most common side affect of manipulation." Crawford finished the explanation.
Nagi took all the information in, focusing on the way Crawford described their power as a 'side affect.' "...you make it sound like a disease. Psychic powers." He said softly.
The American did something frightening and unexpected.
He grinned.
"It is."
==================================================================
The leader of the second Sweeper team had to practically hold two of his teammates back.
"C'mon." One of them, a Manipulator, growled. "They're right there! Ready to be plucked. Let's move."
The team was adorn in civilian clothes, gathered around a park bench, trying to look like a study group. They were all young men, college students it may have seemed, nothing about them, save the ear pieces, were suspicious.
"Not in the open," The leader hissed. He snapped his fingers in front of the Manipulator, grabbing his attention. "There are too many people, and none of us have the ability to wipe their minds. Hoztmann said, keep it clean."
"...but...but they killed Lucero." The other whined, pathetically.
"Don't make me take you back home, Janssen." A little more squabbling and eventually the group settled down, forcing themselves to be content with glaring at the four little brats that the Institute prized so much as to order none of them to be harmed.
It was almost unbearable when Schuldig slowly turned his head in their direction and smiled.
